Every year, New York City is graced with an appearance from one of the OGs of cinema—
or should I say OS: Original Samurai—
No, not the Original Original Samurai, the cinema Samurai,
the Japanese icons from the 60s,
like this guy,
or this gun guy,
or this King Lear guy.
Yeah, I know those aren’t all samurai,
but, those are all the same actor—
Tatsuya Nakadai
a cinema badass if there ever was one.
You might recognize this guy from Yojimbo he was played by Tatsuya Nakadai.
This is one of Nakadai’s coolest movies— The Sword of Doom. It follows an absolute
sociopathic samurai without a conscience who descends into madness.
It’s a brutally stylized samurai flick with no shortage of action.
Tatsuya Nakadai comes to New York City every year. Big fan of Broadway musicals, but he
always makes sure to make an appearance here— to the Museum of the Moving Image— to screen
one of his films and answer a few questions.
I first went to one of these screenings a couple years ago.
They were playing The Sword of Doom.
And you can probably tell how much I like this movie from the intro and banners
for this channel. I took a little bit of video and a lot of notes.
So lets use Nakadai’s rare Q&A to take a behind-the-scenes peek at the pulpy bloodbath that is…
The Sword of Doom.
The Sword of Doom follows a hated samurai named Ryunosuke who is seen as a brutal savage
with no regard for the law (Eder). He is an outcast, making a living as an assassin of
political figures (Eder). He also lives in fear of the inevitable revenge by those he
has wronged including his deceased father, “the brother of his first samurai victim,”
and Shimada — a superior swordsman played by Toshiro Mifune (Eder).
Nakadai is no stranger to playing the bad guy, but his role in The Sword of Doom might
be the most villainous of them all— a man who kills simply for pleasure. At the screening
Nakadai said, "I think I prefer to play the villain because there is both a light and
a darkness in such roles and it really intrigues me as an actor. And after the war, there was
an influx of films from America coming to Japan, so my teachers were John Wayne, Henry Fonda,
and my number one teacher, Marlon Brando. American actors were very distinct and memorable
because they had that mysteriousness, the darkness and the shadow. So, as an actor,
I quite prefer these roles that have a front and a back and a depth (MOMI).
The novel, on which the film was based, started as a newspaper serial in 1913 that spanned
three decades of people buying the newspaper to read the next installment (O’Brien).
The story was left incomplete when the author died in 1944 (O’Brien). There had been numerous
adaptations over the years for the stage and the screen, but The Sword of Doom is arguably
the most famous (O’Brien). It should also be noted that the plot holes and unresolved
story lines in the film could possibly be due to the assumption that most of the audience
during that time were familiar with the story (O’Brien).
It has been said that The Sword of Doom
is mainly a collection of the novel’s most famous scenes (O’Brien). Still, the
sense of ambiguity in the film also reflects the ambiguity of the novel (O’Brien).
Bruce Eder describes Nakadai’s performance as a man "whose bloodlust is portrayed with
dead calm” and quite often you can see in the close-ups, these very subtle facial expressions
that seem to reveal so much about the character.
At the screening of The Sword of Doom, Nakadai said that people often told him that he was
an actor who performs with his eyes. He said that he was always confused at what they were
talking about and that he imagines that it was just the feeling in his heart that inevitably
appeared in his expression (MOMI).
Ryunosuke’s swordplay style during matches has a bizarre quality to it.
People take extreme offense to his technique. His father even calls it “deceitful and cruel.” …
Wait we need something here…
Yeah.
So, he doesn’t hold his sword in the normal way.
He holds it kind of down and he looks away. It’s very apprehensive and shy.
He’s really just baiting his opponent in, but when his opponent finally kind of a closes
that gap as he’s walking slowly away from them and at that point, it’s almost instinctual.
He reacts immediately.
On the flip side, Shimada, played by Toshiro Mifune, embodies the heroic samurai we are used to.
Look at his stance how he holds his sword.
At the screening Nakadai said, “The actor that you saw of course, Toshiro Mifune—
he is my great sempai or mentor. I consider him a genius when it comes to the swordplay.
I wasn’t cut down by him in this film, but in films such as Yojimbo and Sanjuro I was
constantly sliced up by him. And so, I really looked up to him and I wanted to catch up
to his genius, so what I did was I built a small shed in my backyard at my house and
every day I would practice my Chambara or swordplay. And watching this film today, perhaps
I was able to... grow a little closer to the great Mifune" (MOMI).
Nakadai also said that Mifune never came into the shoot with a script in hand. He would
always memorize all of his lines to the entire film before shooting.
This inspired Nakadai to do the same.
As Nakadai said, he was killed many times by Mifune in samurai pictures,
however, now that we finally see Mifune in a Nakadai led movie, we don’t get to see
a fight between them (Commentary).
The epic climax of the film shows Ryunosuke in a simple room at an inn. His paranoia and
madness gets the best of him and he begins to hear and see shadows of people coming to
get him. He goes mental, cutting the room apart and as he does so, the setting gets
more and more abstract signifying the interior of his mind (Commentary).
This is a real samurai sword from the Edo period. Look at how sharp this thing still is.
How would you like to get stabbed with this thing?
Now I know what you’re thinking… ‘no, I would not like to get stabbed with this thing,’
but they actually used a real sword for this scene
when Nakadai’s cutting up the room
It was actually freaking out the cinematographer Hiroshi Murai. He was constantly warning him
as he would stab into the bamboo mats— ‘be careful of your big toe!’
But what’s really cool is that, as Ryunosuke is losing his mind fighting imaginary enemies,
Kondo’s real men show up to attack him and the fight carries over seamlessly.
What ensues is one of the most brutal bloodbaths in samurai cinema.
Nakadai said that for 4 days straight he was cutting down people and he thinks he cut down
nearly a hundred people (MOMI). Japanese actors back then never used stuntmen. Nakadai said,
“No matter how dangerous the scene, if you were not able to perform with that real sword,
you were told you had no skill” (MOMI).
The film ends with a freeze-frame. It was supposed to be a three-part series, but because
of that last scene, Nakadai said that “the sequel was considered ‘too violent to shoot’" (MOMI).
All during the Q&A I was trying to muster up the courage to ask a question.. and I did.
I asked him about what it was like to perform for different directors with different directing styles.
He spoke directly to me in Japanese—those mesmerizing eyes staring directly into mine—
and I nodded along like I understood what he was saying,
but the entire time I couldn’t help but think about this:
According to the translator, this was his answer: “Different directors have very different
styles in terms of how they give their requests or instructions. I’ve spent the last 60
years performing on stage and in film and I’ve done my very best to behave and do
exactly what directors have told me to do. As a result, I’ve never had any fight or
conflict with a director… If I’m working on one film or stage performance and I move
on to the next one, the next director might say to me, ‘do it totally different from
what you did before. Don’t do anything like your previous performance.’ That would often happen."
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