REVIEW: Porno Jidaigeki: Bohachi Bushido

ポルノ時代劇 忘八武士道 (Porno Jidaigeki: Bohachi Bushido)

Released: 1973

Director:
Teruo Ishii

Starring:
Tetsuro Tanba
Goro IbukiTatsuo Endo
Yuriko Hishimi
Keiko Aikawa

Running time: 81 min.


Reviewed by Matthew Hardstaff

Kazuo Koike’s influence is far reaching. His creations include "Lone Wolf and Cub", "Lady Snowblood", "Hanzo the Razor", "Crying Freeman" and "Demon Spies", as well as a slew of other manga. The man’s ability to weave an epic narrative that dwells deep in your soul is uncanny. His tales are filled with fine historic detail, violence and nudity depicted in its most base form, deep philosophical musings and engaging tales of the most incredible kind. His influence spans the seven seas, reaching out across the globe. Back in 1973, Teruo Ishii, at the height of his mad delirium of ero-guro filmmaking, was approached by actor Tetsuro Tanba to adapt a Kazuo Koike manga short into a film. Tetsuro Tanba had worked with Ishii previous, was no stranger to the jidaigeki film, and had played Tiger Tanaka in the greatest bond film ever made, "You Only Live Twice". Ishii agreed.

"Porno Jidaigeki: Bohachi Bushido" tells the tale Shino, played by Tanba, an assassin who has seen the hell that life is. After dispatching a handful of men, surrounded by dozens more, a violent and bloody conclusion imminent and inevitable, Shino decides to end it all. He knows his future will only bring more death and more bloodshed. He jumps from the bridge into the depths below, hoping the hands of death will take hold. ‘To live is hell, but to live is also hell’ Shino recounts as he awakens, alive, naked women at his side, rescued by a clan known as the Bohachi, the Forgotten Eight. The Bohachi are a clan without any moral or ethical code. They have abolished the eight virtues, leaving them able to deal with the society on the most base of levels. They deal specifically in prostitution, kidnapping women, forcing them to be sex slaves until they become the most deadly of assassins as well as the most submissive of servants. The Bohachi have a task for Shino. When Ieyasu Tokugawa unified Japan , the workers he used to build Edo into the mecca it became were unruly and disgruntled. The Bohachi provided the workers with women, and after a good dose of sex, Edo was built without incident. The Bohachi were given a bell with the Shoguns crest emblazoned on it, giving them exemption from officials. Thus, the Bohachi ran the brothels using there slave women. However illegal brothels fueled by raging samurai hormones have flooded the markets, and the officials do nothing to shut them down. The Bohachi want Shino to eliminate the competition, and Shino, able to morally justify his actions, is only too happy to comply!

"Bohachi Bushido", in the hands of any other director, probably would have been a very different film. However Teruo Ishii wasn’t interested in presenting the world of bushido as Koike usually presents it. The film is essentially a jidaigeki pimp war, and that’s exactly what Ishii creates. Compared to other Koike adaptations, the swordfights aren’t choreographed nearly as well, the philosophical musings are all but absent; in fact at times it seems Ishii is almost laughing at Shino’s moral aptitudes. The use of sex and nudity as a weapon is something most Koike manga have in common, but Ishii turns the fusing of sex and violence on its head, creating anti-Koike manga adaptation. Ishii does everything to mash the jidaigeki genre, pushing the psychedelic boundaries a film about bushido, prostitutes and opium can go. Limbs fly, blood gushes, prostitutes with syphilis grovel in cages, and surging rainbows of light flood the screen. Teruo Ishii proves that with an incredibly limited budget, he is and was one of the most imaginative directors that worked during the sixties and seventies, as well as one of the most subversive and genre bending. It’s the jidaigeki that hates itself, paying no attention to the boundaries its genre creates, instead condemning them, mocking them, and ultimately depicting them as no better than those that abolish all laws, rules, boundaries, ethics or morals.

Read more by Matthew Hardstaff at his blog.