Hiroshi Inagaki, “Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island” (1956)
Inagaki’s third and last installment in the historical fiction drama series on the life and times of master swordsman Musashi Miyamoto is a mellow and almost wistful study of the samurai’s spiritual and mental evolution as he prepares for the fight of his life against an evil challenger. At the end of the second film in the series, the samurai Kojiro Sasaki (Koji Tsuruta) vows to seek out and fight Miyamoto (Toshiro Mifune) and this determination becomes the main focus of the third film as the two characters warily circle each other on their respective journeys through life, knowing that once they have decided to fight one another, they can’t avoid their fate. To this end, Miyamoto requests of Sasaki that he be allowed to spend a year to prepare for the fight, during which time he rejects an offer from the Shogun to train warriors and travels to a village where he devotes his life to farming and defending the villagers against feared bandits. The bandits rope in Akemi (Mariko Okada), one of Miyamoto’s rivals for his affections, to lead them to the village. Akemi’s rival, Otsu (Kaoru Yachigusa), tracks down Miyamoto herself and joins him on his farm. This means that in addition to preparing himself psychologically for the showdown with Sasaki, Miyamoto must fight off the brigands and deal with two women jealous of one another and reconcile with Otsu. What’s an ascetic samurai to do under such circumstances? In the meantime, Sasaki lives a life of ease and easy pleasures, visiting courtesans and courting the young daughter of a noble family at Kokura.
Like its predecessors, the film includes nature as a significant character in the narrative: scenes of flowing water reflect the plot’s concern with the passage of time and past memory and hint at emotions within Miyamoto and Otsu that they are afraid to admit to themselves, much less each other. To be frank, I found the romantic sub-plot and the rivalry between Akemi and Otsu uninteresting: the two characters are too stereotyped as one-dimensional scheming bitch and helpless no-brain damsel respectively to generate any real tension. The film’s attempt to contrast Miyamoto and Sasaki through their life-styles and activities is laudable, and demonstrates Miyamoto’s down-to-earth integrity and maturity – he had formerly spurned the life of a farmer as he admits to Otsu – compared to Sasaki’s glide through fun and luxurious living.
Made for the general public, the film brushes over how and why Miyamoto adopts a more humble attitude to life. The priest who helped Otsu in the earlier films has gone and the film makes no attempt to explain any Buddhist principles that might be relevant to Miyamoto’s inner quest. We see Miyamoto being quite reluctant to fight the brigand leader and various others but the film does not explain his change of attitude from his early eagerness to prove himself. He avoids fame and celebrity but the film does not show how this desire came about. In short, if viewers want to learn something of Buddhist philosophy and what aspects of it influenced Miyamoto’s life, they will not find anything useful in the film to help.
The main glory of the film is the final battle scene between Sasaki and Miyamoto on the beach at sunrise. Framed between two trees and their canopies and branches, the fight is surprisingly swift and brisk. The end when it comes is unexpected and the victor, overcome by the momentous nature of the fight, is saddened at a life’s brief duration, cut off in its prime. Is he also sorrowful that the fight did not need to take place at all, that because of pride and an obsession with fame, a man has died unnecessarily?
The film does flow better than its predecessors and is much more focused due to its plot. Loose ends are tidied up and there is a definite sense of release and freedom at the end of the film. Miyamoto’s life quest is complete and he earns undying fame: the lesson he had to learn to become a legendary samurai was to become humble and to think of others and care for them before caring about himself and his reputation. There might be a lesson there for Japan and other nations to learn.