Misumi was called up for military service shortly after joining Nikkatsu Kyoto in 1941. He spent several years during the war interred in a Siberian prisoner of war camp; when he later returned to Japan, he joined Daiei, where he served as assistant director under such notable figures as KINUGASA Teinosuke and ITO Daisuke before making his directorial debut in 1954. By the time Daiei went bankrupt in 1971, he had directed upwards of sixty feature films, including The Yotsuya Kaidan (Yotsuya kaidan, 1959) and The Adventure of Kyoshiro Nemuri (Nemuri kyoshiro shobu, aka Sleepy Eyes of Death: Sword of Adventure, 1964). In his later years, in addition to his continued directing of films like Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (Kozure okami: ko wo kashi ude kashitsukamatsuru, 1972), he also worked as a director on numerous television dramas. He is revered for having reinvigorated the jidaigeki (period drama) genre with arresting production design and rapid-fire editing, all from within a studio system that was in sharp decline from the late 1950s onward. A prolific director of studio-led projects, he was simultaneously an auteur who brought his own inimitable signature to anything he made, with his scintillatingly choreographed swordfight scenes in particular influencing later works such as Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003). In recent years, his achievements have become the focus of global attention, as attested by a recent retrospective of his work held at the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in 2022.

(Taken from text originally written for National Film Archive of Japan screening program / Rearranged by HOSHI Ryotaro / Translated by Adam Sutherland)