Basara: The Princess Goh

The tea master Sen no Rikyū is ordered to take his own life, and his student Furuta Oribe is appointed in his place. The new lord is Toyotomi Hideyoshi. When Rikyū’s severed head is thrown into the Nijo river, Goh, the daughter of a lord and adopted by Hideyoshi, is outraged. She sends Usu, Oribe’s servant, to recover the head and deliver it to Rikyū’s adopted daughter. The film sets the violence of a period beside the quiet of the tea ceremony. That refinement and brutality can stand in the same court is the real matter. The power relations of the Sengoku period turn into a personal debt. Rie Miyazawa and Tatsuya Nakadai appear in Hiroshi Teshigahara’s hundred and forty two minute Japanese film, completed in 1992.