Kansuke Yamamoto is a samurai who dreams of a country united, peaceful from sea to sea. He enters the service of Takeda, the lord of Kai domain. He convinces Takeda to kill the lord of neighboring Suwa and take his wife as a concubine. He then convinces the widow, Princess Yu, to accept this arrangement and to bear Takeda a son. He pledges them his life. He then spends years using treachery, poetic sensibility, military and political strategy to expand Takeda's realm, advance the claim of Yu's son as the heir, and prepare for an ultimate battle with the forces of Echigo. Has Kansuke overreached? Are his dreams, blinded by love, too big?
Stars: Toshirō Mifune, Yoshiko Sakuma, Kinnosuke Nakamura, Yūjirō Ishihara, Katsuo Nakamura, Umenosuke Nakamura
Crew: Hiroshi Inagaki (Director), Kazuo Yamada (Director of Photography), Yasushi Inoue (Novel), Hiroshi Ueda (Art Direction), Yoshihiro Araki (Editor), Shinobu Hashimoto (Screenplay)
Country: Japan
Language: 日本語
Studio: TOHO, Mifune Productions
Runtime: 165 minutes
Quality: HD
Released: Mar 01, 1969
IMDb: 3.583