Orochi

Lately I have been trying to pluck the roots of cinema, looking for images from the first hours. Especially intriguing images that have shaped entire cinematic worlds by now. For my next entry from Japan I finally get to see the grandfather of chambara, as a big fan of the genre a film I have been looking forward to for a long time.

Storywise, it was meant to caution audiences on the deception of appearances; that the most noble authority may be masking evil, and a crook may be a victim of unjust prejudice and at heart a hero. It is all structured around a young, honorable samurai's descent into anomie and lawless violence, the reason offered for this is not just the unreliable human eye prone to make judgments from ignorance but the very nature of a world floating with fleeting images.

But of course we have been watching all along and know who is pure at heart. It works perfectly as a tragedy about organized injustice, an indictment of a Tokugawa society of absolute power and reckless vice, but double-times better as a metaphysical treatise on the sankaras of the clouded mind, to borrow from Buddhist terminology, that power the cycle of human suffering.

It is superb stuff and not just for the time. There was a long precedent of these types of film on the kabuki stage; with the intense artifice of that stage and its striking poses. But the film is serpentine with vitality, the eye prodding.

It ends with a protracted fight scene redolent with agonies of the soul, as would grow to be the chambara tradition in everything from Killing in Yoshiwara and Sword of Doom to the Lone Wolf films. The karmic sword slashing inwards in a dissolution of the self. The camera steals a sweeping panorama of this as it unfurls across the screen.

The actor playing the lead was one of the first jidaigeki stars. Everyone who yielded a sword afterwards, Tatsuya Nakadai, Shintaro Katsu, Tomisaburo Wakayama, they owe no small debt to what he accomplished here. For the finale, to accompany the wonderfully unceremonial aragoto ('rough style') of his performance his face is subtly made-up in devilish hues from kabuki, to connect the audience with where these stories were first conceived.

He is not finally allowed to perform seppuku or die in battle, that would have been more heroic than the censors of the time could tolerate. But the finale affects with just the turn of life in this fleeting suffering world.

I had the good fortune of watching this movie with live piano music, narrated by the wonderful benshi Kataoka Ichiro. The experience as a whole was easily my favourite movie-going experience in recent memory.

The (anti-)hero of the movie, Heisaburo, is a young samurai. He tries to do good by upholding his sense of bushido, while pining for the attention of the woman of his dreams. Unfortunately, his sense of honour keeps getting him into trouble, and public opinion quickly turns against him.

Heisaburo writhes like a snake -- Orochi means snake or serpent -- while trying to stay alive, down on his luck.

Unlike many movies of its time, the fight scenes are nicely choreographed and fast. They manage to convey Heisaburo's prowess as a martial artist, without resorting to either camp over-acting or slow kabuki-style action.

The movie caused some minor controversy in 1925 Japan. It was banned for a time, and forced to change its title from Outlaw to Serpent. It was deemed "improper" to have an outlaw as a hero. Apparently universal male suffrage in Japan (1925) was a large political hurdle. The more conservative members of government wanted assurances and compromises. Cracking down on "improper behaviour" was a sad side-effect of that.

If you can watch this movie with a narrator, then I strongly encourage you to. It's a wonderful tradition that is on the verge of extinction.

Tsumasaburo Bando plays a young but hotheaded samurai. He falls in love with two women (Misao Seki and Utako Tamaki) but he cannot convince either that he is a good man. He becomes a killer trying to save one of them from a criminal who had rescued him after some time in jail.

The final extended fight scene is wonderful. The print also comes with a 'benshi' (film explainer) performance. He does the voices of all the characters and explains the action.

Chambara (from the sound of swords striking one another during a fight) is the Japanese name for samurai warrior pictures. They were a very important genre in the early days of Japanese cinema, but surviving films are rare.

Samurai films in Japan during the mid-1920s were increasingly popular in the thriving cinema market of the Land of the Rising Sun. Although not laden with multiple sword fights, these movies highlight the noblesse battling evil criminal elements to preserve the Japanese way of living.

Actor-turned-film producer Tsumasaburo "Bantsuma" Bando, in his second independent movie, released an entirely different samurai motion picture, November 1925's "Orochi." In it, the portrayal of a few noble samurai wearing false masks are the actual villains in the film, unique in early Japanese movies. The hero in "Orochi" isn't some rich guy; he's a member of the lower class. Kunitomi (Bantsuma) possesses all the positive traits of a noble, including an underlying sense of loyalty to his master and an expertise in sword fighting. The movie follows him through a series of unfortunate circumstantial incidents, casting him in an unfair villainous light.

The first misfortune occurs to him when he attends his master's birthday party. As the sake flows throughout the partiers' guts (with the exception of Kunitomi), one young samurai offers him a glass. When he refuses, the hot-headed samurai hurls the drink in his face. After the fight, Kunitomi gets blamed for the incident. Another event happens when a group of noble samurai insult his master's daughters, sending Kunitomi into another brawl. He gets banished from his hometown, labeled as a criminal.

Bantsuma's film was originally titled 'The Outlaw.' But an increasingly militance stance by the Japanese government created a hostile atmosphere, forcing him to change the title's name. He settled on "Orochi," meaning serpent. He felt his style of sword play was similar to a fighter slithering like a snake all the while he felt the censors would be happy seeing his hero described in despicable term. Bantsuma was required to cut and reshoot 20% of the film because censors were displeased with his portrayal of the nobles at writ large.

"Orochi's" fame in cinema is the concluding battle, which captures an entirely new style of sword fighting. The fast-paced, quick-edited sequence of Kunitomi battling a group of samurai set a standard in the genre. One unusual aspect of his sword fighting is he doesn't look at the person he's killing. As the weapon enters his victim's body he's already on alert for the next fighter he'll take on. So impressive were the martial sequences in his movie that Bantsuma was given the nickname "The King of Swordfights."

Bantsuma produced and directed a number of films after his landmark "Orochi," well into the early 1950s. But of all the movies he made, there was one that he held in the highest esteem. He kept only one negative print of a movie in his personal library, and that was "Orochi."

From a technical standpoint this is wonderful. There are great sword fighting scenes, panoramic camera shots, and good characters. Of course, as is always a battle for a westerner, I have been slow to embrace the Japanese history, the caste system. Here, a man who does not deserve to be persecuted, is attacked over and over because he is poor and has few options. He falls in love tragically and this leads to even more pain. I assume this was a statement film about life's cruelty.