Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Before ed scolds you, there is another thread on this somewhere on the forum that can be found using the search engine.

Yungflutes wrote:

Can you rip the scenes and upload them to Youtube? No, just kidding. I believe the Hollywood Guild Polizei may be registered Forum members...

The Hollywood Guild Polizei have taken the Dokyoku Polizei to court over use of Christopher Plummer's image in their warning messages.

I just ordered "The Yakuza" it better be all that and a bag of wasabi peas or I am coming to Chicago to visit you.  I loved all the goodies and the notes that accompanied them.  I ate one of the minnows or whatever they were and it was NASTY!!!!  It was labelled unsafe so that was on me.  The peas were excellent.  I missed you there!

Brian

BrianP wrote:

I just ordered "The Yakuza" it better be all that and a bag of wasabi peas or I am coming to Chicago to visit you.  I loved all the goodies and the notes that accompanied them.  I ate one of the minnows or whatever they were and it was NASTY!!!!  It was labelled unsafe so that was on me.  The peas were excellent.  I missed you there!

Brian

At the very least it is a good Robert Mitchum film written by Peter Schaffer, who wrote TAXI DRIVER and a host of other notable stuff, and who wrote and directed MISHIMA. A Komuso appears for all of about 30 seconds in the film.

Yeah, Brian P,    " The Yakuza"  is all that, a bag of wasabi peas and much more,  so please do not come to Chicago,  I am too busy practicing for shakuhachi lessons.                              It's a unrequited love story, a tale of an unrepayable obligation, betrayal,  and passion.     Please realize this movie is very good for it's time , but very dated,  it's even older than your mother.    I first saw it in my late forties,  back in 1975,  so I can relate to it completely.                  The film is based upon " giri"  an unrepayable burden,  similiar to what I owe you for helping me out in Chikuzen's first summer flute camp when I could never keep track of where we were on the music notation.      In  future camps all Japanese snack bags will be pre-opened, and all minnow-type items " deemed B.P. nasties from here on " will be removed and eaten prior to camp.                  The Yakuza excels with great footage of sleeve and body tattoos,   so I know your breaths will quicken when you see exquisite body art similar to yours.                    Missed you at summer camp too, buddy!                       To refresh a thread for the rest of the forum members,  Florida Flute Camp is coming in October this Year!    Max capacity is seven,  so how many openings are left?      I will try to make it.   I must keep making payments upon my  " giri ".

mrwuwu wrote:

Wow!  Gishin!     Daibosatsu Toge sounds like a great UFC midget porn fighting flick!      " For good komuso on komuso action and real komuso getting pissed on and beating the shit out of a samurai who wants to screw with his flute...."   til his face looks like hamburger!

Indeed Daibosatsu Toge is a great trilogy based on the long novel by Nakazato Kaizan, It relates the story of a ronin obsessed with death in the last days of the bakufu before the Meiji restoration. The trilogy movie adaptation with Ichikawa Raizo is the one closest to the book. There is another version called sword of doom with Tatsuya Nakadai and Toshiro Mifune but it only shows the first part of the whole story sadly.

Clinton, there will always be room for you.  You can share my room.  I have 2 beds and I will make it work if you can get there.  That is 100% for sure.  So make plans and bring minnow free snacks!

Zakarius wrote:

Gishin wrote:

There is another version called sword of doom with Tatsuya Nakadai and Toshiro Mifune but it only shows the first part of the whole story sadly.

Sword of Doom is a great flick.

Zak

Indeed a great film but it only shows the first part of the whole story which leads most foreigners to think that this is the end of it when actually it is only the beginning. It took me years to realize this when I saw the other version that this was a quite long saga. I suspect the Nakadai/Mifune film was planned as a full version but was dropped along the way which would explain the abrupt ending. When you watch the other full version you can fully appreciate the Shakuhachi relation to his own being etc.

mrwuwu wrote:

For those of you, as I,  whom " Sword of Doom " is a favorite flick,  after an half hour of searching google, found a source for the 3 films that make up Daibosatsu Toge,  with English subtitles.    As Gishin mentioned, Sword of Doom basically represents only Part One of the story.     These 3 separate films are easy to find in Japanese only,  but this one source,     http://stores.vendio.com/STUFFYOUWANTED     has it with the subtitles.    I will review the quality of the dvds after I see them.   It was approx. 33 bucks for the 3 films.      Thanks,   Gishin,  for the recommendation.    Remember,  these are not with the actors Nakadai or with Mifune.

I looked at the website in question and there seems to be a lot of nice stuff. Sadly it smells like bootleg stuff and I strongly feel that if this is what I think of the subtitles will not be that great. I hope this is a different version. It seems Japanese companies have no idea that there is a market for this stuff and 90% of all old Japanese jidai geki/samurai cinema is sold and subtitled by dedicated fans.

On another note this novel is quite interesting since the main guy Tsukue Ryunosuke is fictional but mostly all the other characters are real and the situation in which he is placed all happened so in a way Nakazato Kaizan used history and patched him in it in the same way Yoshikawa Eiji wrote the Musashi novels.

The main actor in the trilogy version being Ichikawa Raizo came out of a famous Kabuki actor family and his way of acting shows some of his kabuki training. He is quite good and I love his style being a theatrical one in comparison to Mifune and Nakadai.

Here is the wiki page for Ichikawa Raizo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raizo_Ichikawa

Last edited by Gishin (2009-07-18 01:13:40)

Has anyone else seen any of the Hanzo - The Razor movies?  No shakuhachi sightings, but at least one of them has some decent background riffs.  It is called "The Snare."  I watched that one and another this weekend.  I highly recommend them.  Sword fighting, rice bale screwing, Buddha statue beating, sluething, and even some boobies (Hey, I am a simply guy) with a little shakuhachi thrown in to give you a plausible reason to watch.    They are not quite "insistent," to use a term from Peter Griffin, and serious as Sword of Doom.  They cut a jagged line between humorous and brutal.  Hanzo is the classic iconoclastic Zen Master/Samurai.  I enjoyed his character.  If anyone has IFC on satellite in the US, they have played samurai movies (Sword of Doom last week) late on Fridays or Saturday the past two weekends.  I just discovered the channel, so I don't know if it is a consistent thing or just a coincidence.  The Snare also has a great scene where Hanzo feigns suicide by cutting into a sack of watermelon rinds strapped to his stomach and throwing the fake guts on his Police Cheif-like superior.  Great stuff.

Last edited by lowonthetotem (2009-07-27 09:36:37)

I didn't see any komuso but "Scooby Doo and the Samurai Sword" (AKA in the cartoon as the Sword of Doom) had some canned shakuhachi sounds to give atmosphere. ;P

I've just seen the one film but enjoyed it.  It seems very much like "naturalist" novel to me, you know man being controlled by forces out of his sphere of influence.  I like that stuff.  I enjoyed the scene where the main character talks about how he and his father both enjoyed the bamboo flute.  To me it seemed as though the duel was the one instance in his life that seemed to shape everything after it.  I would enjoy seeing the entire story.  There is a similar movie about a Judo fighter.  He goes to a teacher, but the teacher will not take him because he "lacks humanity."  They both seem to present interesting discussions on nature vs. nurture.

However, watching a guy pound his wiener on a stone and then screw a rice bale (Hanzo the Razor) is really entertaining.  I know ... I was surprised too.