Bryan Miller
Bushido is definitively a samurai movie—the title is the word for the samurai code of honor, after all—but it’s not a chambara film, the kind of Japanese sword-fighting showcase often associated with the genre. There is some swordplay to be had, sparingly deployed but thrillingly staged, although Bushido has much more in common with Masaki Kobayashi’s meditative masterpiece Harakiri than, say, an action-packed installment of Zatoichi or Lone Wolf & Cub.
So, yes, Bushido is a samurai movie, but it’s just as concerned with the game of Go as both an intellectual exercise and a model for leading a purposeful life. Yanagida (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi) is a vagrant samurai renting a tenement house with his young-adult daughter, Kinu (Kaya Kiyohara) in the capital city during Japan’s Edo Period. Yanagida ekes out a living as an engraver and an enthusiastic teacher of Go, but despite his reputation as a master of the game he refuses to play for money. Only after much taunting from the boorish pawnbroker Genbei (Jun Kunimura) does Tanagida agree to play a game for a single ryu. Then, despite having a clear advantage in the match, he abruptly surrenders.
When the angry pawnbroker tracks him down to ask why he forfeited, Yanagida explains that he doesn’t like to engage in Go with those who have a rude playing style. This rebuke cuts Genbei as deeply as a katana blade and causes the pawnbroker to reevaluate his entire character. Soon he has not only corrected his shady business practices, shedding his nickname “Stingy Genbei,” but he has developed a close friendship with Yanagida, who is a model for a more honorable way of living.
Yanagida refuses to disclose his history with Go or the circumstances of his exile, but of course the past always echos into the future. A fellow samurai (Eita Okuno) who used to serve the same lord arrives with news that Yanagida’s name has been cleared. Another man has been revealed to have stolen a valuable scroll and laid the blame on Yanagida, ultimately leading to Yanagida’s dishonor and his wife’s suicide. But just as Yanagida prepares for a trip to avenge his late wife, a new accusation of thievery darkens his reputation and threatens to upend the lives of Yanagida, his new friend Genbei, and everyone in their orbit.
Someone once tried to teach me how to play Go, and the results were … uninspiring on my end. It’s a deceptively simple game that involves two players laying black or white stones on a gridded board, but the potential permutations and subsequent strategies are incredibly elaborate. As with chess, endless, often inscrutable volumes have been written about strategies and maneuvers — inscrutable to me, anyway.
The good news is, you don’t need to know much about Go to appreciate the game as both our hero’s great fascination and also the film’s central metaphor. Yanagida does demonstrate a few points of strategy along the way, but at no point does anyone explain the basic rules or principals of the game, nor must you comprehend the intricacies of the game to follow the drama.
What director Kazuya Shiraishi brilliantly conveys is the notion of a playing style—not strategy but the way someone physically play the game: the delicateness with which one draws a stone from the go-ke, the manor in which they place the stone on the board, and their overall posture toward their opponent. Shiraishi’s camera zooms in tight to focus on the specific way Yanagida holds the stone between two fingers on each turn, his hand perfectly parallel to the board, before he crisply but gently lays it on the grid. That is sharply contrasted with the noisy clattering and cocky sliding of the stones around the board displayed by the villainous Chobei (Masachika Ishimura). These nuances are keenly observed in the change of Genbei’s playing style, the evolution of which matches the trajectory of his character. For Yanagida, the way you play Go directly extends to the way you live your entire life, and in that way, Shiraishi quite brilliantly conveys the broader concept of deep and practical philosophy of bushido.
The film is written by Masato Kato, best known in the video game industry as one of the creators of Chrono Trigger and a writer of two installments in the Final Fantasy series. In American cinema, the confluence of video games and film is generally a recipe for disaster. You’d be forgiven for assuming a samurai movie written by a game designer mind wind up in a lot of frenetic bloodletting. But Kato’s script is incredibly elegant, far more interested what meaning can be drawn from playing a game, and what that game ultimately says about the players. When violence does erupt, it’s a much a startling intrusion as a climactic inevitability for Yanagida, the prototype of the reluctant warrior, who would vastly prefer to confine his conflicts to the orderly grid of the Go board.
Bushido is one of the best new samurai films in years, drawing on the rich history and tropes of the genre but reinterpreting them in a way that feels both fresh and classical.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival features over 200 films from around the world, plus an array of parties, panels, visiting filmmakers, and special guests.
