32 – Harakiri – 1962

Harakiri is a Japanese film directed by Masaki Kobayashi. It´s based on the novel “Ibun rônin-ki” by Yasuhiko Takiguchi. The storyline develops between 1619 and 1630, during the Edo Period and the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate, and it shows us the story of Hanshirō Tsugumo, a rōnin or samurai without a master. The film captures the poverty and helplessness in which thousuands of samurais were forced to live under Tokugawa Shogunata in 1603. This period was characterised by a strict centralisation. A period of peace followed, in which many samurais, especially those serving the warlords designated by Tokugawa, were left with no master, leaving this figure of the rōnin, or the samurai without a master.

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