Teppo denraiki
The Saga of Tanegashima
- Release Date
- May, 18th, 1968
- Running Time
- 109 min
- Genre
- Feature
- Color
- Color
- Screening Format
- HDCAM
- Screen Size
- Cinema Scope (1:2.35)
[ Directed by ]
[ Cast ]
[ Staff ]
- TAKANO Etsuko ── Original Story
- ── Screenplay
- HAYASHI Hikaru ── Music
[ Production Company ]
DAIEI
[ Distributor (Japan) ]
DAIEI
[ Story ]
In the middle of the 16th-century, a storm drives a large Portuguese sailing ship ashore at Tanegashima, an island in the south ofJapan. There the local lord, Tokiaki meets Captain Pinto and his crew and sees foreign firearms for the first time.
Impressed, he orders his swordsmith, Y aita, to make similar ones and, to that end, buys one of Pinto's two flintlock-rifles. It is stolen, however, and Wakasa, Yaita's beautiful daughter, unable to endure her father's distress, goes to Pinto's house to acquire the other. Eventually he gives it to her.
The two get along well; so much so that when Pinto is ready to return to Europe, she is carrying his child. He pleads with her to accompany him but, torn between love for him and duty to her father, she decides to stay on the island.
Now, her father, having made the first successful Japanese gun, finds that he has inadvertently caused much misery. For the local warlords are using it for their own ends and many are killed during the ensuing battles. The swordsmith retires to live with his daughter-then comes the news that Pinto is returning.
Just before his arrival, however, Wakasa dies in an accident, trying to save their son. The distraught father is given his son by the heartbroken grandfather and the two-father and son-sail off to Portugal.
【Quoted from Unijapan Film Quarterly 1968.11.3】
[ Contact (International) ]
KADOKAWA CORPORATION
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