The ''Samurai Trilogy'' is a film

trilogy A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected and can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, and video games, and are less common in other art forms. Three-part wor ...

directed by

Hiroshi Inagaki was a Japanese filmmaker best remembered for the Academy Award-winning '' Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto'', which was released in 1954. Career Born in Tokyo as the son of a shinpa actor, Inagaki appeared on stage in his childhood before joining t ...

and starring

Toshiro Mifune was a Japanese actor who appeared in over 150 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration (1948–1965) with Akira Kurosawa in such works as ''Rashomon'', ''Seven Samurai'', ''The Hidden Fortress'', ''Throne of Blood'', and '' ...

Musashi Miyamoto , also known as Shinmen Takezō, Miyamoto Bennosuke or, by his Buddhist name, Niten Dōraku, was a Japanese swordsman, philosopher, strategist, writer and rōnin, who became renowned through stories of his unique double-bladed swordsmanship a ...

and

Kōji Tsuruta , better known by his stage name , was a Japanese actor and singer. He appeared in almost 260 feature films and had a unique style of singing. His daughter, Sayaka Tsuruta, is an actress. Career Born in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Tsuruta was raised in ...

Kojirō Sasaki Kojirō, Kojiro, Koujirou or Kohjiroh is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: * (born 1977), Japanese footballer *, Japanese educationist *, Japanese scholar of Islam *Sasaki Kojirō (Ganryu Kojiro, c. 1585–1612) ...

. The films are based on '' Musashi'', a novel by

Eiji Yoshikawa was a Japanese historical novelist. Among his best-known novels are revisions of older classics. He was mainly influenced by classics such as ''The Tale of the Heike'', ''Tale of Genji'', ''Water Margin'' and ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'', m ...

about the famous duelist and author of ''

The Book of Five Rings is a text on ''kenjutsu'' and the martial arts in general, written by the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi around 1645. Many translations have been made, and it enjoys an audience considerably broader than other martial artists and people ac ...

''. The three films are: * '' Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto'' (

1954 Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The fir ...

) * '' Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple'' (

1955 Events January * January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama. * January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut. * January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijian ...

) * '' Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island'' (

1956 Events January * January 1 – The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Anglo-Egyptian Condominium ends in Sudan. * January 8 – Operation Auca: Five U.S. evangelical Christian Missionary, missionaries, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim ...

) Together, they are a trilogy following the character growth of Musashi from brash—yet strong—young

soldier A soldier is a person who is a member of an army. A soldier can be a conscripted or volunteer enlisted person, a non-commissioned officer, or an officer. Etymology The word ''soldier'' derives from the Middle English word , from Old French ...

to thoughtful and introspective

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

. The choreography for the films was by

Yoshio Sugino was a Japanese martial artist and film choreographer. Early life Sugino was born in Naruto village, Chiba prefecture, in December 1904. When he was a child, his family moved to Tokyo. He first encountered martial arts at Keio University, where ...

of the

Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū Written as 天眞正傳香取神道流 before adoption (1946) of Tōyō kanji. is one of the oldest extant Japanese martial arts, and an exemplar of '' bujutsu''. The Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū was founded by Iizasa Ienao, born in 13 ...

Reception and influence

''Samurai I'' won the 1955

Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...

. In a review almost 60 years after the release of the trilogy, the late academic and film critic Stephen Prince noted "the absence of gore" in the films: "Severed limbs and spurting arteries hadn’t yet arrived as a movie convention, and the fights in ''The Samurai Trilogy'' are relatively chaste, not showing the carnage that such duels would have actually resulted in." The trilogy became an influence for future films.

References

External links

* * * * Japanese film series Jidaigeki films Samurai films Trilogies 1950s Japanese films {{1950s-Japan-film-stub