Ansatsu
The Assassin
- Release Date
- July, 4th, 1964
- Running Time
- 104 min
- Genre
- Feature
- Color
- -
- Screening Format
- -
[ Directed by ]
[ Cast ]
[ Staff ]
- SHIBA Ryotaro ── Original Story
- YAMADA Nobuo ── Screenplay
- KOSUGI Masao ── Cinematography
[ Production Company ]
SHOCHIKU
[ Distributor (Japan) ]
SHOCHIKU
[ Story ]
In 1863, Lord Matsudaira of the Tokugawa Shogunate appeals to Premier Itakura and obtains an amnesty for Hachiro Kiyokawa, a masterless samurai, who has been imprisoned on the charge of murdering an agent of the Edo Police. At the same time, Matsudaira secretly tells Tadasaburo Sasaki, one of Shogun's guards, to be on the alert and prepared for the assassination of Kiyokawa.
It is Matsudaira's intention to use Kiyokawa, a great schemer, an orator and a man of unusual talent, in organizing a band of master samurai, which will be sent to Kyoto to suppress the anti-Shogunate movement there. What surprises everybody is that Kiyokawa was a notorious anti-Shogunate advocate.
Kiyokawa's former comrades in the anti-Shogunate movement decide to assassinate him. But he kills his attackers, his former friends, when they try to stop him.
In Kyoto, Kiyokawa reveals his true colors by declaring his anti-Shogunate intentions and obtains an Imperial Message to head a punitive force to destroy the anti-Royalist movement.
Finally, Lord Matsudaira orders Sasaki to assassinate Kiyokawa. And when Kiyokawa is at the zenith of his glory, Sasaki kills him on a street in Edo.
【Quoted from Unijapan Film Quarterly 1964 7.4】
[ Contact (International) ]
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