Is there such a thing as a timeless genre? The interest of an audience in a particular mode of storytelling always has a shelf life, fickly ebbing and flowing once a saturation point is reached. But what does that moment look like, where tastes change and affection for times gone by becomes sour? Junichi Yasuda’s gentle high-concept fish-out-of-water comedy A Samurai in Time illustrates the pains and pleasures of nostalgia, holding onto images and ideas of the past while time’s arrow flies right on by the duelling swordsmen at its centre.
We open in mid-19th century Kyoto with righteous samurai Kosaka Shinzaemon Kosaka (Makiya Yamaguchi) on the hunt for a nefarious enemy (Ken Shônozaki); when he catches up with his foe and blades are drawn, pathetic fallacy is in the air and a lightning strike sends Shinzaemon forward in time nearly two hundred years. Waking up on the set of a jidaigeki (period drama) TV show, he blends right in, so much so that his commitment to the role stokes interest in further work as an extra, then a stunt man, and finally as a potential leading man. Yet the time slippage antics soon turn melancholy as Shinzaemon not only realises his time is long, but the history, the memory of it is fading away too.
Coming from a lineage of great samurai pictures before it gives Yasuda plenty to work with in terms of subtext and satire, yet he approaches the challenge in an interestingly restrained and modern way. The TV show Shinzaemon finds himself a star of is a tropey soap opera of the highest order, with minimal camera coverage and obvious melodrama that is designed to show how much of a production-line enterprise the once-great genre that was led by the towering Akira Kurosawa. Threats of network cancellation loom over the production, and you can unfortunately see why. It’s perhaps a disappointment, then, that the look of the film overall is more in line with its televisual satire than it is with its composed, poised forebears, also leaning on some quirky incidental music that telegraphs laughter well before it comes (if it even comes at all). For the first hour and a half of its two hour-plus run time, there is often no line between how the show within the film looks and the film itself, sapping the intrigue out of the tragic cosmic story at its centre.
Makiya Yamaguchi turns in a soulful performance as Shinzaemon, blending stoicism and vulnerability with ease and charisma as he gradually comes to accept the unfortunate temporal mishap he’s landed himself in.
Its finale does, however, drum up some strong pathos. As the complexity of Shinzaemon’s situation deepens, an endgame draws into focus that unearths questions of honour and retribution, tradition and survival. The shadow of Highlander looms longer over A Samurai in Time than one may expect (even though the blue-hewn lightning on the poster is a big parallel to its American uncle-film), and the otherwise uneasy mix of comedy and sci-fi paves the way for a stirring final movement, dripping with atmosphere and emotion. It’s just such a pity that the film settles for second gear for such a long time and leaves much of its appeal to the back end.
That said, Makiya Yamaguchi turns in a soulful performance as Shinzaemon, blending stoicism and vulnerability with ease and charisma as he gradually comes to accept the unfortunate temporal mishap he’s landed himself in. He has a sweet relationship with plucky assistant director Yuko (Yuno Sakura) that forms the heart of the film, and the two share some pleasant chalk-and-cheese chemistry as she tries to rehabilitate him to modern ways of living. A second half performance from an imposing Norimasa Fuke also brings an extra dose of gravitas to the proceedings, and proves to be a fantastic foil to Yamaguchi’s weathered warrior as time goes by.
The spirited cast save what is otherwise a broad and inconsistent comedy-drama from falling in between the cracks of its satire. It’s a film with a lot on its mind when it comes to the sadness of forgetting a culture or losing the authenticity of history to the sheen of entertainment; it just sometimes falls short of its ambition, whether that be through the silly-but-not-silly-enough comedy beats or the flatness of its cinematic scope. There’s plenty genial energy to be found in this light-hearted, lightning-powered low-fi sci-fi, yet goodwill and charm only get it so far when it so often resembles what it’s trying to deconstruct: a fluffy version of a harsher film.
A Samurai in Time is also coming out on Third Window Films Blu-Ray at the end of April. More details HERE.
A Samurai in Time played as part of the Japan Foundation Touring Film 2025 Programme
Simon’s Archive – A Samurai in Time
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