Peace in 17th-century Japan causes the Shogunate's breakup of warrior clans, throwing thousands of samurai out of work and into poverty. An honorable end to such fate under the samurai code is ritual suicide, or hara-kiri (self-inflicted disembowelment). An elder warrior, Hanshiro Tsugumo, seeks admittance to the house of a feudal lord to commit the act. There, he learns of the fate of his son-in-law, a young samurai who sought work at the house but was instead barbarically forced to commit hara-kiri. In flashbacks, Hanshiro tells the tragic story of his son-in-law, and how he was forced to sell his real sword to support his sick wife and child. A fascinating, tragic samurai tale that explores and tears down the code which the samurai lives by. Director Masaki Kobayashi (Kwaidan) was a huge fan of Akira Kurosawa's work and managed to make a jidaigeki film that doesn't try to compete with Kurosawa's epics, but has numerous times been called an anti-samurai film due to how it throws the whole samurai establishment under a bus, and exposes a lot of hypocrisy. Many scenes has a genuine sense of tangible anxiety, when it dawns on the character that death is unavoidable. Delivers great dialogue and minimalistic cinematography, and under a thick layer of grain portrays a much more restrained story compared to other films in the genre. Actor Tatsuya Nakadai (Sword of Doom) plays the lead role, and has cited Harakiri as his favorite film.
Genre: Drama
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