Samurai Spy

Years of warfare end in a Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, and samurai spy Sasuke Sarutobi, tired of conflict, longs for peace. When a high-ranking spy named Tatewaki Koriyama defects from the shogun to a rival clan, however, the world of swordsmen is thrown into turmoil. After Sasuke is unwittingly drawn into the conflict, he tracks Tatewaki, while a mysterious, white-hooded figure seems to hunt them both. By tale’s end, no one is who they seemed to be, and the truth is far more personal than anyone suspected. Director Masahiro Shinoda’s Samurai Spy, filled with clan intrigue, ninja spies, and multiple double crosses, marks a bold stylistic departure from swordplay film convention.

Japan
1965
100 minutes
Black & White
2.35:1
Japanese
Spine #312

Special Features

New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Exclusive new video 16-minute interview with director Masahiro Shinoda
Gallery of key characters in the film
New essay by film scholar Alain Silver
New and improved English subtitle translation

New cover by Eric Skillman

DVD 1 Disc $23.96 SRP: $29.95

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Rebel Samurai: Sixties Swordplay Classics

DVD Box Set

4 Discs

$79.96

Special Features

New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Exclusive new video 16-minute interview with director Masahiro Shinoda
Gallery of key characters in the film
New essay by film scholar Alain Silver
New and improved English subtitle translation

New cover by Eric Skillman

Cast & Credits

Cast

Koji Takahashi: Sasuke Sarutobi, spy
Shintaro Ishihara: Saizo Kirigakure, spy
Eitaro Ozawa: Shigeyuki Koremura, leader of spies
Kei Sato: Takanosuke Nojiri, lieutenant
Mutsuhiro Toura: Mitsuaki Inamura, spy
Tetsuro Tanba: Sakon Takatani, lieutenant
Eiji Okada: Tatewaki Koriyama, lieutenant
Seiji Miyaguchi: Jinnai–Kazutaka Horikawa, clan minister
Minoru Hodaka: Genba Kuni, magistrate
Misako Watanabe: Okiwa, dancer and spy
Yasunori Irikawa: Yashiro Kobayashi, Christian samurai
Jitsuko Yoshimura: Omiyo, orphan in Joshinji Temple
Jun Hamamura: Joshinji Temple priest

Credits

Director: Masahiro Shinoda
Screenplay: Yoshiyuki Fukuda
Based on the novel by: Koji Nakada
Cinematography: Masao Kosugi
Art direction: Junichi Osumi
Music: Toru Takemitsu

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Toru Takemitsu

Composer

Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, known to Western listeners predominantly as the man behind the music in such iconic movies as Woman in the Dunes and Ran, was an acclaimed classical composer and music theorist well before he became one of his country’s most reliably brilliant scorers of film. A noted musical avant-gardist in midcentury Japanese intellectual circles, as influenced by jazz as by Debussy, Takemitsu first turned to feature film composing when he was commissioned (along with Masaru Sato) to write the hip, twangy-guitar-inflected score for the Ko Nakahira youth flick Crazed Fruit (1956). It wasn’t until a few years later, though, when his friend Hiroshi Teshigahara asked him to score Teshigahara’s short debut film, José Torres (1959), that Takemitsu’s career in movies truly began. The deeply sympathetic working relationship that they discovered on that project resulted in Takemitsu’s providing the haunting, instrumentally jarring themes for virtually all of Teshigahara’s subsequent output (“He was always more than a composer,” Teshigahara would recall. “He involved himself so thoroughly in every aspect of a film—script, casting, location shooting, editing, and total sound design”). Takemitsu became a go-to guy for many other major Japanese filmmakers as well, including Masaki Kobayashi (Harakiri), Akira Kurosawa (Dodes’ka-den), and Nagisa Oshima (Empire of Passion); his themes remain some of the most beautiful, spectral music ever written for the screen.