The Betrayal

A man who genuinely believes in the samurai code comes to the bitter realisation that this makes him an oddity among those around him, and a defenceless one. He takes the blame for crimes committed by others, having been told that he will be exiled for a year and then restored to the clan’s favour once things settle. But one betrayal follows another and he sees that he will live out his life as a ronin, if he is not hunted down first. Tokuzō Tanaka’s eighty seven minute black and white Japanese film started from Buntarō Futagawa’s Orochi of 1925, with a screenplay by Seiji Hoshikawa and Tsutomu Nakamura. Raizō Ichikawa takes the lead, with Kaoru Yachigusa, Shiho Fujimura and Ichirō Nakatani in the cast. It was completed in 1966 and questions whose interests the idea of loyalty actually serves.