Word: samurais
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...Samurai (Homel; Fine Arts Films] rivets the eye with its swift alternations of animal ferocity and morning calm. Like the prizewinning Gate of Hell (TIME, Dec. 13), this new Japanese film begins with a disordered 17th century battle piece: a flood of lance-waving horsemen surge across a meadow; agile warriors skip and pirouette in a whirling of two-handed blades; the defeated topple, with blood bursting between their clenched teeth. The struggle ends in far-off shouting as mists steal down from the mountains to draw a pale blanket over the slain...
...Rentaro Mikuni, longs to go back home to the girl he left behind, but he is weak-willed, and the women use him for their own purpose. The other, Toshiro Mifune, is a bullnecked, snarling ruffian who dreams of avenging the lost battle by becoming a great samurai. He soon has a chance when a rabble of bandits raid the farm. Toshiro kills the bandit chief and routs his men, then becomes a beast of the hills. He sweeps back into his native village, scattering the militia like a cat in a hen roost...
Yokoyama began his volcanic life in turbulence. He was born in a bamboo grove, where his mother had crept to escape the swinging swordsmen of feuding samurai factions at the dawn of the Meiji Era. Sent to a Tokyo art school, Yokoyama soon proved his talents for 1) outstanding brushwork and 2) consuming sake. Advised by a professor to drink either one sho (3.8 pints) of sake a day or nothing, Yokoyama took to the bottle in earnest. Today he begins his day by downing a prebreakfast glass full of his favorite sake brand, "Inebriate Soul", during the rest...
...clues to the Japanese taste and popular spirit. In one scene, for instance, a sort of Japanese Bobby Clark (Shunji Sakai) muddles interminably with some chicken droppings in the baron's parlor; in Japan this was a sure laugh-getter. And then at the end, when the slamming samurai has foiled the villain and won his lady love (Kuniko Ikawa), do they leap into each other's arms? Not at all. The hero rides sadly away, and the sound track sings to the heroine: "Your hawk has flown away . . ./ The bold, dark bird that dare not dwell...
Koryusai, a contemporary of Shunsho, was among the few high-born Ukiyo-e artists. The samurai generally thought printmaking and even print buying beneath their dignity. Famed for his woodcuts of Yoshiwara girls, Koryusai did equally well with more imaginative pictures of birds and animals. His Phoenix Bird (above at right) is notable for its delicacy and restraint, makes elaborate use of embossing, i.e., printing without ink, for plumage...