The two and half millennia-old board game Go plays a pivotal role in this sprawling jidaigeki drama from Japan. The story concerns an array of characters living in a civilised town during Japan’s Edo period (between 1600 and mid-1800s), but the central relationship follows Yanagida (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi), a mysterious former samurai, and Yorozuya (played by veteran Japanese character actor Jun Kunimura), a stingy antique salesman known for his cutthroat business tactics. These two very different figures bond over a shared love of Go, and as a result the various characters around them start to connect.
I won’t go into any more detail because Bushido’s main appeal is how languidly it shifts between different moods and genres, starting off as a rather quaint drama before pivoting into far more morbid territory. Tsuyoshi Kusanangi’s lead performance put me on the wrong foot initially for being far too cute and aggressively ‘good’ in his general wizened alignment, but by the end of the film we see a side of him vastly opposed to this that gives us the thrills we traditionally expect from the samurai genre.
Bushido may seem restrained at first, but when it shifts gears, it does so with exhilarating style—unexpected bursts of color, bold camera moves, and sudden tonal pivots that make its finest moments truly rousing.
Directed by seasoned Japanese journeyman Kazuya Shiraishi, Bushido being his third directorial effort of 2024 alone, the first act has the safe look and feel of a modern for-hire job, a difficult side effect of modern period pieces filmed on clean-looking digital cameras that Bushido at times doesn’t overcome. This may sound like a bad-faith criticism, and one I wouldn’t usually level at a film suffering from its own low-budget trappings, but what makes this film such a joy at times is how Shiraishi will sporadically pull a trick out of his bag and change gears into something far more singular. There’s a surprise format change, deft camera angles and explosions of colour that completely offset the style beforehand, but in a way that is extremely satisfying, especially for how restrained Shiraishi is in revealing these tricks late into the runtime. There’s a conversation between Yanagida’s daughter Kinu and her potential romantic interest Yakichi that features a few editing choices I found quite bumpy, but it’s suddenly followed by Kinu running away while the camera performs the most incredible zoom while the colours of the backdrop saturate, followed by a reverse of Yakichi watching her while the camera shutter speed is manipulated to make the background actors blur while he stays in focus, Wong Kar-Wai style.
The film makes these jumps in style (and depending on your taste, quality) every so often when you’re least expecting it, it may seem cheap to some for the film to present itself as rather dull for the most part, only to wake up in extraordinary fashion for effect; I can’t tell what the intention behind such a varied style is as a viewer, in theory it sounds like a cheap tactic to me but I cannot deny that I was stirred every time Bushido changes direction.
The term ‘Bushidō’ itself refers to the ancient code that samurai would promise to uphold, not just in battle but in their attitudes and approach to life. Promises to reject greed and embrace loyalty, compassion, and tranquility are meant to be upheld by the samurai, but the very crux of this film is that Yanagida’s entire commitment to bushidō is tarnished by the events of the film, and how far he goes to try and rectify those wrongs done against him. How this conflates with the game Go is up to interpretation, but Shiraishi seems to take joy in telling this admittedly standard samurai fable, one that has some very unengaging stretches littered throughout but at its finest moments, it properly roused me.
Bushido is playing as part of the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2025
click poster below for more details
JAKE’S ARCHIVE – BUSHIDO
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