Revenge

A harmless remark during a weapons inspection wounds the pride of Shinpachi, a low ranking samurai, and turns into an argument with his superior. The thing grows, becomes an illegal duel, and then a political crisis threatening the whole clan. To close the matter the authorities declare him mentally unfit, and under that declaration he genuinely begins to come apart. Tadashi Imai's 1964 film belongs not to the branch of samurai cinema that celebrates bushido but to the cruel branch that shows its hypocrisy and what it costs the people living inside it. Shinobu Hashimoto, who wrote Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Harakiri, wrote this one too. Imai had taken the Golden Bear at Berlin the year before.