The Broken Commandment

Ushimatsu Segawa is a primary school teacher. He lives in the last years of the Meiji period. He comes from the community known as burakumin. That community faced heavy discrimination in Japan. His father made him give his word. The word was that he would never tell anyone where he came from. He has kept it for years. Then he comes to know a writer. The writer is from the same community and says so openly, and he fights the discrimination in public. The example shakes the teacher. He begins to wonder whether he can go on keeping silent. The film is drawn from Toson Shimazaki’s novel of 1906, with a screenplay by Natto Wada. Raizō Ichikawa and Rentaro Mikuni appear in the hundred and nineteen minute film, a Japanese production Kon Ichikawa finished in 1962.