Sword Devil

Hanpei is a quiet, gentle young samurai who loves flowers. One day he sees how fast an old man draws his sword, and he is so struck by it that he becomes the old man’s pupil. Before long his skill with a blade reaches the ear of his lord. The lord orders him to kill a man, and what Hanpei has learned no longer belongs to him. The film is about how mastery gets turned into an instrument of service, and it gives its swordfights without ornament. The work put into the hands of a man who grows flowers keeps the question of what he is turning into open until the very end. Raizo Ichikawa plays the lead in Kenji Misumi’s eighty three minute Japanese film, completed in 1965.