Ghost of Tsushima is one of the most anticipated games of 2020, and it finally arrives this month. It’s an open-world action game set in the 13th century, and it focuses on a character named Jin Sakai, one of the last samurai warriors on the island of Tsushima during the Mongol invasion. The trailers and footage released by developers Sucker Punch reveal that the game has taken a lot of inspiration of Japanese samurai cinema. So while we wait for the game, now is a perfect time to explore some classics of this movie genre.
Samurai movies–or chambara, meaning “sword fighting”–were made in Japan throughout the 20th century. But it was the huge success of Akira Kurosawa’s films in the 1950s and 1960s that truly popularized the genre, inspiring dozens of imitators and homages, and making the genre popular internationally. Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai were both remade as the classic westerns A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven, while the director’s Hidden Fortress was an acknowledged influence on Star Wars.
But there’s more to samurai cinema than Kurosawa of course. Some movies took a more dramatic, contemplative approach, exploring the traditions and codes of honor of the samurai and ronin (masterless samurai). Others went the other way and cranked up the violence, especially during the 1970s, where jetting geysers of crimson blood became a familiar sight.
So here’s our selection of some key samurai movies to check out (and one fantastic film that doesn’t technically count but we’ve included it anyway). Many of these are also available to stream, so we’ve noted where you can find those on the various streaming platforms out there.