Bored Hatamoto: Idle Vassal Tribute

Bored Hatamoto film #20

A history drama portraying the confrontation between the indigenous Ainu people living on Japan’s northernmost main island—then called...

Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by...

Iwane Sakazaki returns to his homeland and gets caught in the middle of an incident that results in the tragic death of two of his best friends from...

1953 jidaigeki directed by Nobuo Nakagawa of Jigoku and Ghost of Yotsuya fame.

The film is set in Kyoto at the end of the Tokugawa period, when there is a fierce clash between the supporters of the Emperor, who are fighting for...

In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who...

Ichi travels to the village of Itakura to pay his respects at the grave of Kichizo, a man he killed two years ago. When some tax money is stolen...

Can a sinful man change and find peace? It's unlikely in gang-plagued Japan. Jokichi of Mikogami, a drifter (and hired sword), goes straight after...

In 1879, Kenshin and his allies face their strongest enemy yet: his former brother-in-law Enishi Yukishiro and his minions, who've vowed their...

With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare's King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic...

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa's tightly paced, beautifully composed "Sanjuro." In this companion piece and...