Love and Honour
Legendary director Yoji Yamada completes his acclaimed Samurai Trilogy with Love and Honour, a simple, graceful film which continues the theme of its two predecessors, the Oscar nominated The Twilight Samurai and Hidden Blade, and closes the series with a sword fight that will go down as one of the greatest duels in cinematic history.
This stunning film has garnered numerous accolades including three Japanese Academy awards and will be released on 22 June 2009 courtesy of ICA Films.
Japanese film and pop super-star Takuya Kimura (2046, Howl’s Moving Castle) plays Shinnojo Mimura a lower-ranked samurai employed by his clan as a food taster to the Shogun. He lives a thrifty but happy life with his beautiful wife Kayo (Rei Dan) and their old servant Tokuhei (Takashi Sasano).
One day Shinnojo eats an incorrectly prepared shellfish, while managing to save the Shogun, it is too late for Shinnojo who suffers life-threatening food poisoning; he eventually recovers but is left with permanent blindness.
Unable to perform his duties, Shinnojo falls into a deep depression, and sees his only recourse as an honourable death by his own sword. Desperate to help her husband Kayo consults his family who encourage her to seek help from the head town clerk Toya Shimada (Mitsugoro Bando) an admirer from her youth.
Suspicious, Shinnojo orders Tokuhei to follow Kayo and discovers that Toya has been exploiting his wife in exchange for promised, but never delivered, help. His honour blemished, there is no other recourse than to challenge Shamada to a due.