J-entertainment Reviews
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| [55]Name:gail / [ 2002年04月21日 (日) 05時57分 ] |
| Just finished watching Chushingura today and all I can say is that it is excellent!!! First thing that puts this special dorama up is the premise of the storyline, which is historically based and tells of how Nakayama Yasube ( later Horibe Yasube ) became one of the legendary heroes of all time. Nakayama Yasube (Kimura Takuya) was the son of a disgraced warrior who was adopted by a relative after his parents died. The relative was challenged to a duel on the street with some ruffians and Yasube rushed in to help but failed to save his relative even though he managed to kill most of those ruffians. People that saw the fight went on to spread the story throughout the city and thus Yasube came to be known as a man of exceptional talent ( killed many men in a fight ). This fight was witnessed by Hirobe, a retainer under the Lord of Ako (Tsutsumi Shinichi) and his only daughter Hiro (Fukatsu Eri). Hirobe, being heirless and tremendously impressed by Yasube, after several attempts manages to convince Yasube into marrying into his family and carrying on the Hirobe family name. Thus, Yasube came to be under the service of the Lord of Ako and his wife (Matsu Takako). It then transpires that Kira, an old and extremely corrupt official, has been trying to get the Lord of Ako to pay him a monetary tribute of sorts but the Lord has steadfastly refused to pay. Kira then proceeds in making life difficult for the Lord of Ako culminating in the Lord's drawing of his sword against Kira in the shogun's court. Since the old coot is a favourite of the shogun's, Kira escapes sharing the blame of the drawing of weapons in court and the Lord of Ako is sentenced to death by suicide on his own. The Lord's death leads to the end of the Lord's household and the retainers that had been under him were henceforth labelled as "ronin". Several retainers under the Lord of Ako were indignant at his death and the unfair circumstances under which he had been sentenced and swore to avenge his death, amongst them being Yasube and his father-in-law. They all however had to wait for orders from the Head Steward of the Lord of Ako's household, Oishi (Sato Koichi) as exacting vengeance against Kira would not be deemed appropriate(?) if not done under his orders. Oishi was however of the opinion that they would have to bide their time and try to rebuild the Lord of Ako's family first before seeking revenge. The agreed waiting period was a year after the death of the Lord. During the year that follows, the former retainers of the Lord of Ako all had to put up with ridicule from the common people. Think one reasons as to why that was so is because they have left their Lord's death unavenged and were therefore deemed cowardly. Upon the first anniversary of the Lord's death, Yasube goes looking for Oishi as he's run out of patience and wants vengeance for the Lord. Oishi finally gives the go-ahead and the mission for vengeance was carried out by a total of 47 men one wintry December night against Kira. The mission was astoundingly accomplished with no casualities on the part of the 47 men, given that out of the 47, only Yasube had ever slain another man before, and Kira's head was brought to the Lord's grave. Even though the 47 were lauded as heroes by the people, they were all sentenced to death by suicide for their deed and thus ends this tale of vengeance and bloodshed. I quite enjoyed watching this as the cast was excellent and everything was beautifully shot. The scene where the 47 men launched the assault on Kira's residence kept me on the edge of my seat and it was only after that that I realised that I'd had my breathe pretty much held for the entire scene. Kimura's acting was good and the scene where Yasube was teaching the rest of the men as to how to kill a man was particularly chilling. There were 2 problems that I had with watching this. One was the archaic form of language being used so much so that even with subtitling, I found myself having to rewind and watch and listen again more than twice for certain scenes. The other problem was that even though Chushingura is a good watch because it's historically based, it caused part of my headache as certain things that happened are formalities/customary of that era and one tends to get a bit lost if one is not familiar with it. But once you get past that, this is really something worth watching. Not quite for the faint-hearted or those that are queasy but worth watching nonetheless. |