General discussion (non-Usagi Yojimbo related) about all things Japan -- Feudal Japan, Samurai, Ninjas, Anime & Manga, Chambara films, Japanese Pop Culture, Otaku, martial arts, history, sushi, giant robots, Godzilla... anything Japan-related!
Where can you go to learn more about the fascinating genre of samurai films which were produced in Japan in such large numbers during the 1950's and 1960's?
There have been a couple decent books written which focus on the genre, these being Alain Silver's "The Samurai Film" and Patrick Galloway's "Stray Dogs and Lone Wolves", both of which are excellent introductions to jidai geki and chanbara films.
During the 1980's, the publishers of the magazine Inside Kung Fu produced a short lived magazine called Martial Arts Movies Magazine which focused on, of all things, movies which featured martial arts. Most of the issues usually featured at least one article concerned with chanbara or samurai genre films, as well as some film reviews.
One of the handful of authors who contributed to this magazine was Jessica Amanda Salmonson, author of the Tomoa Gozen samurai fantasy series. (Tomoe Gozen. New York: Ace Books, 1981 / The Golden Naginata. New York: Ace, 1982 / Thousand Shrine Warrior. New York: Ace, 1984)
Jessica Amanda Salmonson has (recently?) started collecting, revising, and posting to the internet her various articles and reviews of samurai genre films (as well as numerous other genres) along with new material, thus creating one of the larger reference sources for fans of this genre of films. If you are interested in reading about some of the more obscure samurai films, check out Jessica's web-site.... the weird wild realm of Paghat the Ratgirl!
Welcome to the film review pages of Paghat the Ratgirl. Probably a full 75 percent of these reviews are of horror films & Japanese cinema, but actually I like all sorts of movies & coverage is broad. The rapidly expanding selection of Asian film reviews includes a great many things rarely discussed in English & definitely discussed nowhere else on the web. So while film websites are a dime a dozen, quite a bit that will be found here is uniquely informative.
The "seed" of this website was my film-notes diary covering hundreds of films viewed, plus many rather more detailed reviews off an archive of reviews I wrote for filmfan newsgroups. I also dug out back issues of martial arts magazines for which I wrote reviews of swashbuckler, yakuza, & samurai films, some of those having been feature articles of considerable detail, & which I have been adapting for this website. Plus all the while I keep writing up fresh reviews as new films are viewed, adding reviews as often as daily. http://www.weirdwildrealm.com/index-jidai-geki.html
I also really enjoyed "A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century Of Narrative Film" by Isolde Standish. It's a fairly in depth look into the genre, as well as several other popular film styles of the period. It's worth checking out, seeing that it can be found in paperback now.
One of my absolute fav series of chambara movies, besides the obvious classics, is the Hanzo the Razor trilogy starring and produced by Shintaro Katsu, who is most famous as Zatoichi.
It's absolutely bizarre.......a combination of Japanese exploitation, action films, and samurai pictures. It's......just bizarre. I can't exactly describe it except as 'Shaft in Edo Japan'.
"But you should know this by now, Anjin-san. In this land of tears, death is our heritage."
Angelcake the Fox wrote:One of my absolute fav series of chambara movies, besides the obvious classics, is the Hanzo the Razor trilogy starring and produced by Shintaro Katsu, who is most famous as Zatoichi.
hanzo the razor itami...alias goyokiba..
another great manga of kazuo koike and takeshi kanda!!!
Another book is: Japanese Cinema: The Essential Handbook by Thomas Weisser and Yuko Mihara Weisser. It covers all genre of Japanese films from the samurai movies to giant monsters to the "pink" movies. There is even an appendix on the Lone Wolf and Cub movies written by Max Allan Collins.
