DaimajinWhen tyrants run amok, people turn to prayer; what if those prayers were answered by a giant, vengeful warrior god made of stone? Daimajin is a period drama and kaiju monster movie set in feudal Japan. After the cruel Ōdate Samanosuke (Ryūtarō Gomi) overthrows his lord, Hanabusa Tadakiyo (Ryūzō Shimada), Tadakiyo's children--Tadafumi (Hideki Ninomiya) and Kozasa (Masako Morishita)--escape slaughter, courtesy of the brave samurai, Kogenta (Jun Fujimaki), and retreat to a sacred shrine in the mountains, tended by the priestess Shinobu (Otome Tsukimiya). Ten years pass; as Samanosuke's tyranny reigns over the land, an older Tadafumi (Hideki Ninomiya) and Kozasa (Miwa Takada) consider how to reclaim their birthright and save their people, ultimately conjuring the ancient warrior god, Arakatsuma (a.k.a. Daimajin), to that end.
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Daimajin is the first in a trilogy of kaiju movies about the eponymous warrior god; although filmed concurrently in 1966, they were released incrementally by Japanese studio, Daiei Film. In many ways, Daimajin feels like a prefabricated studio project, like the big-budget blockbusters and shared universes commonly seen today, featuring superheroes or classic movie monsters--some of which have proved more successful than others. Conversely, Daimajin embraces tropes of low-budget monster flicks, like how the "Great Demon God", Daimajin doesn't really show up until the climax of the film--as if the filmmakers were saving their budget for the big payoff at the end. This makes the real plot of Daimajin instead about the coup d'état by Samanosuke and its aftermath. The film teases something supernatural dwelling within the mighty stone statue half-buried near a waterfall in the mountains during the opening credits, when an eye is superimposed over the statue's, shrinking into the titanic monolith. Before the coup, a series of tremors has the villagers scared that Daimajin has awakened, so they perform a ritual to appease the god, including burning an effigy of the deity. Samanosuke and his lieutenant, Inugami Gunjūrō (Tatsuo Endō), seize this opportunity to besiege their lord's home, slaying Tadakiyo in the chaos, and attempting the same with his heirs, even trying to burn the children alive in a barn. Samanosuke and his clan are unrepentant in their evil; ten years only solidifies their vile base of power, as they press the villagers into slave labor, forcing them to build increasingly massive fortifications. (The irony of this paranoid defense is how useless it is against Daimajin in the end.) Villagers like Mosuke (Gen Kimura) work day and night without being able to tend to their families, while his son, Take-bō (Shizuhiro Izoguchi), is forced to watch his mother die from sickness while his father is kept from them. Tadafumi and Kozasa have led reclusive lives in the mountains; Tadafumi hunts with Kogenta, but they are removed from the realities of Samanosuke's reign of terror, until Kogenta is captured while travelling through the woods. The impulsive Tadafumi stealthily sneaks into the compound where he is being kept, but falls for a trap set by Gunjūrō, and is taken prisoner himself. When Shinobu makes a last-ditch effort to try to appeal to Samanosuke's humanity--while threatening that his evil will awaken Daimajin to wreak vengeance--the arrogant Samanosuke instead cuts down the elderly woman and sends Gunjūrō to destroy the statue. When Gunjūrō and his warriors storm the mountain shrine, Kozasa and Take-bō--who has joined the exiled princess--barely escape capture, while Samanosuke's new chamberlain et al discover the very real wrath of Daimajin. Witness to the deity's power, Kozasa makes a pact with Daimajin: her life for the death of Samanosuke.
A prevailing theme in Daimajin is desperation, and how far people will go to secure power and security. The reasons for Samanosuke's evil are ambiguous; he was once a drifter who Tadakiyo took in, ascending all the way to the rank of chamberlain himself before his betrayal. Samanosuke must have enticed the majority of the Hanabusa clan not only to follow him but to betray the benevolent Tadakiyo for his coup to have succeeded. His sole motivation appears to be the acquisition of power at any cost; talk of his military might expanding all the way to Tokyo suggests that if Samanosuke and his evil followers were left unchecked, they would become an unstoppable force to be reckoned with. When Kogenta escapes with the Hanabusa prince and princess, he is only able to do so because of the sacrifice of several other retainers who provide them with the necessary distraction to flee. Prior to Daimajin's climactic rampage, the remaining loyalists rush Samanosuke's fortress to save Kogenta and Tadafumi, only to be slain en masse by the cruel usurper's skilled archers and riflemen. Even Shinobu's ritual at the beginning of Daimajin is performed out of the desperate desire to keep the demon god from running rampant through the land. Despite Kogenta's expertise at keeping the children hidden and fed, his capture reveals that it was just a matter of time before he was apprehended, and that Samanosuke's interests in hunting down the last remaining legitimate threats to his base of power--the Hanabusa children--have not waned over the last decade. After hearing of Samanosuke's cruelty, Tadafumi claims that they should assassinate the despot; Kogenta agrees, but quells the young man's fervor by wisely pointing out that it would be a suicide mission. Despite this, Tadafumi makes the solitary journey to save Kogenta, knowing full well the odds are against him. After the capture or death of everyone who has raised her, Kozasa's choice to make her own life the collateral for soliciting the terrifying Daimajin is an act of desperation that only just outweighs the tenacity of her opponent. The titanic Daimajin stomps his way into the compound, accompanied by storm clouds as red as blood, and wearing an expression of fury and rage. After Gunjūrō failed to destroy the statue of Daimajin by driving a massive spike into his forehead, the steel rod remains embedded there while he shatters Samanosuke's fortress, tossing aside structures like tinder. When the moment comes for him to fulfill his bargain and end Samanosuke, he violently returns the iron spike to Samanosuke by impaling him on it, displaying a capacity for violence that exceeds his prey. Although Kozasa is ultimately spared owing to the purity of her tears for mercy, the tragic message of Daimajin is that despite one's vigilance against evil and betrayal, fighting the forces of darkness often comes with an even greater escalation of violence and/or evil.
Recommended for: Fans of a medieval Japanese drama about tyrants and rebels, à la "Robin Hood", that explores themes of power and desperation. Daimajin was billed primarily as a kaiju monster movie--and the conclusion delivers on that classic Japanese "guy in a fantastical rubber suit" vibe--but it is better approached as a cautionary tale about the corrupting influence of power and the inherent nature of escalating violence.
A prevailing theme in Daimajin is desperation, and how far people will go to secure power and security. The reasons for Samanosuke's evil are ambiguous; he was once a drifter who Tadakiyo took in, ascending all the way to the rank of chamberlain himself before his betrayal. Samanosuke must have enticed the majority of the Hanabusa clan not only to follow him but to betray the benevolent Tadakiyo for his coup to have succeeded. His sole motivation appears to be the acquisition of power at any cost; talk of his military might expanding all the way to Tokyo suggests that if Samanosuke and his evil followers were left unchecked, they would become an unstoppable force to be reckoned with. When Kogenta escapes with the Hanabusa prince and princess, he is only able to do so because of the sacrifice of several other retainers who provide them with the necessary distraction to flee. Prior to Daimajin's climactic rampage, the remaining loyalists rush Samanosuke's fortress to save Kogenta and Tadafumi, only to be slain en masse by the cruel usurper's skilled archers and riflemen. Even Shinobu's ritual at the beginning of Daimajin is performed out of the desperate desire to keep the demon god from running rampant through the land. Despite Kogenta's expertise at keeping the children hidden and fed, his capture reveals that it was just a matter of time before he was apprehended, and that Samanosuke's interests in hunting down the last remaining legitimate threats to his base of power--the Hanabusa children--have not waned over the last decade. After hearing of Samanosuke's cruelty, Tadafumi claims that they should assassinate the despot; Kogenta agrees, but quells the young man's fervor by wisely pointing out that it would be a suicide mission. Despite this, Tadafumi makes the solitary journey to save Kogenta, knowing full well the odds are against him. After the capture or death of everyone who has raised her, Kozasa's choice to make her own life the collateral for soliciting the terrifying Daimajin is an act of desperation that only just outweighs the tenacity of her opponent. The titanic Daimajin stomps his way into the compound, accompanied by storm clouds as red as blood, and wearing an expression of fury and rage. After Gunjūrō failed to destroy the statue of Daimajin by driving a massive spike into his forehead, the steel rod remains embedded there while he shatters Samanosuke's fortress, tossing aside structures like tinder. When the moment comes for him to fulfill his bargain and end Samanosuke, he violently returns the iron spike to Samanosuke by impaling him on it, displaying a capacity for violence that exceeds his prey. Although Kozasa is ultimately spared owing to the purity of her tears for mercy, the tragic message of Daimajin is that despite one's vigilance against evil and betrayal, fighting the forces of darkness often comes with an even greater escalation of violence and/or evil.
Recommended for: Fans of a medieval Japanese drama about tyrants and rebels, à la "Robin Hood", that explores themes of power and desperation. Daimajin was billed primarily as a kaiju monster movie--and the conclusion delivers on that classic Japanese "guy in a fantastical rubber suit" vibe--but it is better approached as a cautionary tale about the corrupting influence of power and the inherent nature of escalating violence.