THE TRAGEDY OF BUSHIDO

A clan lord has died, and 16-year-old Iori must follow him into death, honouring the Junshi tradition. His sister-in-law, who raised him, proposes to seduce him so he will die a man and not a virgin. Then a proclamation arrives, but its joyful message has tragic consequences.
Set in 17th-century Japan, Bushido is an astonishingly modern film, among the first to break with traditional samurai cinema. An intimate family drama, with overtones of illicit sexual desire, it portrays bushido, the samurai moral code, as a crushing value system with no regard for the individual. Bushido was Shochiku’s first Japanese New Wave venture, a movement whose films appealed to a younger generation, which no longer held in unwavering esteem their parents’ notions of duty and sacrifice.