Few points to understand Hideo Gosha’s first movies:
Gosha’s Cinema can be resumed by one shot. His ‘very’ first one: someone’s foot walking in a mud puddle! Someone? No, it’s a samurai. Meaning Gosha wants to break myths to bring out humanity. Breaking a moral prison to free men.
Japanese Society
In the feudal Japan, samurai was a social cast with important values (honor, respect…), nothing else really mattered. These men had to adopt a perfect behavior, and respect their duties. They were like slaves, like puppets in a way. Yet, samurais inspired fear. That’s because these men weren’t that perfect, and they abused people. For example, Three Outlaw Samurai’s peasants wants to be heard, they’re victims of this system. But at the same time, they’re afraid to act – they can be killed.
It explains why the feudal society is still safe. Nobody moves.
The Mud of the Samurai
Gosha’s Heroes
Few men manage to get away from the social cast system. In Gosha’s world, they’re broken men: they did bad things on the name of Honor… and then they’ve understood how they’ve been used. How they were blinded by a hypocrite system. And now they’re decided to act against hypocrites, to regain their “humanity”. This feeling is so important, it can breaks social barriers (see Three Outlaw Samurai).
Gosha rejects clearly the society’s laws that can’t bring peace or freedom to men.
The Myth of the Samurai
Gosha uses the myth of the samurai to show his idea of freedom. It’s also seen as the failure of the society. It begins with Three Outlaw Samurai, and the famous first shot, the samurai walking nearly bare-foot in a mud puddle. What’s left of the glorious and heroic samurai? Nothing. Same thing with Sword of the beast, where the samurai is a wild beast proud to be a coward!
Liberty, here I come!
Gosha wants to use every single face of this myth, he will even start changing the physical aspect of the samurai with Tange Sazen, in fact a ronin – masterless samurai – who became one eyed and one armed after being betrayed by his own clan!
The Tange Sazen’s ‘antagonistic brother’ is to be found in Goyokin. It’s also a ronin (Tatsuya nakadai). He’s a totally destructed man, he’s pure nihilism (see his physic and his moral). He’s pessimist and doesn’t believe in anything, forced to be a “clown samurai” to earn money. Who’s interested by samurais? Only some curious people. With this film, the samurai is clearly dead. There’s no belief, no moral, the way of the samurai is nothing, the sword is no longer the soul (it’s just a simple work object, old and strange for some).
But Hideo Gosha will go beyond with Tenchu! (aka Hitokiri), his masterpiece, in which being a samurai is just a faster way to climb the social ladder. Honor has became meaningless, assassinations are current (in honor of the Emperor!)… Moreover, Izo Okada is a manipulated assassin, a rustic bully, a naive and grotesque man who even cries!
A simple man
Hideo Gosha is destructing the myth, bringing out the absurdity of a society and her cast (lost between tradition and modernity). How a man of honor can become nihilist if not because the society itself doesn’t have any beliefs?
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In every single movies, Hideo Gosha brings a nihilist point of view on this myth reflecting their societies. For a samurai, and later for a yakuza, the only way out is to become a man. Not a greedy opportunist one but a wiseman.
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Nice piece. These really are among the finest samurai films ever made. They deserve to be seen and discussed, as they focus on universal truths about humanity and human nature. If you want to learn all about realpolitik, you need only watch Tenchu and Goyokin; want to understand the true nature of honor? Take a look at Sword of the Beast and Three Outlaw Samurai. Plus these films are damned entertaining! God bless Hideo Gosha. It’s too bad he’s not still with us.