Miyamoto Musashi

The first film of the series is about Takezo, before he took the name Musashi. His beginnings are not auspicious at all. He fights on the Toyotomi side at Sekigahara and ends up on the losing side. He manages to escape with his friend Matahachi, who is wounded in the leg. On the way they come across Akemi, who lives with her mother Oko by stripping the dead on the battlefield of their armour and anything else that can be sold. Oko takes an interest in Matahachi, first cleaning his wound and then binding him to her. The film builds the start of the legend not out of heroism but out of defeat and poverty. Kinnosuke Nakamura and Akiko Kazami appear in Tomu Uchida’s hundred and ten minute Japanese film, completed in 1961.