Muhômatsu no isshô

A beguiling anecdote set during the Meiji Era and gracefully shot by one of Japan's leading cameramen, Kazuo Miyagawa.

Although described by Japanese film authority Alex Jacoby as "one of the finest and most moving films produced during the war years", it tends to be neglected in favour of it's veteran director's 1958 remake in colour and 'scope, dismissed by Donald Richie as "not nearly so good".

Although heavily censored and truncated after the war, at least it survives; unlike leading lady Kekio Sonoi who received a lethal dose of radiation at Hiroshima.

Tsumasaburô Bandô is a rickshaw man, a wild one who loves to fight and takes slights poorly. Yet he has a good heart, and when Hiroyuki Nagato is injured, he carries him home and then to the doctor. The boy's mother, Keiko Sonoi offers him money, but he refuses; even a poor man has his pride, and helping children is a duty. The boy's father invites him home, and treats him to many drinks, but dies, and Bandô helps to raise him to a man.

Hiroshi Inagaki directed this movie, and it is a sentimental pip, with Bandô giving an exuberant performance of a man with a generous heart and little in the way of words to express he. Instead, he shows it by the enthusiasm with which he throws himself into situations, whether it's fighting, on winning a foot race, or festival drumming. Inagaki later remade this in color with Toshiro Mifune in Bandô's role, but this version in better.