Director: Tokozu Tanaka
Year: 1965
Rating: 7.0

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Aka - Akai Shuriken

An excellent samurai film with a good amount of action. It might sound a bit familiar. A lean tough samurai or Ronin rides into a beat up old town on his horse to scout out the territory. He sees opportunities for his skills. Skills like his two swords and his never ending supply of darting sharp knives. There are three Yakuza factions that run the town - all knee deep in corruption and paranoia that one of the other factions will drive them out. They all want his services and are willing to pay for it. It is difficult to determine which had more influence on the film - Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars or the original source Red Harvest from Hammett. It has elements of all three. It very much feels like a Spaghetti Western in style and protagonist but the central theme of Red Harvest is also brought in. Some people just have to die before things are set right.


Ibuki played by Raizô Ichikawa is sitting by the river and sees a dead body floating in the water being pecked at by crows - he chases them away. In a sense that is the entire film in the first minute. He enters the town and quickly busts up a fight between two of the Clans and steals some money - quickly establishing his credentials. He learns that there are three groups - Hotoke (Isao Yamagata) who are on the top in terms of men and ambitions; Kinuya (Fujio Suga) are second on the rung but hoping to do something about that; and at the bottom is Sumiya (Yoshio Yasuda) who are terrified about their survival. Ibuki feels like a Godsend when he offers Sumiya his services to kill Hotoke but he has a much more complicated agenda. Kill them all.


The film throws in a few other central characters that make the film intriguing and more complex - the honorable woman Oyuki (Chitose Kobayasi) who runs the stable and hates all the Yakuza, the not so honorable woman Chinami (Masumi Harukawa) who runs the local bar and is willing to trade her body to anyone for protection and murder and finally another Ronin, Masa (Koji Nanbara) who shows up to work for Hitoke and may be the equal of Ibuki. He wants two things in life - Chinami and to kill what he refers to Ibuki as "the lowly samurai". Ibuki remains a mysterious figure till the end - corrupt or heroic. A few times he runs away from a fight with Masa because it doesn't fit into his overall plans but the that day is inevitable.