Rating: ***
Review Date: 11/9/25
Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Yumiko Nogawa, Tomoko Mayama
A Dutch warship tries to sell guns to the Shogunate, but they get turned away. So instead, they sail south and try to sell their guns to another clan that wants to overthrow the Shogunate. This would be bad for Japan, so the Shogun hires Ichibei Shikoro (Tomisaburo Wakayama) to make sure that doesn't happen. He's a kind of Edo-era super spy, with an arsenal of wild gadgets to help him with his mission. Along the way he meets a goofy ronin named Tokuro and a female spy named Kagero (Yumiko Nogawa), and things become increasingly complicated. He even gets romantically involved with beautiful Tomoko Mayama in true James Bond fashion.
The plot feels needlessly confusing, but it really just boils down to "don't let anyone get their hands on the foreign weapons." Tomisaburo Wakayama is wonderful, although his character is a bastard and the brutishly sexist behavior is distasteful, which was typical for the genre and the time period. The fight scenes are very good and Wakayama shows off a variety of different styles. There are some nice bloody wounds and one delightfully outrageous blood geyser. There are also a fair number of forehead-slapping moments of complete nonsense, as you would expect from a Japanese production. It's solidly entertaining, and I look forward to the other films in the series.