Kazuko Yoshida

During the 20s in Japan, a romantic student at Tokyo's Waseda University is filled with noble sentiments absorbed from literature but his naive illusions will be shattered by the ruthless realities of money and power.

Taikoki is a legendary biography of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who rose to the office of taikō. And the story of this film is about the rise to power of Toyotomi Hideyoshi from a farmer's son.

"Around the time he made such remarkably ambivalent war films as Mud and Soldiers and Five Scouts, Tasaka directed this 'home front' comedy-drama which is too bizarre to be serious propaganda. [The plot revolves around a public contribution campaign to buy airplanes.] The mayor's aviator son promises to fly over the village in salute, and much of the narrative concerns the preparations for this great event. Tasaka throws in a few songs, some village humor and satire, and tremendous camera mobility, finally wringing every possible effect from his climax." John Gillett, British Film Institute

Second part of director Hiroshi Inagaki's 1940 adaptation of the story of Musashi Miyamoto.