Kei Satō

Genius provocateur Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses), an influential figure in the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s, made one of his most startling political statements with the compelling pitch-black satire Death by Hanging. In this macabre farce, a Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.

While Kichi is away at war, his impoverished mother and wife survive in medieval Japan by killing samurai who stray into their swamp, selling the valuables they find.

Kaneto Shindo’s classic, spectacularly eerie twilight tale is a poetic and atmospheric horror fable with a shocking feminist angle. A malevolent spirit has been ripping out the throats of itinerant samurai at a village in war-torn medieval Japan. When a military hero is sent to dispatch the unseen force, he finds that he must struggle with his own personal demons as well.

Hanzo faces off against a notorious thief as well as a temple priestess who sells her pupils into prostitution.

Following the collapse of his clan, an unemployed samurai (Tatsuya Nakadai) arrives at the manor of Lord Iyi, begging to be allowed to commit ritual suicide on the property. Iyi’s clansmen, believing the desperate ronin is merely angling for a new position, try to force his hand and get him to eviscerate himself—but they have underestimated his beliefs and his personal brand of honor. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize, Harakiri, directed by Masaki Kobayashi is a fierce evocation of individual agency in the face of a corrupt and hypocritical system.

Tatsuya Nakadai and Toshiro Mifune star in the story of a wandering samurai who exists in a maelstrom of violence. A gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule Ryunosuke (Nakadai) kills without remorse, without mercy. It is a way of life that ultimately leads to madness.