The historical jidai-geki has been in decline – that is a fact that no one can dispute. However, the genre is far from dead. Production companies, in search for diminishing financial risk in these trying times, merely seek to produce surefire hits. Either these companies craft ensemble pieces – featuring a cast that can pull in audiences, or adapt manga narratives that already have proves their popularity.      

With his narrative, Jun’ichi Yasuda, however, asks the spectator as well as his contemporaries to re-evaluate the chanbara genre and the jidai-geki frame. The director, at least, proves with his time-travel film that there are many stories left to tell within this frame and that this frame can be creatively exploited to add a freshness to the genre (General-note 1).   

In the final years of the Edo period – bakumatsu, the conflict between the pro and anti shogunate forces is slowly reaching its zenith. Somewhere in Kyoto, Kosaka Shinzaemon (Makiya Yamaguchi) and Sanosuke (-), members of the pro-shogunate Aizu clan, lie in wait to ambush their target, the young anti-shogunate samurai Yamagata Hikokuro (Ken Shonozaki). While Hikokuro quickly dispatches Sanosuke, Shinzaemon poses a bigger challenge. However, before a bloody conclusion is reached, something extraordinary happens: Shinzaemon is struck by lightning.

When he comes to himself, he happens to find himself in a strange yet somewhat familiar place. Trying to find his bearings, he unknowingly wanders into a jidai-geki film-set. Due to his strange behaviour, Yuko Yamamoto (Yuno Sakura), the assistant director of the series being shot there, tries to send him away. Yet, an accident on the movie-lot causes Shinzaemon to end up in the hospital. Yuna decides to look after him, yet the samurai, confronted with a foreignness he cannot place, runs away.  

While Samurai In Time is not a narrative that demands the spectator to think too deeply – a fun ride to be enjoyed while relaxing, it is nevertheless interesting to analyse the way Jun-Ichi Yasuda approaches the uprooting of Shinzeamon from his time-period. The reason for the slow unfolding of the film is, in our view, function of the thought the director put into the concept of traveling into time and finding oneself in a societal space that, despite some familiarity, is nevertheless radically different.  

With the opening of Samurai in Time, Yusada offers his view on how a subject can cope with unsuspected time-slip. The key-signifier is ‘familiarity’. The fact that Shinzaemon finds himself in Toei Kyoto Studio Park surrounds him with a variety of familiar elements (e.g. buildings, clothes, … etc.) which allows him, first and foremost, deflect the impact of the ‘anachronistic’ signs of modernity and maintain the consistence of his ego.

Shinzaemon succeeds in managing his confusion by explaining the strangeness of certain elements away in accordance with his own symbolic frame – contemporary garments as considered foreign elements that intrude into the Edo-frame. The familiar visual frame of Edo-Japan also enables him to act as he always acted, following the internalized dictates of the symbolic system of the samurai – bushido, that defines his subject and allows him to give his ego its definite shape.    

Yet, an accident on the set – Shinzaemon hits his head on camera crane – forces him into space (i.e. a hospital room) that cannot in any way be integrated within his Edo-frame. His attempt to rhyme all the signs of modernity with his outdated image of the world is rendered impossible. Holding on to his name and his swords – the only things that halt the disintegration of his ego, he ventures into this strange world of tall greyish buildings, utility poles, trains, level crossings, cars, trucks, … etc. Yet, mentally speaking, his aimless wandering eventually takes its toll.   

By mere chance, he is confronted with the truth – a poster on a shutter informs him that bakufu – the Tokugawa shogunate – has ended 140 years ago. While this truth affirms his state of feeling lost, stuck within this symbolic space that is not his, it does not cause any kind of subjective collapse. While Shinzaemon finds a support in what defines him as samurai, i.e. his katana, the revelation also allows him to slowly accept that he is the anachronistic element within the societal space (Narra-note 1). This shift – the acceptance of being a samurai in time – is evident in the way he comes to talk about certain things within the contemporary societal field: Shinzaemon analyses contemporary Japan (e.g. the rice, the cake) from the frame of the lived reality of his past. However, being subjected to this radical contradiction does rear its head in the productions of his unconscious. In the manifest content of a dream, the sudden presence of a film-crew wakes him up, because it seemingly subverts the truth of his past (Psycho-note 1).

Not that much later, due to an unexpected illness of an extra, Shinzaemon is asked to become an extra and turn himself into a member of the shinsengumi who is in search for the dissident Sakamoto Ryoma (-). For Shinzeamon, the task to act gives him an unexpected chance to act out his subjective truth in a fictional frame – a gift to symbolically exist as samurai in a societal field where their function has long since become redundant – “There is no other way for me to remain alive in this world”. To put it differently, he is, due to his origin, able to breathe a reality in his performance that eclipses the fictional framing of the past. Of course, that dedication does not go unnoticed. After a long absence, mega-star Kyoichiro Kazami (Norimasa Fuke) returns to the jidai-geki genre and personally asks him to become his main adversary.

The spectator is, as the narrative unfolds, led to wonder what the effect of the fictionalized repetition of the past can be on Shinzeamon. Will performing imprison him in the past – enslave him to the conflict he was caught up in – or will it help him fictionalize his past and allow him to separate himself from a past that, without his presence, has already been written?  

To bring his narrative visually to life, Jun’ichi Yasuda mainly relies on static shots. His reliance on the static shot does not only enable him to integrate some pleasant shot-compositions, but also emphasize the contrast between Shinzaemon and what happens around him – e.g. Shinzaemon’s confusion as trucks and cars pass by – and elevate the comical flavour of certain of his (emotional) reactions.

Yasuda keeps his visual fabric visually interesting by utilizing the cut in an effective way. The cut allows him to give his composition a pleasant ebb and flow and please the spectator with light-hearted visual contrasts. The use of static shots in action-sequences, elegantly emphasizing the movement of the characters with respect to each other, breathes life into the tensive and dramatic flow of the action-choreographies.  

Yasuda reserves dynamism for moments of transition (e.g. to highlight the movement of characters to another space, shift the focus within the shot) and establishing moments. In some rare instances, Yasuda employs some decorative dynamism (e.g zoom-in moments) to light-heartedly emphasize the impact of certain events on Shinzeamon (e.g. his first taste of a strawberry shortcake) or to infuse a dramatic flair into the action moments (Sound-note 1, Cine-note 1).

A Samurai In Time is a beautiful and genuinely endearing love-letter to the chanbara genre. While Yasuda’s reliance on the static shot might feel too straightforward at first glance, he utilizes its full potential to create many effective light-hearted moments and allow the sword-fighting to come to full its right. Recommended viewing.

Notes:

General-note 1: The film is dedicated to Seizo Fukumoto, Japan’s leading kirareyaku who died more than 50,000 times on camera, had his first starring role in Uzumasa Limelight (2024), and starred as the Silent Samurai in Last Samurai (2003).

Narra-note 1: Any spectator that pays close attention to Shinzeamon’s relation towards his katana will notice that this katana has a symbolic relevance – a signifier that grounds his way of being.  

Psycho-note 1: The dream confronts Shinzaemon with the truth that, by abiding to a symbolic system, we are always led to perform fiction – we always play a role. The ego is a fiction we present to the Other, a fiction we dedicate ourselves to – a fiction that allows the truth of the subject to be half-said.  

Sound-note 1: The zoom-in movements are always accompanied with a light-hearted sound.

Cine-note 1: Yasuda also turns to decorative slow-motion to heighten the dramatic tension of certain moments of action in the finale for example.