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Shinobi: Limited Edition
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Radiance Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (16th July 2024). |
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The Film
 "Starring “the Japanese James Dean” Raizo Ichikawa (Sleepy Eyes of Death, Conflagration) alongside Tomisaburo Wakayama (Lone Wolf and Cub, the Bounty Hunter trilogy) and Ayako Wakao (Elegant Beast, Red Angel), the Shinobi series was an epoch-making success and became a social phenomenon that left deep marks on Japan of the 1960s, from children’s playgrounds to the leftist counter-culture. Packed with spectacular and oft-copied action scenes, it also established the ground rules for all ninja movies that followed, introducing such classic tropes as the shuriken throwing star and the iconic black mask and suit." Band of Assassins: In his ambitious ascent to become Shōgun, Oda Nobunaga (Shogun Assassin's Tomisaburô Wakayama) has made victories by persecuting and eradicating clans of the ninja class, but it is his burning down of the temple at Mount Hiei and the resulting deaths of sixteen-hundred clergyman that has made him an enemy to Buddha, and thus, an enemy to all ninja. Upon learning that Lord Fujibayashi Nagato has ordered his ninja to assassinate Nobunaga, Momochi Sandayű (High and Low's Yűnosuke Itô) believes that his clan would be undermined if they are not the ones to claim Nobunaga's head. Momochi selects ninja-in-training Ishikawa Goemon (An Actor's Revenge's Raizô Ichikawa) to be his counselor, advising on strategy and helping with the accounts and expenditures. Despite the misgivings of his gunpowder-maker father – who is subsequently killed in an explosion – Goemon is flattered, but also becomes attracted to Momochi's young wife Inone (Woman in the Dunes' Kyôko Kishida), a fact which does not go unnoticed by Momochi. Upon learning that Momochi has sent his men to assassinate Nobunaga, Lord Fujibayashi (also Yűnosuke) sends his own skilled ninja, but both of these attempts fail with brutal results. Goemon can only resist Inone for so long and when he finally gives in, they are caught by the servants. Goemon believes that Inone will be forgiven by her husband if he cuts ties with the clan and leaves; however, Inone attempts to stop him and is accidentally killed in the struggle. Goemon flees but is persecuted by Momochi who tells him that there is no forgiveness for what he has done, and he can only do penance by being the on to assassinate Nobunaga. However much he tries to find something like a normal life with would-be prostitute Maki (Zatoichi's Cane Sword's Shiho Fujimura), he is hounded by a "handler" Yozo (Tampopo's Yoshi Katô) who reminds him of his debt, spreading rumors of his crimes against Momochi and making him a wanted man wherever he goes. Vengeance: His debt to Momochi wiped away, Goemon endeavors to live a quiet life as a woodsman with Maki and their child. He is able to ignore Nobunaga's continuing persecution of the ninja clans – including bounties that prove all too tempting for the starving populace – until a band of samurai raid his farm and murder his son. In spite of killing each and every one of his attackers, Goemon is shattered. When they go to live with Maki's brother in Saiga – last refuge of the Ikko sect of ninja – Goemon devotes himself to teaching ninjitsu until ninja Hattori Hanzo (Ugetsu's Saburô Date) who defected to the house of Ieyasu Tokugawa and has been spying for him. Rather than attempting an assassination on Nobunaga again, Hattori instead suggests that Goemon exploit the tension between Nobunaga's generals: loyal Aketsi Mitsuhide (Tora! Tora! Tora!'s Sô Yamamura) who Nobunaga has just humiliated for trying to dissuade him from burning down a Buddhist temple occupied by not only Ikko rebels but also an imperial priest, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (Tokyo Story's Eijirô Tôno) who has ingratiated himself to Nobunaga. Goemon infiltrates Mitsuhide's clan under the guise of a farm boy who wants to be a ninja. While even those closes to Mitsuhide have trouble convincing him that Nobunaga will never return his loyalty, Hideyoshi steps up his his attempts to shift Nobunaga's favor to him by attempting to starve out the Ikko rebels in Saiga including Goemon's wife. Resurrection: Sentenced to be boiled alive and his head put on display for public viewing after a failed attempt at assassinating Hideyoshi – who has ascended beyond the shogunate to Taiko – to avenge his wife and the Saiga clan, Goemon is saved at the last moment by Hattori Hanzo on behalf of Ieyasu Tokugawa (Harakiri's Masao Mishima). Although Ieyasu has found favor with Hideyoshi, he is eager to exploit the rift with his adopted son Hidetsugu (Zatoichi the Fugitive's Jun'ichirô Narita) and his wife (Fighting Delinquents' Chikako Hosokawa) since he fathered a biological son Hideyori with concubine Ochacha (Elegant Beast's Ayako Wakao). With Hideyoshi eager to invade Korea and directing all spending to that cause along with demanding all the lords supply him with soldiers, Goemon and fellow lone samurai Inuhachi (Warning from Space's Koh Sugita) set about terrorizing Ochacha to prove to Hideyoshi that they can get to his son at any time and feeding Hidetsugu's paranoia while Ieyasu courts Hideyoshi's wife who also senses her precarious position.  "What does a Ninja live for? Starting as an innocent toddler, he must endure hard training in Ninjutsu. Then he is sent to serve under some warlord in the east, or some daimyo in the west, and does so knowing that his life is always at risk. If he is captured, he must endure exquisite tortures, and yet not divulge the truth. Rather than disclose his name, he will intently seek death instead. When escape is no longer possible, he will burn his face with fire, and if fire be not at hand, he will disfigure his face with his sword; and thus, no one will ever know his true identity. He is born in darkness, and he will die in darkness. This is the path of the Ninja's life, it is the path of death." Based on the serialized novel by Tomoyoshi Murayama – simultaneously adapted for the screen as this eight film series by Daiei between 1962 and 1970 and on television by Toei between 1964 and 1965, Band of Assassins or "Shinobi no Mono" does not so much question these edicts as show the difficulty of reconciling one's humanity with them, be it in the form of Goemon's seeming sins of pride and lust – although his father chides him as he boasts about Momochi's seeming favoritism towards him, the older man nonetheless expresses existential weariness – or the machinations of "both" Momochi and Fujibayashi. Although the film reveals early on that Momochi and Fujibayashi is not a dual role for actor Yűnosuke but a dual idenity in which he may not be aware that the strategic duality is also an expression of a divided self. Momochi is cold towards his young and beautiful wife Inone and ultimately seems selfish. Fujibayash is no less self-interested, but he is lustful with his wife Hinona (Yôko Uraji) and even shocks her in his willingness to abandon his fortress under siege to escape with her. With ninja usually depicted elsewhere in cinema as masked, anonymous, and disposable assassins attacking the protagonists, there would be no story for a film foregrounding them as protagonists if there were no such struggle (apart from the usual Hollywood scenario of a white character who studies their fighting techniques). While Goemon is wanted man in Band of Assassins, he is nevertheless drawn to other people including Maki and Momochi's maid Hata (Irezumi's Reiko Fujiwara) who is reduced to prostitution and reveals the extent of Momochi's duplicity. Some of Goemon's colleagues as well as rivals in Fujibayashi's clan are presented as no less "human" – apart from Kizaru (Yojimbo's Kô Nishimura) introduced stealing off of the dead until chased off by chuckling Goemon – but their selfless willingness to endure torture and scar themselves beyond recognition rather than betray their masters to Nobunaga seems more like manipulation given their master(s). Even after Goemon has had everything he loves torn from him (family and his adopted clan) in Vengeance, Goemon is entirely and even recklessly driven by emotion. He puts across a stoic image seemingly in defiance as he prepares to face his fate at the end of that installment and adapts the role of cool puppet master in Resurrection – apart from a few acts of self-defense by Goemon, it is others who reveal their inner weaknesses through rage and violence – but he cannot contain his bitterness from Hattori or Inuhachi. Although the series originated with director Satsuo Yamamoto (Zatoichi the Outlaw) – who felt he had told Goemon's entire story in the first two films and would would exit the series when Daiei wanted to continue it – Band of Assassins is more of a character study with some intentional and unintentional incoherence in the narrative due to unclear motives for Momochi assuming to roles and self-destructively playing two clans of ninja against each other when he shares their goal of ridding Japan of Nobunaga. Vengeance steers the series in the direction of court intrigues and betrayals but still with the end goal of Goemon achieving his vengeance through bloodshed. Helmed by Kazuo Mori (Wrath of Daimajin) from a script by Hajime Takaiwa (Crimson Bat, the Blind Swordswoman), Resurrection more clearly and compellingly delivers the intrigue with more well-rounded characters rather than mere pawns. While Hattori Hanzo and Ieyasu Tokugawa better fit the bill of puppet masters, Goemon is more ambiguous, seeming to be their pawn but acting on his own and in sometimes unpredictable ways that seem to run counter to his intent to slowly torment Hideyoshi (including a startling scene in which it seems like he intends to rape Ochacha and murder her child). His growth in the third film is staying his hand when his nemesis is most vulnerable – taking pleasure in the other's knowledge of his own mortality and the inevitable collapse of his house of cards – and rejecting a job offer which would insure him safety knowing that his employer is not only no more loyal but also no better than Nobunaga or Hideyoshi. Ichikawa simultaneously starred in the ten Sleepy Eyes of Death films before his early death of liver cancer at age thirty-seven in 1969. 
Video
Not widely seen in the United States or the United Kingdom, the Shinobi films have been consistently available in Japan and Asian territories on VHS, laserdisc, VCD, and DVD – including non-anamorphic but English-subtitled Hong Kong editions – but were first made more accessible stateside in English-friendly form via AnimEigo's DVD boxed set of the first four films (optimistically subtitled "Vol. 1" but it was not followed up by a subsequent volume). That set utilized standard definition transfers that had already appeared on Japanese DVD. We have not seen those in a while but Radiance's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.43:1 widescreen Blu-rays of the first three films come from more recent HD masters provided by Kadokawa Pictures which had been released on disc in Japan in 2019, and the results are striking. Blacks are deep with none of the gamma issues seen in some earlier Japanese transfers of monochrome films, archival damage is almost entirely absent or has been capably repaired, sharpness wavers during some panning wide shots due to the distortion of the older anamorphic lenses, and close-ups exhibit some vivid detail in hair, skin, wardrobe, and the mix of location and studio settings. 
Audio
All three films include original mono Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks and they have all been cleaned, with the Westrex "noiseless" recording actually exhibiting some clean silences that are all the better to convey the film's use of sound when depicting the swift (sometimes undercranked) stalking maneuvers of the ninja. The louder passages of films including music, battles, and the explosive and fiery climaxes of the first two films also come across without distortion in the high ends. The optional English subtitles have been newly-translated and manage to convey the story and context without the annotations of the AnimEigo subtitles. 
Extras
Extras are sparse but informative. The first disc with Band of Assassins and Vengaence features an interview with Shozo Ichiyama, artistic director of the Tokyo International Film (14:05) who discusses the position of studio Toho before and after the war, Satsuo Yamamoto's role in a labor strike in which Toho asked the American army to intervene that lead to the director forming an independent company, and collaborating with Daiei on the first two "Shinobi no Mono". Although Yamamoto was a leftist and Daiei's Masaichi Nagata (Rashomon) right wing, and the series was conceived as merely an "entertainment", Ichiyama notes the political aspects of the film including the depiction of the elite samurai class and their treatment of the proletariat ninjitsu. Disc two includes "A Brief History of Ninja Films" (18:11), a visual essay by film scholar Mance Thompson who sheds some light on Japanese silent ninja cinema and its stars – much ot the output of which is lost – social concerns about the influence of the films on children, the post-war resurgence of the genre, and how the first foreign film about ninja You Only Live Twice – which cribs the first film's poison scene – influenced the depiction of ninja in subsequent non-Japanese cinema including Hollywood productions. The interview with film critic Toshiaki Sato on star Raizo Ichikawa (14:18) discusses the actor's stage beginnings, revealing that he had already been courted by Daiei before he determined that he had no future in kabuki theater, and that his stardom was instant and that he worked prolifically even up to his death (with doubles being employed for action in his last two films). More interesting is Sato's description of how the always rather frail actor managed to convey the illusion of swiftness and power through movements and mannerisms, and how he tailored those techniques to different roles.  The disc also includes trailers for the first three films (2:19, 2:19, and 2:31 respectively).
Packaging
This limited edition of three thousand copies – U.S. and U.K. – is presented in a rigid box with two full-height Scanavo cases and removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings including six postcards of promotional material from the films, reversible sleeves featuring artwork based on original promotional materials, and a booklet featuring new writing by Jonathan Clements on the "Shinobi no mono" series and Diane Wei Lewis on writer Tomoyoshi Murayama.
Overall
Little seen outside its native Japan upon release, the Shinobi series nevertheless proved a major influence on some of the first non-Japanese films to depict ninja including the Bond film You Only Live Twice.
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