There have been several distinct phases to the career of Miike Takashi. Given his immensely prolific output there are obvious slippages and overlaps, but his development from V Cinema maestro to subversive genre iconoclast; and from poster boy for Asia Extreme to elongated classicism, genre revisionism and even upscale director of dramatic A pictures (see, for instance, The Lion Standing in the Wind [2015] or First Love [2019]), has been one of contemporary Japanese cinema’s most interesting trajectories. Who better, then, to bring to the screen an adaptation of a Manga that combines a chambara aesthetic with a 13 Assassins (2010)-like series of extended set-pieces and the high-concept narrative found in the director’s earlier Izo (2004) into a whole that, whilst entertaining and gory enough for the neophyte viewer, in fact has a stake in discourse on gender and identity that is probing, penetrating and deceptively complex.  

Blade of the Immortal, based on the aforesaid long-running and incredibly popular Manga by Samura Hiroaki that began in 1993 and lasted for almost 20 years, offers a fascinating conflation of some of the different norms outlined above. It tells the story of a samurai, Manji, who is granted immortality by a mysterious old ‘crone’ (shades of Macbeth, though ones that are not developed to any significant degree, though like Shakespeare the lack of explanation or elucidation is edifying here) and who takes it upon himself to aid a young girl whose father has been murdered, and who seems to be the double (reincarnation?) of the protagonist’s mentally deficient younger sister who was murdered at the time when his own immortality was foisted upon him. The killer is the leader of a gang that desires to train with and indeed instruct the ruling warlord and his clan, and his trajectory of being wronged overlaps with Manji’s and leads to a complication as the film nears its typically outsized dénouement that is interesting and well-handled so that it both satisfies and negates simple generic pleasures.

Immortality, as anyone familiar with numerous iterations of the Dracula narrative can attest, is not all that it is cracked up to be. It effectively circumscribes any sense of having a stake (no pun intended!) in the world and delimits any and every action and relationship; and so it is in Blade of the Immortal. However, it is amplified in Miike’s film. In the context of a samurai warrior – someone whose primary aim should be to die in battle and in service – it remains literally a fate worse than death. Unlike Bram Stoker’s signature creation Manji is not a creature of his appetites – indeed has secreted himself away seemingly to lament his lot. His decision to train and help the young girl with her vengeance – initially motivated by the aforesaid physical likeness to his sister – develops along generally predictable lines in terms of motivating key actions and attitudes, but more important is the generally questioning nature here, specifically of the different iterations of gender, and more widely the place of the film in contemporary identity politics.

Though said politics as they have been felt in the West have had comparatively little direct resonance in Japan, there have been some films that address the discursive aspects thereof, and Blade of the Immortal is a key addition here. It is to this end a commentary on rather than a representation of such identity politics. Manji, given his physical indestructability, is able to absorb violence as much as to inflict it. He remains an arbiter of recriminatory punishment, almost as though he were there to be ritually beaten for being the strong, capable, fearless, protective male figure that at the beginning he appears to be (in other words, a traditional genre hero). Indeed, he seems a better swordsman before being made immortal than he is as a physically indestructible warrior, when his skill is as much to withstand violence without dying as it is to dispense punishment and kill others.

He is, one may contend, summarily, almost ritually, punished – a repeated symbol of a perceived problematic masculinity that the characters (though not the film) seem intent to attack. The film’s panoply of different supporting characters – who are almost all variously defined and encoded as ‘Other’ – reinforce this sense of a stark juxtaposition. Both men and women are depicted and narratively organized in a way that ostensibly reflects hegemonic concerns, yet the prescriptive ideology of identity politics is destabilized by a refusal to offer a hierarchy that delimits Manji’s agency. The fact that these characters appear to have intervened in the chambara narrative from elsewhere (they are dressed and behave in a way that screams either a subculture of masculinity or a proactive, defiant and empowered femininity) suggests that their commentative, interventional, exploratory qualities are notable. Manji’s young protégé, who repeatedly enters into the fray of the action only to be found wanting as to the help she can offer, is a key figure in this regard. She does not develop into the expected skilled warrior (the girlboss trope), and neither are the other female fighters idealized and depicted as more capable than their male counterparts. They certainly display notable skills as adversaries; however, they ultimately are beaten or refrain from being ruthless in the heat of battle, something that in at least one instance due to what may termed a sentimental (certainly an emotional) reaction to different characters and events.   

Miike does not either lionize or lament the state of identity affairs as they impact on the film. What he does do, significantly, is refrain from contravening any straightforward enjoyment of Blade of the Immortal as a high-concept genre piece. Miike and his screenwriter Oishi Tetsuya (writer of Death Note [2006] amongst other notable works) orchestrate the different characters and groups’ shifting enmities and goals well, as the ostensible collection of heroes and villains are ultimately less clear-cut than may at first appear to be the case, and the film has fun unmaking and remaking itself as expected dynamics are dismantled and re-fitted to find some kind of conclusion that is neither purely conventional not deconstructive or art cinematic. This was the right film at the right time for this director, and the result, despite wanting in places for a solid emotional anchor when its focus begins roving, is striking, well-mounted and proudly, almost defiantly, meaningful in a modern cultural context. It is a samurai film with a twist and an exploration of gender as it is situated in a generic concept with wider cultural ramifications, and neither of these constituent parts negates either the other or the whole.