There
is a moment early in The Secret of the
Urn when the struggle between fealty and personal honour can be read in the
samurai Samanosuke’s expression. It comes when he is ordered by his superiors
to kill his friend, accused of being a government spy, “for the clan, for the
lord”. A look of anguish flickers across his face, to be replaced, after a
double betrayal that robs him of an eye and an arm, by a sneer of scorn and a radical
change of identity. A self-described “monster” is born.
The
cynical ronin Tange Sazen – Samanosuke’s adopted name – was created by Hayashi
Fubo in the Twenties and was (and perhaps remains) a national treasure in Japan.
This particular story had been filmed more than once already.[i]
Gosha’s decision to take it on has been considered, at least in retrospect, a
departure for a director of more ‘serious’ fare. (Gosha had just three previous
films to his name, which doesn’t seem a solid enough platform to ‘depart’ from.)
Not exactly the equivalent of David Lean helming a Carry On film, but not a personal project either. Yet the circumstances
surrounding Sazen’s intervention in a dispute over a hidden fortune could only
have nourished Gosha’s preoccupations.
Sazen’s
object is not profit but mischief. By thrusting his sword in where it doesn’t
belong, he mocks the severity of a situation that lays bare the absurdity and
iniquities of the feudal system he once served so staunchly. It is as if, “A
man must become a monster to comprehend the monstrosities which surround him,”
writes Alain Silver, much as Zatoichi had a clearer ‘vision’ of life as a
result of his blindness.[ii]
The Yagyu clan have been nominated to oversee the restoration of the Toshogu
temple – a prestigious but ruinously expensive undertaking. They cannot refuse this
‘request’ from the shogun, and so begins a scramble to secure a sacred urn
inscribed with the key to 1 million ryo.
Behind the Yagyu’s predicament is a scheming shogunate minister. Sazen works to
expose the plot while manipulating the competing parties, including a crafty geisha,
her retinue of thieves, and the noble Genzaburo, a dutiful Yagyu retainer who is
a reflection of Sazen’s former self – “Until I became a monster [and realised]
samurai were such fools.”
Working
for the first time in (appropriately gaudy) colour, Gosha weaves this
relatively lightweight material into a spirited adventure embellished with
exciting set pieces – an ambush by a river; a skirmish along rooftops – and shot
through with spiky attitude. This derives largely from Nakamura’s rumbustious
performance as the swordsman whose scars are more than skin deep.[iii]
His disdain for bushido, expressed
with bitter pronouncements, communicates a defiantly rebellious, individualistic
mind-set (“I’m a little bit weird, you know…”). It makes him a fitting bedfellow,
in more ways than one, for Ofuji, the conniving geisha, played so earthily by Keiko
Awaji; she thinks nothing of throwing off her clothes, mid-flight, to distract a
chasing mob. As with Sazen, it is apparent she wasn’t always so cynical, and they
both recover a vestige of selflessness in the course of the film. Sazen has
burnt his bridges, however: he rejects Hagino, the woman he once loved but now
belongs to a different world from the one he inhabits; and disabuses a young boy
of his romantic notions about the samurai.
In short, Sazen, conceived as a loveable rogue (and usually presented as such on screen), has become a quintessential Sixties antihero – the cousin of Sanjuro in Yojimbo, or the protagonists in Gosha’s own Sword of the Beast, Goyokin and Tenchu. Sazen is more apt to cock a snook, Sanjuro-style, than brood on his troubles, which is probably why this film is considered a slight aberration in Gosha’s canon. It is no less well crafted for that.
Kevin Grant
[i] The
best-known version is from 1935 – the comedic Million Ryo Pot, which significantly omits the details of Sazen’s
disfigurement that form the prelude to Gosha’s rendering of the tale. Gosha
retold it for television in 1982, casting Tatsuya Nakadai in the central role
[ii] The Samurai Film (Gerald Duckworth &
Co Ltd, 2007)
[iii] Nakamura
was the son of a famous kabuki actor.
He became one of Toei’s biggest stars in the Fifties and played in numerous chambara adventures. He later took on
the role of Ogami Itto in the Lone Wolf
and Cub TV series
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