柳生武芸帳 / Yagyu bugeichō / Yagyu Secret Scrolls (pt. I) [1957]

Release date: April 14th, 1957

Director: Hiroshi Inagaki

Studio: Toho

Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Mariko Okada, Yoshiko Kuga, Denjiro Okochi, Kyoko Kagawa, Senjaku Namamura, Akihiko Hirata, Eijiro Tono, Nobuko Otowa, Bokuzen Hidari, Yoshio Tsuchiya et al.

Availability: Full movie available online; unofficial English-subtitled DVD also available. Official Toho DVD (not subtitled) available through amazon.jp.

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Today is Toshiro Mifune's birthday, so I wanted to feature something that he starred in. I'm thankful for Mifune, because our man happened to co-star with him in quite a few films, and I've always felt that without the international appeal Mifune had, a lot of Hirata's movies would be far more obscure. (On a much more personal note, it is also the six-year anniversary of the first time I watched Godzilla '54, which eventually led me to create the fansite you're reading now.)

I'll also say upfront that although this is a duology, I'm just going to be talking about the first part; you usually will see Hirata credited as being in both movies, but he's actually only in the first one.

It's likely that anybody who has seen more than one or two jidaigeki films from the Showa era has seen something by Hiroshi Inagaki. Inagaki was one of those directors who seems to have made a name by not necessarily doing anything too innovative, but by being extremely good at sticking to the conventions of the genre he was working within. Taking one of his epic films - let's say his 1962 Chushingura - and comparing it to, say, Seven Samurai, there's a lot less depth of character and a lot more perfunctory plot points, but the sheer grand scale of Inagaki's work and the way his films are costumed and colored still make them achievements in historical drama.

A paperback collecting volumes 4-8 of Yagyu bugeichō.

This film, along with many, many others, was adapted from a serialized novel by Yasusuke [Kousuke] Gomi. I find Wikipedia's statement that the story was "so complicated it was discontinued [from serialization]" very amusing. Despite being discontinued, it still spanned seven volumes. This work and others came at a time when fiction about swordfighting, ninjas, and other historical intrigue of the sort was rapidly gaining popularity. Much of this fiction - and the films that were subsequently made from it - defines modern perceptions of jidaigeki tropes. However, a lot of it was also just kinda made up. I'm not discounting authors who did actual historical research, but you can look at the work of Rob Tuck at Critical Ninja Theory for an idea of how much of this was either invented whole-cloth or based on unclear historical sources that authors had to extrapolate from extensively. The personages, clothing styles, and place-settings in Yagyu Secret Scrolls may correspond roughly to historical truths, but all-in-all, this is a "new" story, based off of a contemporary work of fiction.

(I'm also not saying a movie has to be perfectly historically accurate to be good. When I'm watching The Three Treasures, I'm not bothered about whether or not people ever actually wore their hair like that.)

Toho's two-film adaptation may have been the first, but it most certainly wasn't the last. The next filmed adaptation came from Toei, who produced nine films starring Juushiro Konoe between 1961-64. Konoe also starred in a TV series adaptation staring in 1965; also featured in the series was a young Hiroki Matsutaka, who would go on to play the lead role in another television adaptation in a five-episode series between 1990 and 1992. (No, the Brits are not the only ones who can make TV series that run for five episodes over two years.)

Note both eyes.

Jubei Yagyu was a real guy. Of that much, there does seem to be general scholarly consensus. However, he has been romanticized throughout history, which ironically is due in part to how little is known about his life, rather than how much. Jubei was an attendant in the court of Hidetada Tokugawa and subsequently a sword instructor for Iemitsu Tokugawa, but after that was dismissed fairly suddenly from his post after sixteen years of what was seemingly distinguished service. In a work authored by Jubei himself, he claims to have been, quote Wikipedia, "Traveling the countryside [and] perfecting his skill". I don't think it's difficult to see why this kind of thing would generate intrigue: one imagines an accomplished figure with a comfortable life in court being dismissed for mysterious reasons and then choosing to go off on his own, a shadowy lone swordsman, an individual in an age defined by obeisance and class stratification.

There is also a legend that Jubei lost one of his eyes at some point and wore an eyepatch. This is, as far as I can tell, made up, but it has been proliferated throughout pop culture depictions of him, to the point where it's become his most recognizable characteristic. (Far be it from me to complain about a guy in an eyepatch.) In the movie we’re talking about here, Jubei is missing his left eye, but doesn’t wear an eyepatch; Denjiro Okochi just kinda squints that eye. It’s not very convincing, but it gets the point across.

In Toho's adaptation, Hirata plays Tomonori Yagyu, the illegitimate half-brother of Jubei Yagyu. Tomonori was also a historical figure; he had a 2,000-koku fief and held various positions of rank, but died very young. Tomonori replaced Jubei after the latter's dismissal as sword instructor to Shogun Iemitsu. There is some vague suggestion that Tomonori and Iemitsu were in a romantic relationship, but as far as I know none of that is verifiable, and most of the evidence given for it seems to simply be that Iemitsu was apparently unusually angry to hear that Tomonori had died.

Hirata stars alongside his future wife, Yoshiko Kuga; the two had first met in 1949 and would later meet again on the set of Story of Osaka Castle, hit it off, and marry in October of 1961. He plays Tomonori with a lot of restraint, which can also be said of pretty much the entire cast, even Mifune; watching Yagyu Secret Scrolls feels like watching an adaptation of a stage play. Although there are different factions and motivations in play among the characters, every actor feels like they're on the same level and nobody steals the spotlight (again, even Mifune). This is one of my favorite things about older Japanese movies, especially jidaigeki - it feels like other countries' film industries lost their ties to stage play and moved into cinéma vérité as default much faster than Japan did.

He also wears some cool outfits.

Although Inagaki's films are generally known for being very dry, there is one scene involving Tomonori that I've always found extremely funny, which is when young Prince Chiyomatsu (later Mitsukuni Tokugawa, played by Ken Yamauchi in the Toho version), who is around ten years old, demands to be instructed in Yagyu-style swordfighting. All the Yagyu guys demur, but Matajuro Yagyu agrees, and in the ensuing fight Chiyomatsu accidentally whacks open a secret compartment and one of the titular secret martial arts scrolls falls out.

There's also the part where Tomonori pulls all of a guy's teeth out for a secret plan that as far as I can tell did not actually even end up working.

Anyway, the film was shot in Agfacolor, which I want to make a brief note of since it's different from the usual Tohoscope that the studio had debuted the same year. I think the film does look noticeably different from others that were shot in Tohoscope; there is a distinctive tone to it.

Very small picture of Inagaki on-set of Yagyu Secret Scrolls.

We're now going to move away from discussing the film's background and production within Japan to seeing where it went when it was exported and released to theaters overseas.

The first theatrical run of the film outside of Japan that I can confirm was a startling two and a half months after its original release (this would still be fairly quick for a Japanese export even today). The film ran in Honolulu's Kapahulu theater with English subtitles in late June of 1957 under the title Yagyu Confidential. Its use of Agfacolor was a selling point in newspaper ads. Hawaii Times mentions its upcoming release a few days prior, in the June 28th edition.

What's really interesting, though, is that Hawaiians would have been aware of the movie only a matter of weeks after its initial Japanese release. The May 9th edition of Hawaii Times printed a statement accompanying the grand-reopening of the Kapahulu from Toho's then-president Fusao Kobayashi wherein he said "[...]it gives moviegoers of Japanese ancestry, as well as other residents of Hawaii, the opportunity to appreciate more Japanese-made motion pictures. By doing this, Toho hopes to promote increased friendship between Japan and the United States. I expect Toho's other super-films, Rodan, Snow County, and Yagyu Confidential will also be shown in various parts of the world in the near future."

The film was back the next year by popular demand - by August of 1958 the second film had already been released, but audiences apparently wanted to see the first one again, so it returned to the Kapahulu.

It took ten years for the film to get a wider theatrical run in the continental United States. On October 11th, 1968, the film premiered at the Toho La Brea in Los Angeles. Agfacolor was not as exciting at this point; the film is marketed simply as being "In Color", and in fact the L.A. Times article about its release falsely claims the film is in Eastmancolor. As usual, I've had to cobble together the contents of the article from shoddy OCR, but here's what I can make of it:

 'YAGYU SECRET SCROLLS' A Toho production with Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Yoshiko Kuga, Kyoko Kagawa, Mariko Okada, Deniiro Okochi, Jotaro Togami, Akihiko Hirata, Eijiro Tono. Director: Hiroshi Inagaki,  Associate producer: Tomoyuki Tanaka.

Screenplay (based on story by Kosuke Gomi): Inagaki, Takeshi Kimura. Photography: Tadashi Imura. Art directors: Takeo Kita, Hiroshi Ueda. Sound: Yoshio Nishikawa. Music: Akira Ifukube.

[...]the secret of the scrolls it is necessary to get all three.

The crux of the story deals with samurai-magician Mifune's attempt to grab the set for his master and the princess' efforts to bargain with hers to restore her house and make secure the future of her 50 retainers. Not unpredictably, Mifune and the princess fall in love. Filmed in the old standard ratio and in beautiful Eastmancolor, this 1957 film was directed by Hiroshi Inagaki with his customary verve and has an outstanding score by Akira Ifukube, one of the best composers in Japanese pictures. The acting is in the traditional operatic manner, with Mifune acquitting himself well, as always. 

The sequel played the next year, with the Times giving it a much more negative review, calling it, among other things, "[...]hopelessly confusing, especially since the first film played here last October, too long ago to remember in detail." At least the credits for the second film don't mistakenly include Hirata.

My favorite showing of the film, however, did not occur at the Toho La Brea nor the Kapahulu. My favorite showing was at a fundraiser for a Japanese-language school in 'Ewa Beach, Hawai'i in 1964. The film was shown at 7:30 PM following a half-hour performance put on by the students themselves. At the time 'Ewa was a small plantation town; even today it only holds some ~16,000 residents. I've always said that I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and see movies at the Toho La Brea, but if I really did have a time machine, I don't think I could ask for anything more than to be watching Yagyu Secret Scrolls at a fundraiser in a Japanese-language school in a plantation town in Hawai'i.

After the film's Hawaiian run, Hong Kong was next to get it sometime in 1960. I can't turn anything up about that except for a single crusty poster.

Title should be read right-to-left in Chinese.

The U.S. runs and the Hong Kong run are unfortunately the only theatrical releases I can confirm definitively. IMDb lists Polish and Brazilian titles for the film as well, but I've done some newspaper scouring and haven't been able to turn up any positive evidence for a theatrical run in either country.

Intriguingly, however, I do have evidence for, if not an Italian theatrical run, at least awareness of the film within Italian-language sources. (Wonder what the Italians re-named our man this time.) A 1957 edition of the left-leaning film magazine Cinema nuovo mentions the film. Unfortunately, Google Books doesn't let me view the full contents, so I can't say anything more about it. I did try to ask some Italian eBay sellers if they'd be willing to ship it to me overseas but no dice on that front.

I think that about covers everything, so we will leave Yagyu Secret Scrolls there. The sequel is a fine film, and they work well back to back (which is somewhat rare; sometimes you watch one movie and you're just too tired of it to watch more of the same), but we won't be covering it here. Hopefully this was informative.