Shigeru Satoi

A look at the lives of a troupe of geishas working in a small seaside resort town. For the most part, their lives consist of greeting boatloads of oversexed businessmen and providing bawdy entertainment through the evening followed by private companionship at night, interspersed with occasional catfights with the rival geisha house. Their routine is suddenly thrown off by the appearance of an abandoned baby in the geishas' dormitory, followed by its disappearance only a short time later. Who could be responsible for such a thing?

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The second film in the "Suruga yukyoden" series, in which Shintaro Katsu plays Jirocho Shimizu. The film features Omasa, Komasa, Ocho, who will become Jirocho's wife, as well as other members of his future family. There is a particularly great swordfight near the end where Katsu and cronies attack the rival villainous yakuza clan to rescue their ailing, elderly boss. The action choreography, cinematography and editing of this sequence is quite brilliant, treading a difficult tightrope act between genuinely goofy antics and exhilirating, bloody violence.

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Comedy movie

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Evil wizards and ninjutsu black magic cloud the land as the legendary Sanada Yukimura tries to defend Osaka Castle from Tokugawa Ieyasu’s tightening noose. Can Sarutobi Sasuke and Saizo the Mist level the playing field with their own ninjutsu skills? This rousing gem in the plucky swashbuckling ninja magician vein is full of familiar historical and shinobi genre names, plus rarer characters like a lady wizard and a female samurai love interest. Satomi Kotaro and Yamashiro Shingo star in what was one of the last bastions of this type of ninja movie before the Shinobi-no-Mono inspired 60s craze redefined the genre.

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1961 Japanese movie

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