"Japan in the sixteenth century was embroiled in a series of civil wars. The seventeenth century ushered in 250 years of peace, but before a stable government under the victorious Tokugawa was established, swordsmen trained for warfare and not accustomed to peace challenged other swordsmen on an individual basis. In his day Musashi Miyamoto (1584-1645) was the most famous, and his duel with another famous swordsman, Kojiro Sasaki, in 1612, is celebrated in song, story, and film. "When we first see Musashi in this film, he is not a sympathetic character. He is skilled but undisciplined. He arrives late to face a challenge issued by the family of a man he has killed. The central figure in the vendetta is the son, a boy of about 12. A more humane warrior would have advised the boy to wait another 10 years and would have promised to honor the challenge. But Musashi dispatches the boy with no trouble, to the horror of his seconds. It is Musashi's friendship and training with Genba Kuroki which matures the wild swordsman. Aware of Musashi's potential, Genba even sacrifices himself in order to ferret out the secret of the new technique devised by the formidable challenger Kojiro. Young, cocky, and slightly psychotic in his desire to test his new form on a living subject, Kojiro finds one in Genba. Armed with the key to the secret, Musashi faces Kojiro on Ganryu Island. "Miki Mori, an Osone discovery, plays Musashi. Mori, along with Tatsuya Nakadai, who made his debut at about the same time, was the most personable new male star of period films in the 1950s. Tragically, his career was cut short by an untimely death in 1960 at the age of 26." --Frank T. Motofuji