Ninja bugei-cho / Band of Ninja

Nagisa Oshima: 忍者武芸帳 / Ninja bugei-cho / Band of Ninja (JP 1967).

忍者武芸帳 / Ninja [the English title on screen] / Carnets secrets des Ninja / [Ninjan sotakirja] / [Ninjas krigsbok]. 

    JP 1967. PC: Sozosha. P: Masayuki Nakajima, Takuji Yamaguchi, Nagisa Oshima. 

    D: Nagisa Oshima. SC: Nagisa Oshima and Mamoru Sasaki – based on the manga by Sanpei Shirato (1957). DP: Akira Takada – b&w – 1,37:1. M: Hikaru Hayashi. Theme song: "Ninga bugei-cho". Singer: Sumito Tachikawa. ED: Keiichi Uraoka. Voices in the Japanese version: Shoichi Ozawa (commentary), Kei Yamamoto (Jutaro Yuki), Akiko Koyama (Akemi), Kei Sato (Shuzen Sakagami), Noriko Matsumoto (Hotarubi), Yoshiyuki Fukuda (Mufu-dojin), Hideo Kanxe (Nobutsuna Kamiizumi), Shigeru Tsuyguchi (Mitsuhide Akechi), Fumio Yatanabe (Nobunaga Oda / Kynnyo), Hikaru Hayashi (Tokichiro Kinoshita), Mutsuhiro Toura (Kagemaru), Hosei Komatsu (Onikichi / Zoruko), Nobuo Tanaka (Munetoshi Yaguy), Juro Hayano (chief of Raiunto).

    Japanese version 131 min

    On display was the short English-language version, 100 min

    Print: Kawakita Memorial. 

    Screened at Cinema Orion (Helsinki Festival: Nagisa Oshima), Helsinki, 27 Aug 2009.

A decent print of the short version. The film is probably more watchable in the short version.

A ninja action manga film. Not animation (anime) in the true sense, as the film is photographed from the frames of Sanpei Shirato's manga, and the cinematic impact is based on movement inside and into the manga frames, on montage, and on the soundtrack (music, song, commentary, voices, sound effects).

The birth of the ninjutsu and the ninja in the 16th century. A rebellious jidai-geki based on the manga favoured by the student radicals of the 1960s.

At first the film based on static drawings feels jarring and disappointing. Towards the end it gets more effective.

The story is very cruel and violent, and there are endless battle scenes.

Women have a prominent role as fearless fighters, including a pregnant lady and a nude ninja fighter.

The final message: "keep on fighting until all men can live equally".

The music by Hikaru Hayashi is original and effective. The theme song resembles the western. The singer Sumito Tachikawa has an attractive voice.

Not a profound or sophisticated film, but an interesting experiment, one that one would not wish to be repeated in a feature film.

Antti Suonio remarked that a similar approach is now commonplace in dvd extras.