Here's another installment. Sorry I couldn't do it everyday, Jeri. School is killing me. 
#3 In Harakiri, the facade of Bushido is underscored by the insinuation that the samurai of the Iyi clan were no longer warriors. When Tsugumo reveals that he went after Omodaka, the best swordsman of the Iyi clan and the ring leader of Chijiwa's demise, he admitted that Omodaka's use of the wind was clever, but in a fight he was still no match for Tsugumo who had fought in actual battles, lecturing those who would listen to his admonition that swordsmanship practiced only in the dojo and not in actual battle was like "learning to swim on a tatami mat."
This attitude led to movies in the 1990s that revisioned the samurai. They were less warriors and more bureaucrats, and the lines between good and evil were not so clear. In "Samurai Fiction", one clan hires a ronin--Kazamatsuri--who saves one of its members on the road. He is a superior swordsman but others in the clan are suspicious of him. He is tasked to watch over a famous sword gifted by the shogun but a clansman accuses of him of trying to steal it. An argument ensues and the ex-ronin ends up killng the clansman and runs away, taking the sword with him. Heishiro, the son of the clan Lord, insists on pursuing Kazamatsuri to take back the sword. The father knows that he is unskilled and tries to stop him, but Heishiro will not be denied.
Both Kazamatsuri and Heishiro are symbolic of this shift in view of the samurai. Kazamatsuri is a samurai with skills but is portrayed as both good and bad: He saves the clansman but then walks off with the shogun's gift, although that was not really his original intent. Indeed, when he flashes back to the series of events that finds him running away, we wonders, "How did it come to this?" The fact that Kazamatsuri is gay further blurs the modern image of the samurai.
Heishiro's character suggests that the romantic image of the samurai is over. Besides his own ineptitude, his brothers-in-arms are just as flawed. When they catch up with Kazamatsuri on the road one, Kurosawa, dies immediately, the other, Shintaro, survives but is seriously injured. Does Kurosawa's death suggest the death of the romantic image of the samurai as portrayed in Kurosawa Akira's Seven Samurai and Yojimbo? Is Shintaro's injury a criticism of the attempts to reframe the samurai in Katsu Shintaro's Zatoichi films? Indeed, the man who helps Heishiro recapture the sword is named Mizoguchi, a man who is as skilled as Kazamatsuri but refuses to fight after killing one man and then adopting the daughter of the man he killed. He would rather live a peaceful life and fight only by throwing stone or two, a bloodless way to fight, as bloodless as the most famous movie directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, The 47 Ronin (Chushingura). Kurosawa, Shintaro, Mizoguchi: I'm pretty sure that these names were not chosen by accident.
Anyway, the movie was not very popular, but it is as entertaining, even humorous, as it is thought provoking.
