No, I am Sasaki Kojiro!

Watched part two of the Samurai trilogy last night: Duel at Ichijijo Temple. I was inspired to write the following message.

Dear Japanese directors of the 1950s:

USE SOME LIGHTS. THANK YOU.

Love, DougBot.

It's a good set of films—Mifune is magnificent as Miyamoto Musashi, the greatest fencer Japan has ever known. Musashi was also the author of one of my favorite books on strategy, which was briefly fashionable in the 80s as a management manual. Hopefully the third installment in the series will show its creation, though I'd gladly skip that for more swordfighting.

Mifune's athleticism is hampered a lot by the very dim print. The weird thing is that I was looking at a Criterion edition of the film, and they're usually a lot better about such things. The Criterion edition of Seven Samurai is magnificent, but the Samurai releases are very very bare-bones. The translation is somewhat dull and the copy of the film is not only incredibly difficult to see in places, there are artifacts all over.