HAGAKURE-FILMS

For everyone that love the art of the samurai in cinema, Musha-e and the occassional manga

[hagakure-films]

Why i love chanbara/jidaigeki (Swordfight & Samurai) films:

Oddly enough it all started with the viking age. I am scandinavian and im proud of my own heritage

In no way whatsoever am I trying to be a weeb or japanophile. So why samurai films? Well there are similarities between the feudal Japanese and the old norse socieities. The warrior culture, the caste system, the animistic beliefs, polytheism and honor culture are very similiar. Even sumo wrestling is similar to the nordic Glíma wrestling. In fact the whole bushido code is also similiar to the warrior philosophy of hávamál and Oðins followers in pre-christian Scandinavia.

But when ever i was trying to find films based on the Norse its just atrocity after atrocity. No regard to history or archaeology, Misrepresentations of the religion too, Modern slop with marxist propaganda baked into it.

But Japanese people dont have that issue. They embrace their past in all of its beauty and horror. Their period piece dramas are very respectful and have effort put in them to make them authentic.

They also remind me greatly of the icelandic sagas. The themes of revenge, honor and oaths are present in both as is the lone warrior. Grettir the strong could have worked well as a character in an Akira Kurosawa film.

And besides that, the films are just amazingly made and ahead of their time. Im still being impressed by how the films of the sixties look so great and timeless today. As any cinemaphile knows, the West greatly copied its techniques from the Japanese.

So thats the short answer to why I love chanbara/jidaigeki films. And my collection is always growing.

POST-SCRIPT: the northman by Robert Eggers is amazing. Its like a Kurosawa film but with Vikings. The only thing that is holding it back is that they speak english instead of old norse.

[ero-aniki-69]

Art by 藤本郷 [Go Fujimoto] (@go_fujimoto on X)

[bobbole]

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Man-eating Tiger

[wolfgangamadeusmozartwife]

“In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed”

Yukio Mishima, pseudonym of Hiraoka Kimitake, was born in Shinjuku, Tokyo on this day in 1925.

Photographed by Tamotsu Yatō (1965)

[easterndelights]

ミシマ：ア・ライフ・イン・フォー・チャプターズ Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) dir. Paul Schrader

[netego]

Photo: Shinchosha With Utaemon in 1954. Mishima had a compulsion to love, but when he gained the attention of another person, he would take flight. A rare exception was his friendship with Utaemon, the well-known onnagata (the actor in the Kabuki theater who takes the female roles).

[hagakure-films]

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (Japanese: 月岡芳年; also named Taiso Yoshitoshi 大蘇芳年; 30 April 1839 – 9 June 1892)

yo o tsumete

terimasarishi wa

natsu no tsuki

holding back the night

with its increasing brilliance

the summer moon -- Yoshitoshi's death poem

Yoshitoshi is generally considered the last great master of the Japanese woodblock print (ukiyo-e) - and by some, one of the great innovative and creative geniuses of that artistic field.

His life is perhaps best summed up by John Stevenson: Yoshitoshi's courage, vision and force of character gave ukiyo-e another generation of life, and illuminated it with one last burst of glory. -- "Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon", 1992

[onenakedfarmer]

Watching

CONFLAGRATION [炎上] Kon Ichikawa Japan, 1958

[lovelyswampwitch]

a couple that plots murder together, stays together

(well, kinda)

Throne of Blood, 1957 Akira Kurosawa

[hagakure-films]

Musha-e, derived from the Japanese term for 'pictures of warriors,' is a distinct genre within ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Musha-e focuses on warriors and samurai drawn from Japanese history, legends, and classical literature. Typical themes include the Genpei War (1180-1185), the Sengoku or Warring States period (c. 1467-1615), and later historical conflicts. Even prints depicting the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, often called 'The Last Samurai,' are classified as musha-e.

Similiar to european art like the greeks and romans, Musha-e celebrated masculine prowess and tradition with a mythological flair.

Musha-e pictures also heavily influenced the Bara/gei-komi genre with both showcasing hyper-masculine men with well developed muscles, body and facial hair and violent scenarios.

[hero-hom]

Collaboration and cooperation were weak terms bound up in anthropology. But blood brotherhood...that was a matter of eagerly joining one's spirit to that of another. This in itself showed a bright scorn for the futile, laborious human process in which ontogeny was eternally recapitulating phylogeny, in which man forever tried to draw a bit closer to the truth only to be frustrated by death, a process that had ever to begin again in the sleep within the amniotic fluid. By betraying this human condition the blood brotherhood tried to gain its purity, and thus it was perhaps but to be expected that it, in turn, should of its very nature incur its own betrayal. Such men had never respected humanity.

--Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses

[hagakure-films]

My keychain with artwork by Kazuhide Ichikawa.

[torncurtains]

Patriotism, 1968.

dir. by Yukio Mishima.

[netego]

Posing in front of an advertisement for the film Yūkoku (“Patriotism”), in which he played the part of an army officer who commits hara-kiri. Mishima endlessly rehearsed his own death.

[hagakure-films]

Some more of last months haul. It will be fascinating to see Takeshi Miikes remake of Masaki Kobayashis masterpiece Harakiri.

[hagakure-films]

I would really like to see more samurai films where they are wearing men-yoroi. I get why filmmakers dont do it because covering up your actors faces will always limit their performance but I would like atleast a few scenes with the masks.

[diidona]

HANNIBAL RISING (2007) dir. Peter Webber