Shinobi no mono: Zoku Kirigakure Saizô (1964)

Shinobi no mono: Zoku Kirigakure Saizô: Directed by Kazuo Ikehiro. With Raizô Ichikawa, Yukiko Fuji, Shiho Fujimura, Saburô Date. In part five of the 8-part Shinobi No Mono Ninja film series the heroic ninja Kirigakure Saizo (Raizo Ichikawa, of Sleepy Eyes of Death fame) serves the daimyo Sanada, played by Lone Wolf and Cub star Tomisaburo Wakiyama. They are assaulted by Ieyasu and his soldiers. They flee to an allied camp, and once there start plotting how to fight back and win the war. They come across a gun merchant with a unique, three-barrel gun, giving the holder incredible fire power. They begin to strategize ways to find out how the merchant selling these firearms has acquired them, hoping that possession of these weapons in their arsenal will lead to ultimate victory. The merchants of Tanegashima are the makers of the gun, and claim they have made it according to a blueprint gained from the only Western traders they are allowed to do business with, the Portuguese. The Sanada partisans know that can’t be true because the 3-barrel gun is made of iron too fine for the Portuguese to have access to. They must unravel the secret of the “3-barrel gun”. Kirigakure is sent to the Island city of Tanegishima to solve the mystery. Once there he will need all his ninja skills to survive, not only the Tanegishima cartel and their Chinese allies, but enemies from his past, in the form of the daughters of a slain enemy ninja. Can he get the job done and stay alive?

“This old black and white movie is amazingly fast paced and entertaining once the assassins make their moves on the target, the future Japanese Shogun. The manhunt scene in the woods is just an amazing sequence of action–that stays on the ground, as opposed to Ang Leeu0026#39;s sense of action in the infamous Crouching Tiger and Dancing Ballerina. This movie also portrays the stricter sides of the code of men of endurance (literal translation of ninja). An exemplar scene shows a wounded ninja, silently and quickly wiping his blood off the spearhead that ran through the ceiling and his thigh in order to hide his presence. As Saizo matures, he grows out of his material attachments and sees what is essential to shinobi (the way of the ninja). The ruses that the target and the assassin use on each other make for good plot twists and the crucial question on what it means to live by the code–does the ninja die for the mission, or does he endure the failure?–is answered splendidly.”