The Master Spearman
Sake to onna to yari
Japan
1960
99 Min
Color
Japanese
Synopsis
This outrageously entertaining chambara film is perhaps Uchida’s strongest critique of samurai codes, a ferocious and often funny satire of such ideals as loyalty to clan, the glory of battle, and the great bravery of committing seppuku. A retainer who goes by the alias Kurodo of the Spear becomes increasingly disenchanted with the intrigue, corruption, and incessant slaughter of warrior society, and, after drunkenly surviving an attempt at ritual suicide, withdraws into the country to a life of simple pleasures: food, drink, family. His quiet rebellion soon ends, though; forced out of seclusion, Kurodo unleashes a sluice of slaughter in the Battle of Sekigahara. Whether this frenzied finale affirms or contradicts the foregoing critique is debatable, but the film’s masterful control of tone, from broad comedy to pointed satire to tragedy, is not. Especially striking is the Mizoguchean sense of inevitability and suffering in Uchida’s treatment of the two actresses who love Kurodo. —James Quandt
Director
Tomu Uchida
Born in 1898, Uchida joined a theater troupe in his youth, perfecting a sense of stagecraft and theatrical aesthetics that would become the backbone of his films. He turned to directing in the late 1920s; comedies and police actioners dominated his early production, but Uchida also developed a fledgling realist aesthetic rare in the industry at the time. In 1945, he fled Tokyo and joined the leftist Manchuria Film Association, spending ten years there. His return to Japan heralded a new outburst of creativity, as he applied his talents to everything from social critiques to theater adaptations, samurai movies to gritty noir. His late-fifties output in particular could serve as a sampling of nearly every genre and pleasure that Japanese cinema can offer, and also as a snapshot of the country’s postwar aesthetics, concerns, and imaginings. “Uchida crystallized the social, political and artistic passions of an epoch crucial to modern Japan,” critic Max Tessier wrote, “and did so with a… read more
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