Crest of Betrayal

Both ‘Chushingura’, the classic drama of revenge, and the ghost story ‘Kwaidan’ were repeatedly filmed as costume dramas, each separately. Fukasaku himself had already filmed the story of Chushingura once, as Ako-jo danzetsu/The Fall of Ako Castle (1978). The kabuki stories from the Edo era were however often performed together on stage, as two sides of the same coin. In his Crest of Betrayal Fukasaku was the first to put the two stories together in the cinema. Because Mr Asano has committed ritual suicide after his failed attack on the higher placed nobleman Yoshinaga, the 47 ronin, former vassals of Mr Asano, roam the country looking for revenge. One of them is the biwa player Tamiya Iemon who is in love with Oiwa, a prostitute who offers her services in local bathhouses. Because Iemon eventually decides in favour of money and good name over his love for Oiwa, he decides to liquidate her. He poisons her so he can marry the granddaughter of a rich nobleman, who however belongs to the clan of the enemy, Yoshinaga. On the wedding night, Oiwa appears as a ghost for Iemon and his bride. Her spirit drives him to insanity and to wild slaughter. The story takes a closer look at the motivations of several of the roaming ronin, imprisoned between their sworn revenge – from loyalty and honour – and their harsh fate as roaming samurai. Fukasaku uses this background to express even more strongly the cramped way in which Iemon copes with his moral dilemma. Iemon allows himself to be tricked into a marriage that makes him a vassal of the Yoshinaga clan, against which he and the other 46 ronin were fighting. This film is like Fukasaku’s earlier work in that he paints a group portrait of several characters within the framework of a story, but is not like the insistent realism of his earlier films. In this Fukasaku is setting foot on new territory with images that evidence a glowing and fantastic kind of realism, that is best shaped in the wonderful way that Oiwa’s unswerving love is shown.