(Teki wa honnoji ni ari). "The samurai code, as it was being formulated in the sixteenth century, demanded absolute, unquestioning loyalty to one's superior. But what if he were capricious, tyrannical, and vindictive? How much abuse would a vassal tolerate before he turned on his master? Nobunaga Oda (1534-82), a feudal baron who began reunifying Japan after almost a century of civil wars, is depicted (by Osone) in this film as such a callous brute. A vassal, Mitsuhide Akechi (1526-82), bore the brunt of his master's vicious whims. At Oda's command Akechi sends his mother as hostage to a recently hostile feudal lord who trades two of his sons. Oda promptly puts them to death, and Akechi's mother is executed. Oda bestows fiefs on Akechi, then rescinds the order. In one memorable scene, when Akechi realizes that his mercurial lord has killed all of his hopes, Osone extinguishes the lights around this hapless, abandoned figure as he sits alone, surrounded by a dark void. Akechi finally attacks and kills his own master but fails to rally the expected support for his claim to the title of regent. His forces are decimated and he himself is killed in a bamboo grove by a nameless peasant. Akechi was political head of Japan for only three days.
"This film is one of Osone's best. His years as assistant to Teinosuke Kinugasa, who directed such large-scale historical films as Osaka natsu no jin (Summer Siege of Osaka Castle, 1937), are evident in the skillful deployment of armies over a vast terrain in the battle scenes. But above all, his direction of Koshiro as the ill-starred Akechi and Takahiro Tamura as the ruthless Oda is superb. He has drawn from Koshiro quite possibly his finest screen performance. (Koshiro, who died in January, is in seven of the ten Osone films in this series.)" --Frank T. Motofuji