Samurai Trilogy part 3--Duel at Ganryu Island

Toshirô Mifune is confidence supreme and humility incarnate as the mature samurai master Musashi Miyamoto in the final film of Inagaki's sprawling trilogy. Now a legendary swordsman whose latest quest is to save an isolated village from rampaging brigands (shades of Seven Samurai), he remains haunted by the memory of Otsu, his romantic interest from the first two films.

Meanwhile the ruthless and jealous Kojiro Sasaki plots his battle with Musashi to prove who is the finest swordsman in Japan. Inagaki weaves the web of subplots into a series of grand confrontations, including two of the most exciting battles of the trilogy: Musashi's skirmish with the army of cutthroats while the village erupts in a fiery inferno around him, and the sunset duel between Musashi and Kojiro on an isolated beach. The delicate use of color throughout the series becomes most pronounced in this final sequence, where the glow of orange and red adds dramatic flourish to the twilight battle.  

The historic battle with Kojiro is known to every schoolchild in Japan, and represents the classic Japanese respect for the underdog. New Kojiro bath at Ten Thousand Waves is named after our bathhouse akita dog from the '80s and early '90s who lived under the bath. Our underdog Kojiro was in turn named after the swordsman Kojiro Sasaki.

Director: Hiroshi Inagaki

Language: Japanese with English subtitles

Remastered print from Criterion