The ''Samurai Trilogy'' is a film

trilogy A trilogy is a set of three distinct works that are connected and can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, and video games. Three-part works that are considered components of ...

directed by

Hiroshi Inagaki was a Japanese filmmaker who worked on over 100 films in a career spanning over five decades. He is one of the most successful and critically acclaimed filmmakers in the history of Japanese cinema, having directed several ''jidaigeki'' epics s ...

and starring

Toshiro Mifune was a Japanese actor and producer. The recipient of numerous awards and accolades over a lengthy career, he is widely considered one of the greatest actors of all time. He often played hypermasculine characters and was noted for his commandin ...

as Musashi Miyamoto and Kōji Tsuruta as Kojirō Sasaki. The films are based on '' Musashi'', a novel by

Eiji Yoshikawa was a Japanese historical novelist. Among his best-known novels are revisions of older classics. He was mainly influenced by classics such as ''The Tale of the Heike'', ''Tale of Genji'', ''Water Margin'' and ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'', m ...

about the famous duelist and author of ''

The Book of Five Rings is a text on ''kenjutsu'' and the martial arts in general, written by the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi between 1643-5. The book title from ''the'' ''godai'' (五大) of Buddhist esotericism ( 密教), thus has five volumes: "Earth, Wate ...

''. The three films are: * '' Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto'' (

1954 Events January * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown–IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head ...

) * '' Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple'' (

1955 Events January * January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama. * January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut. * January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijian ...

) * '' Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island'' (

1956 Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan after 57 years. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian Missionary, missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, E ...

) Together, they are a trilogy following the character growth of Musashi from brash—yet strong—young

soldier A soldier is a person who is a member of an army. A soldier can be a Conscription, conscripted or volunteer Enlisted rank, enlisted person, a non-commissioned officer, a warrant officer, or an Officer (armed forces), officer. Etymology The wo ...

to thoughtful and introspective

samurai The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

. The choreography for the films was by Yoshio Sugino of the

Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū Written as 天眞正傳香取神道流 before adoption (1946) of Tōyō kanji. is one of the oldest extant Japanese martial arts and an exemplar of ''bujutsu''. It was founded by Iizasa Ienao, who lived near Katori Shrine (Sawara, Chiba, Sawara ...

Reception and influence

''Samurai I'' won the 1955

Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...

. In a review almost 60 years after the release of the trilogy, the late academic and film critic Stephen Prince noted "the absence of gore" in the films: "Severed limbs and spurting arteries hadn't yet arrived as a movie convention, and the fights in ''The Samurai Trilogy'' are relatively chaste, not showing the carnage that such duels would have actually resulted in". The trilogy became an influence for future films.

References

External links

* * * Japanese film series Jidaigeki films 1950s samurai films 1950s Japanese films Films scored by Ikuma Dan {{1950s-Japan-film-stub