Bushido ★★★★

Released: TBC (Part Of The 2025 Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme)

Director: Shiraishi Kazuya

Starring: Kusangi Tsuyoshi, Kiyohara Kaya

Although the Japanese film is much adored outside of its borders. British appreciation for the foreign indie film has spiked this month, thanks to the programming of the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme, taking films like Let’s Go Karaoke!, Ghost Cat Anzu and All The Long Nights on a tour of independent cinemas across the UK. Director of the 2018 film The Blood of Wolves, Kazuya Shiraishi, had his debut jidai-geki (Japanese period drama) Bushido premiere as part of the programme. In a short message before the premiere, Shiraishi shared that although Bushido is set in the Edo period of the 1800s, he believed strongly that the “emotions humans felt must be the same across every point in time.” With that sentiment, Bushido successfully interrogates the intensity that the Edo period is often met with, debunks its complexities and demystifies the samurai.

Following the bond between the vagrant samurai father Yanagida and his daughter Okinu, Bushido is a film named after the Japanese Bushidō code, a moral standard or code of conduct that Yanagida and his fellow samurai are bound by. Chivalry, honour and nobility are three of the values the samurai is bound to: and also the three values most tested throughout the film. As he wrestles with poverty, a borderline addiction to the board game Go seems to define both his purpose and passion: dire circumstances for an ex-gift appraiser to his homeland’s Lord. Yanagida has seemingly made peace with his fall from grace, as has his daughter Okinu who is bound to his side and seeks no marriage or partnership unlike her peers.

Although both father and daughter speak little, Shiraishi’s dedication to the realism of human emotion is evident in the brief moments of candour, weakness and shame they share. This uncovering of their true feelings happens only in each other’s company and Shiraishi’s showcase of such intimacy only happens in the most drastic of circumstances, hinting at the true enemy over the course of the film: pain. Having lost his position, honour and livelihood, Yanagida is a weakened man. His pain multiplies threefold when he learns the true nature of his wife’s death and his dishonourable discharge, when he is accused of theft by his new Go partner Master Genbei and when Okino must give herself up to a brothel to secure a payment, Yanagida needs to clear his name of dishonour.

Bushido is an undeniably heavy film, piling on the weight with every new damning slight Yanagida must bear. Shiraishi doesn’t submit to the often pessimistic takes on the realistic period drama and bestows upon us the relief of the occasional palate cleanser with timeless Japanese comic relief, predominantly and expertly provided by actor Taishi Nakagawa, who plays Yakichi. Of course, no jidai-geki would be complete without the stylish yet minimal samurai combat scenes which come to an enjoyable yet challenging to watch climax as Yanagida faces the man responsible for his downfall: Sir Shibata.

Even the dynamics between Shibata and Yanagida are so effortlessly paired; as are the Go games between Yanagida and Genbei, or even the budding romance between Okinu and Yakichi. Shiraishi’s previous expertise in the yakuza films of his past have clearly prepared him for the challenge of adapting the jidai-geki for a modern audience and a foreign one at that. Perhaps Shiraishi’s only shortcoming in his transition from one genre to another his deftness with a timeline: Bushido’s only reason to alienate the viewer came from occasionally hazy shifts in time. Yanagida’s burdens were clearly long placed on his shoulders, but for how long they were there and how quickly they were solved, we remain unsure.

Nevertheless, Shiraishi may well have reopened the jidai-geki to a breath of fresh interpretations, with Bushido being an instantly irreplaceable classic for the future.