THE HIDDEN BLADE
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: In Japan 1861 a minor samurai is torn
between his responsibility, his desires, and
his morality. With this film Yôji Yamada follows
up his TWILIGHT SAMURAI, also set in the mid-19th
Century against the backdrop of the dying order
of Shoguns and Samurai. It is a story this story
of a man who must choose between his duty and
what he thinks is right. The film is less one of
bloody martial arts and more a study of a
personal conflict in a society at once overly
ordered and rapidly changing. Rating: high +2
(-4 to +4) or 8/10
Yôji Yamada's TWILIGHT SAMURAI won a host of awards from the Japanese Academy and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign film. He continues to adapt Shuuhei Fujisawa's stories with another film about conflicting values in a 19th Century Japan being ripped apart by two factions, those wanting to continue with the old Bushido Samurai values and those wanting to modernize the country to survive in the modern world. As one character laments, "Wars are now won by expensive guns." The conflict will be familiar to those who saw the film THE LAST SAMURAI. Yamada's theme is one common in Japanese film, the dissonance between private morality and public duty, particularly in this time of change.
Change was perhaps more frightening in the outwardly well-ordered historical Japan than in any other culture. This was very much a society in which everybody was expected to be in his place and his duty. The greatest virtue was absolute loyalty and obedience to those above in the pecking order. Everybody in the society had to be obedient at a level that we tend to associate only with our military. Perhaps the most poignant scene of THE HIDDEN BLADE has a servant girl telling a samurai that he terrified her when she first saw him. Why? He carried a sword, and being of the samurai class he had the right to use it against her if she displeased him. The samurai is bewildered because though he knew he had that power over her, he also knew that few samurai would ever use that right. This is a story in which loyalty to friends and love is balanced against duty in a culture in which disobedience can be a capital crime.
Munezo Katagiri (played by Masatoshi Nagase) was an expert swordsman as was Yaichiro Hazama (Yukiyoshi Ozawa) who learned from the same master swordsman. It was never clear whether Katagiri or Hazama was the better swordsman. It may sound at this point like this will be a standard martial arts plot, but there is more to this story. As the film opens Hazama is being posted to Edo (later to be called Tokyo). Katagiri appears to be not so lucky. He will remain in a backwater town in northeast Japan and his life and his career will stagnate over the next three years. Katagiri would remain loyal to the code of the samurai if he could, but he and the military are being commanded to learn about the European ways of fighting with guns and artillery, a less honorable way of fighting. Katagiri does not really mind staying in the town because he loves his family's servant Kie (Takako Matsu), a beautiful country girl. Sadly, marriage is out of the question with a woman of lower caste. Three years later the beautiful Kie is married to a merchant whose family's abuse is slowly killing Kie. What to do about Kie is the first of several moral decisions he will have to make.
Meanwhile, the local defense forces are getting a crash course in the new techniques of guns and artillery. They are taking to the new methods like a duck takes to stock trading. Word comes that Hazama has fallen in with the Unasaka Clan that opposes the modernization of Japan. (The Unasaka is a fictional clan that also featured prominently in TWILIGHT SAMURAI.) Hazama took part in a political conspiracy against the Shogun, but was caught and brought back to his home village as a prisoner. Local officials begin a witch-hunt to find any of Hazama's friends who might harbor similar sympathies.
American audiences my not recognize how unusual the casting choices are. Masatoshi Nagase is known mostly for comic roles in Japan, particularly the hard-boiled troubleshooter with the humorous name Mike Hama. Takako Matsu is a popular singer and actress whose father was a famous Kabuki actor.
Yamada's film is strong and poignant, though perhaps it will be more so with Japanese audiences who better understand societal pressure. The film is powerful, though it fails a little in the final few scenes. I rate THE HIDDEN BLADE a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Mark R. Leeper mleeper@optonline.net Copyright 2006 Mark R. Leeper
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