Kosaka Shinzaemon of the Aizu clan (Makiya Yamaguchi) is a proud samurai fixed on a deadly mission of revenge when, mid duel to the death, he is struck by lightning and hurled 150 years into the future… onto the set of a samurai TV show.
In this familiar screwball ‘man out of time’ set-up (see also Les Visiteur, Austin Powers, California/Encino Man…) with the innocent and unworldly Kosaka encountering 21st-century Japan, Samurai in Time plays only gently and briefly for laughs before settling itself into a deeply earnest paean to the genre of jidaigeki (samurai period drama). Surrounded by kind, helpful and encouraging strangers who either dismiss or are charmed by his unworldliness, Kosaka uses his archaic swordfighting skills to become a jidaigeki stuntman (or ‘kirareyaku’, if you want to get technical), getting ‘killed’ by several different heroes a week.
In the lead role, Yamaguchi is genuinely excellent, nuanced and heartbreakingly earnest (in keeping with the tone of the film). And, he’s supported by a similarly dignified foil in Norimasa Fuke. Sadly, in the rest of the cast, the acting can be broad and stagey, especially from several key supporting characters, meaning the acting in the films within the film often seems more real than the reactions of those ‘filming’ them.
In spite of the time-travel set up, A Samurai in Time is a tribute to the kirareyaku and to the jidaigeki genre. As such, it is somewhat hampered by its sci-fi/fantasy element, as Yamaguchi’s utter earnestness is diluted in playing a double game of both a samurai committed to an ancient code of honour and a stuntman loyal to a dying genre. In this way, writer-director Jun’ichi Yasuda posits the idea that to be a star of jidaigeki is to be a man out of time all too successfully. The idea of the protagonist being a literal late-shogunate-era samurai becomes something of a hat on a hat, a distraction from the true beating heart of the film, which itself is a beautiful and valid thing – the honour and dignity to be found in dramatically pretending to die on camera at the point of a bamboo katana.
