In Goyokin, as in Sword of the Beast (see August 28), Hideo Gosha charts the demise of the samurai in the face of a rapacious Shogunate in the last decades of the Tokugawa period. Gosha's heroes are particularly betrayed by the failure of the old codes; they cling to the old order, unable to accept the pragmatism inherent in the new. Tatsuya Nakadai portrays Magobei, who quits his clan in shame following the slaughter for gold of an entire village of fishermen. When we meet Magobei, he is living as a sideshow, offering "lightning swordplay" at an Edo bazaar. News that the crime is to be repeated in another village brings him out of retirement to face the clan leader in a balletic, snow-lit swordfight. The operatic style with which Gosha demystifies a genre has led critics to liken him to Sergio Leone. "Like Leone," Carlos Clarens wrote of the virtuoso, nearly silent sequence in the fishing village, "Gosha builds up a metaphysical mystery before exposing the mercenary motive behind it." Breathtaking visuals juxtapose a raging storm and a fiery cliff, blue-green seas and the snows of the Sabai country. As in Sword of the Beast, vivid flashbacks forge Magobei's past onto his tortured present, making action inevitable.