Episode 98: SWORD OF DOOM (1966)

CW: discussion of sexual assault as plot. As jidaigeki, samurai period pieces, Kurosawa’s films often level critiques against power structures by depicting their effects on laypeople. Kihachi Okamoto’s SWORD OF DOOM touches on those with a tale of violence set amid the resistance of the Meiji Restoration in 19th century Japan, using distinctly un-Kurosawa styles to heighten reality just ever so much. Tatsuya Nakadai’s unhinged, wayward swordsman, Ryunosuke, doesn’t have A moral code. He has what he thinks is THE moral code – until he’s confronted by a better Toshiro Mifune’s Shimada practitioner with the exact inverse ideology. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/ Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: Selections from the SWORD OF DOOM (1966) score by Masaru Sato.