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1962, 71 min., 35 mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Kenji Misumi. With Raizo Ichikawa, Eijiro Yanagi, Yoshio Inaba, Masayo Banri. Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation with permission from Kadokawa Pictures.

“Destiny's Son is like a haiku. Lyrical, minimalist, a true gem."
- Patrick Galloway, Stray Dogs & Lone Wolves

In Kenji Misumi’s breakthrough film, Ichikawa seeks revenge and redemption after his family is murdered by a rival clan. An astonishing, dreamlike samurai film written by Kaneto Shindo, Destiny’s Son is a demonic masterpiece: designed with quasi-expressionist artistry, awash with surreal landscapes, and subsumed in an otherworldly beauty that fuses Zen and sword.

Destiny’s Son is a film filled with stylistic highlights: the one-take dolly shot of Ichikawa's running battle with a battalion of swordsmen under an inky sky, the labyrinth of empty castle chambers through which he attempts to find his ambushed master, the scene in which the unarmed hero defends himself with a twig of cherry blossom, and especially the recurring flashback to his mother's execution at the hands of her own lover, in a barren landscape beside a single, ancient tree.
– Tom Mes, Midnight Eye

Part of the Monthly Classic Series:
The Double Edged Sword: The Chambara Films of Shintaro Katsu & Raizo Ichikawa

Added by japan Society Films on February 4, 2010