The Sword of Doom (大菩薩峠, Dai-bosatsu tōge?, "The Pass of the Boddhisattva"), is a jidaigeki movie released in 1966. It was directed by Kihachi Okamoto and stars Tatsuya Nakadai.
Story
The story follows the life of Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai), an amoral samurai and a master swordsman with an unorthodox style. Ryunosuke is first seen when he kills an elderly Buddhist pilgrim who he finds praying for death. He appears to have no feeling. Later, he kills an opponent in self defence in a fencing competition that was intended to be non-lethal, but became a duel after he abused his opponent's wife. This latter act forces him to leave his home town with the woman. To make a living, Ryunosuke joins the Shinsengumi, a sort of semi-official police force made up of ronin that supports the Tokugawa shogunate through murder and assassinations.
Through all his interactions, whether killing a man or at home with his mistress and their baby son, Ryunosuke rarely shows any emotion. His expression is fixed in a glassy stare that suggests a quiet insanity.
Eventually Ryunosuke learns that the younger brother of the man he killed in the fencing match is looking for him, intent on revenge. He plans to meet this young man and kill him, but before the duel can take place, two events occur that shake his confidence. In a botched assassination attempt, he sees another master swordsman, Shimada Toranosuke (Toshiro Mifune), in action, and for the first time he doubts that his own skill is truly unbeatable. That same night, Ryunosuke's mistress, horrified by his unremitting evil, tries to kill him in his sleep. He kills her in the gardnens, to the ominous cries of their sleeping child inside the house, and flees without keeping his appointment to duel with his pursuer. Later he rejoins the gang of assassins at a geisha house. There, in a quiet (and he is told, haunted) room, he starts seeing the ghosts of all the people he has killed. Further, he is haunted by the words of Shimada: "The sword is the soul. Study the soul to know the sword. An evil soul is an evil sword." The final blow comes when he realizes that the geisha sent to entertain him is the granddaughter of the pilgrim he murdered at the film's beginning.
With this realization, Ryunosuke appears to descend into complete insanity. He starts slashing at the shadows of the ghosts that surround him, and then begins attacking his fellow assassins, who seem to number in the hundreds. In one of the longest (seven minutes) and most famous sword fight scenes on film, Ryunosuke kills dozens of gang members in the burning geisha house as they gradually wear him down with what few wounds they can inflict. Finally it appears that Ryunosuke will surely be killed; bleeding and staggering, his face contorted in rage, he lurches forward, raises his sword once more, and the film ends; a freeze-frame catching Ryunosuke in mid sword-slash.
Ending
The film's abrupt ending leaves many plot elements unresolved. The film originally intended to begin a trilogy of films, based on the historical novel of the same name by Kaizan Nakazato. That 41-volume novel encompassed 1,533 chapters and over 5.7 million Japanese characters—considered the largest novel in Japan until the publication of Sohachi Yamaoka's 40-volume serialized novel Tokugawa Ieyasu. The filmmakers wanted to complete the story in later sequels, but these were never made.
Notes
- There have been three other adaptations of Dai-bosatsu tōge, a two movie series Daibosatsu tôge in 1935, as well as trilogies Souls in the Moonlight in 1957 and Satan's Sword in 1960.
- Ryunosuke's swordfighting technique is Kogen Ittō-ryū.
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