The Last Samurai

Sugi Toranosuke returns to Edo, the town he came from, many years after attempting to take his own life as a sickly child. He was saved and adopted that day by a master swordsman, and has grown into a master himself and an exceptionally courteous man. The time is around 1868, when the last nails are being driven into the coffin of the feudal order that sustained the samurai. Sugi cannot make sense of what is happening, and his teacher wants him kept out of the power struggles between the clans. The film was Kenji Misumi’s last; the screenplay rests on writing by Shōji Isomaki and was adapted from two stories by Shintarō Katsu. Shochiku distributed it and it opened on 21 September 1974. Hideki Takahashi leads, with Ken Ogata and Keiko Matsuzaka in the cast. It runs two hours and thirty-nine minutes.