Directed by Kihachi Okamoto
Cinematography by Hiroshi Murai
Edited by Yoshitami Kuroiwa
Music by Masaru Sato
Starring
Tatsuya Nakadai as Ryunosuke Tsukue
Toshiro Mifune as Toranosuke Shimada
…
“Power without perception is spiritually useless, and therefore of no true value.”
-dialogue from the film Fist of the North Star (1986)
…
Review by William D. Tucker.
Japan: 1860s: armed factions fight for and against the military Shogunate and the divine Emperor. The Shogun wishes to strike a profitable deal with the foreigners from the West. The Emperor demands the expulsion of all foreign devils and total loyalty as a godlike absolute ruler over all. It is a time of violence. Men sharpen their blades and train rigorously in all forms of martial arts to wage wars covert and overt to determine the fate of the nation . . .
Ryunosuke Tsukue is a master swordsman with a strangely passive sword-fighting style: he squares off with an opponent, lowers his blade, lowers his eyes-he is leaving himself open to attack. Ryunosuke’s opponent takes the opportunity. Ryunosuke strikes this opponent-whoever he happens to be-dead with a single stroke of his sword. This master swordsman has perhaps made himself so sensitive to the sounds of his opponent’s body-maybe even to the changes in the currents of the air as a person maneuvers themselves to try to gain advantage in a duel-that he might not even need to look at his attacker to vanquish them.
Ryunosuke is a wandering swordsman with no master, no loyalty to either Shogun or Emperor. He doesn’t seem to be associated with any criminal gangs. He is rejected as a perverted embodiment of evil by his old-fashioned kendo schoolmaster father. You could say Ryunosuke is his own master. Ryunosuke wanders Japan, getting into fights with other swordsmen, or, if he can find no one to duel, he might just kill a random person-like an elderly pilgrim praying at a Buddhist shrine by the roadside. Ryunosuke will also enter kendo competitions in order to “accidentally” crack open an opponent’s skull with a wooden sword and still be within the bounds of the rules.
Eventually, Ryunosuke’s prowess and ruthlessness attracts the attention of armed political extremists who wish to use this master swordsman as an assassin. Ryunosuke has no political or moral convictions. He is neither a conformist nor a true believer. He fights fiercely, yet not from fear of death. Ryunosuke doesn’t draw his sword for self-defense or idealism. He enjoys killing as an end unto itself. He is a serial killer wearing the disguise of a mercenary swordsman for hire. Or, maybe he just sees killing for what it is stripped of the empty, self-justifying rhetoric of politics and religion.
Ryunosuke goes through the motions of being a Japanese man in the 1860s. He ends up with a wife and a child. He drinks sake in the evenings to unwind. He dutifully carries out assassinations for the political faction that claims him . . . but these are not people or actions he loves.
Well, the sake is okay. The killing is good. But he has no emotional connections to anyone or anything. Ryunosuke doesn’t seem to have emotions save for sadism and cruel, ironic amusement at how he continues to exist in a world of hypocrisy and stupidity. Ryunosuke is married to his sword. His face is a creepy, unblinking mask. He is a collection of gestures trying to pass for human. It’s not even clear if he gets truly drunk off of the sake-he might just be performing drunkenness to enhance the illusion of being human. What he is at heart is a maelstrom of violence disguised as a person. In turbulent times, no one seems to notice. Or care.
Ryunosuke, during one of his assassination gigs, finds himself witness to the spectacle of a sword master slaying many opponents who is possibly his equal: Toranosuke Shimada. Shimada is killing Ryunosuke’s fellow assassins in the extremist political faction. Ryunosuke should be joining his comrades in battle . . . but Ryunosuke has never had comrades. Ryunosuke just lets people think he has a sense of duty so he can have a warrant to kill. But Ryunosuke finds himself frozen before the magnificent technique of Shimada. Shimada is as fearsome as Ryunosuke but he spares the life of a helpless would-be assassin. Shimada has the conscience and sense of mercy that Ryunosuke lacks.
Two swordsmen. One evil. One moral. Both capable of unleashing maelstroms of slashing carnage. Surely, if they clashed it would be like metaphysical matter and antimatter in collision. All would cease.
Okay, maybe that’s taking things too far.
But it is certainly likely both Ryunosuke and Shimada would fight each other so ferociously that they would both perish of their wounds. Neither are afraid to die, yet Ryunosuke lives to kill. If Ryunosuke dies, he can’t kill anymore. Weirdly, absurdly . . . Ryunosuke must refuse to engage the worthiest opponent he is likely to ever encounter in his life so that he can keep on killing numerous lesser foemen and experience the one joy he is capable of having.
Yeah, Ryunosuke is a sick and twisted fuck.
Because Ryunosuke refuses to draw his sword, Shimada dismisses him with a disdainful glance, and strides away into the night.
Throughout The Sword of Doom, we get subjective camera work that puts us in the frightful perspective of Ryunosuke. We even get some first person shots that come oh-so-close to anticipating the steady-stalking camera work of John Carpenter’s Halloween-the one true slasher film of all time, forget all those superfluous sequels and dumbass remakes. In Halloween we have the Shape-who may once have been a person-a masked engine of murder who has no mercy and no discernible humanity. The Shape is a pure terror invading an anodyne suburban landscape unprepared to ward off a monster of pure malevolence. Ryunosuke is a monster born in a time of violence and paranoia whose ruthlessness and murderous spirit make him valuable to the powers that be. Maybe the Shape, after all, is the reincarnation of Ryunosuke-no, the reincarnation of the maelstrom that once wore the disguise of “Ryunosuke Tsukue.”
Of course, you can draw all kinds of bizarre connections in the realm of cinema, with all its recurring tropes and motifs and what have you.
It’s weirdly satisfying-comforting,even-to construct patterns to explain the recurrence of senseless violence across time.
Which is funny in a sicko sort of way.
Because another thing that The Sword of Doom and Halloween’78 have in common?
They both end with their human-disguised murder machines still at large.
It can be a harsh realm out there, people.
It really can.
