[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]
The imagery in Kenji Misumi’s Kenki is reminiscent of haiku: simple at first glance, yet profoundly meaningful and deeply moving upon closer inspection.
Consider, for example, the protagonist’s initial weapon of choice: the hilt of his sword is embellished with decorative engravings of floral patterns. This decidedly concrete thematic juxtaposition of otherwise abstract concepts—life/death, creation/destruction, peace/violence—reflects the character’s contrasting professions. On paper, low-ranking samurai Hanpei works as a humble horticulturalist, cheerfully tending the gardens of his lord’s palace; when his corrupt superiors require his formidable skills with the blade, however, he is employed as an assassin, slaying the spies and saboteurs that threaten his clan’s stability—a grim duty that he performs faithfully, albeit reluctantly. While the symbolism is rather blunt and obvious, it is also undeniably effective; the internal conflict around which the plot revolves is elegantly communicated via a single frame, the intangible metaphors that lurk in the story’s subtext rendered in captivatingly literal detail.
These visual motifs are repeated during the film’s spectacular climax, which features the obligatory army of vengeful warriors ambushing our doomed hero in the sprawling field of lush, vibrant wildflowers that he’s meticulously nurtured and cultivated over the course of the narrative. As the skirmish reaches its tragic conclusion, Hanpei has been fatally wounded, his opponents have been slaughtered to the last man, and the landscape over which he tirelessly labored has been irrevocably tarnished—trampled, littered with corpses, and drenched in blood—his efforts to atone for his sins and transcend his ignoble origins ultimately reduced to utter ruin.
“Ill-fated” is an understatement; the jidaigeki genre has seldom been so mercilessly cruel.
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