Nemuri Kyoshiro – Journal of an Outlaw / 眠狂四郎 無頼控 / Nemuri Kyôshirô burai hikae (aka The Lonely Swordsman Part 1, 1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #97

Koji Tsuruta

This Toho production was the first film based on the series of novels about Kyoshiro Nemuri, a fictional swordsman created by Renzaburo Shibata (1917-78) in the same year this film was released. The character later became the hero of a series of films starring Raizo Ichikawa – these are known in the West as the Sleepy Eyes of Death series (‘Nemuri’ actually means ‘sleep of death’ according to Merlin David’s first-rate subtitles here). Shibata appears to have modelled his character partly on Ryunosuke Tsukue, the anti-hero of Kaizan Nakazato’s novel Dai-bosatsu toge, portrayed most memorably by Tatsuya Nakadai in Sword of Doom. However, in the hands of actor Koji Tsuruta (see The Romance of Yushima), Nemuri simply comes across as an oddly unlikeable hero, especially considering the fact that he rapes Mihoyo (Keiko Tsushima) a few minutes into the film. Of course, she falls in love with him as a result (I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen this dodgy cliché in Japanese films). Although there is some compensation in the fact that the women get to do some of the fighting too (which is probably the best thing about this film), unfortunately the swordfights are never very convincing and feature neither cutting sounds nor blood. This would change forever post-Yojimbo and Sanjuro, but even though those game-changing movies were still a few years away at this point, I felt that director Shigeaki Hidaka (who also made World War III: 41 Hours of Fear) could have done a little better on the action front than what we see here. 

Keiko Tsushima

 

Talking of Kurosawa, the screenplay was written by his frequent collaborator Hideo Oguni and features two of his regular actors, Kamatari Fujiwara and (all too briefly) Bokuzen Hidari. It’s by no means a bad film, but I found it disappointing on the whole and the plot felt both over-complicated and implausible (this is why I couldn’t face writing a synopsis). The character of Kiheita, ‘the flying squirrel’ (Shin Tokudaiji) is especially daft – he’s a hunchbacked swordsman who is supposedly Nemuri’s deadliest rival and can leap really high into the air (i.e. be pulled up by wires). 

Kamatari Fujiwara

 

Shin Tokudaiji

Koji Tsuruta starred in two sequels before Toho dropped the series in 1958. Part 2 was shot back-to-back with this one and features many of the same cast members, but adds Koji Mitsui and Setsuko Wakayama, while the second sequel was shot in widescreen with a new director and a particularly impressive supporting cast including Isuzu Yamada, Haruko Sugimura and Michiyo Kogure. Daiei studios revived the character with Raizo Ichikawa and greater success in 1963 in a series which continued for 12 films and probably ended only due to the premature death of their star in 1969.

Koji Tsuruta