, also known as ''Three for the Kill!'' or ''The Lethal Three'' is a group of seven television ''

jidaigeki is a genre of film, television, and theatre in Japan. Literally meaning "historical drama, period dramas", it refers to stories that take place before the Meiji Restoration of 1868. ''Jidaigeki'' show the lives of the samurai, farmers, crafts ...

'' series broadcast by

TV Asahi JOEX-DTV (channel 5), branded as , and better known as , is a Japanese television station serving the Kanto region as the flagship station of the All-Nippon News Network. It is owned-and-operated by the a subsidiary of , itself controlled by ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. The show aired in the Thursday evening eight o'clock time slot.

Characters

The title characters are three men who wander throughout Japan in the late

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

. In each episode they encounter antagonists, and in the final ''tachimawari'' (fight scene) kill them. The characters traveled sometimes together, sometimes separately. When they arrived in a town they might settle in the same lodging, but sometimes take up with rival factions. In the end, they work together to overcome evil. For the first five series, these characters were the same. Yasaka Heishirō, nicknamed "Tono-sama" ("Lord") is a refined, disciplined ''

rōnin In feudal Japan to early modern Japan (1185–1868), a ''rōnin'' ( ; , , 'drifter' or 'wandering man', ) was a samurai who had no lord or master and in some cases, had also severed all links with his family or clan. A samurai became a ''rō ...

'' played by

Hideki Takahashi is a Japanese people, Japanese actor. Born in Kisarazu, Chiba near Tokyo, he attended Ichikawa Gakuen and later Nihon University. Career Takahashi made his debut with Nikkatsu Corporation, Nikkatsu and acted in youth-oriented films. Takahashi ma ...

. The other characters occasionally speculate that he is a second son of a ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and no ...

'' but his identity is never revealed. He is the informal leader of the group. Yasaka uses the Onoha Ittō-ryū style of sword fighting. He appears in the first six series; at the beginning of the seventh series he is written out of the script by traveling to America. Kuji Shinnosuke, or "Sengoku," is also a ronin, or a spy for the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

, or a commoner, as suits the episode. His nickname refers to his wish to work as a

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 ...

with a stipend of a thousand ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

.'' A native of the

Satsuma Domain The , briefly known as the , was a Han system, domain (''han'') of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan during the Edo period from 1600 to 1871. The Satsuma Domain was based at Kagoshima Castle in Satsuma Province, the core of the modern city of ...

, Kuji practices the Jigen-ryū sword fighting style. He appears in the first five series and returns in the seventh. Kōji Yakusho played the role of Kuji. Tsubakuro Jinnai is the third member of the group. Nicknamed "Tako" ("octopus"), he describes himself as a descendant of the Kōga

ninja A , or was a spy and infiltrator in pre-modern Japan. The functions of a ninja included siege and infiltration, ambush, reconnaissance, espionage, deception, and later bodyguarding.Kawakami, pp. 21–22 Antecedents may have existed as ear ...

and fights with a variety of weapons. Round-faced ''

rakugo is a form of Japanese verbal comedy, traditionally performed in '' yose'' theatres. (Bibliographyvolume 38(1)article
T ...

'' comic Koasa Shunpūtei portrayed Jinnai in all seven series. The title of the series specifies three people, so a replacement was necessary for Kuji and Yasaka in the final two series. Kira Ukon ( Masahiko Kondō, a descendant of

Kira Yoshinaka (October 5, 1641 – January 30, 1703) was a Japanese ''kōke'' (master of ceremonies). His court title was ''Kokushi (officials), Kōzuke no suke (上野介)''. He is famous as the adversary of Asano Naganori in the events of the forty-seven ...

, filled in first for Kuji, then for Yasaka. A debt-collector, he received the nickname "senryō," "a thousand gold pieces," in imitation of Kuji's nickname. During sword fights, he always found an opportunity to ask his opponent his style. In most series, there was also a woman who accompanied the three. The first was Okei, portrayed by Kaoru Sugita. Next came Osen ( Minako Fujishiro); then Ochō ( Yōko Nagayama). They were followed by Okaru ( Wakako Shimazaki) and finally Oryō ( Machi Katsuragi).

Schedule

The first series premiered in 1987, and the seventh ended in 1995. In addition, TV Asahi broadcast another series in 2002 with a new cast and new characters. This series aired on Monday nights.

References

External links

TV Asahi
page on ''Zoku'' series
TV Asahi
page on ''Zoku-zoku'' series

Sources

This article incorporates information from the article 三匹が斬る! (''Sanbiki ga Kiru!'') in the Japanese Wikipedia, retrieved September 24, 2007. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sanbiki Ga Kiru! Jidaigeki television series 1987 Japanese television series debuts 1995 Japanese television series endings 2002 Japanese television series debuts TV Asahi original programming