Ken (1964)

"Something shattered"

Misumi Kenji’s Ken aka Sword was a hotbed of emotions that played out in a kendo dojo. Desire, jealousy, hate, rivalry, and the need to be #1 came to a head when puritanical Kokubu and hedonistic Kagawa butt heads while training for the national kendo championship.

Kokubu Jiro is named captain of the university kendo team. His job is to train the team for the All Japan Student Kendo Championship. Jiro takes his job seriously, of course he takes everything seriously. Too seriously. No one truly understands the enigmatic kendo star. He lives a highly ascetic lifestyle, eschewing music, tv, girls, anything that would take his attention and drive away from kendo. Kagawa is the opposite. He smokes, sleeps around, and finds pleasure wherever he can. His only desire is to defeat Jiro, and to do that he tempts him with worldly pleasures. As Kokubu drives the students for the perfection he seeks, Kagawa sews seeds of doubt about Kokubu into them. Only Mibu is devoted to Jiro. When the team travels to a temple for summer training, the private match of wills for the hearts and minds of the students will have dire consequences.

I’m not sure if Kokubu Jiro’s rigid and obsessive behavior was held up as an example to be followed or a cautionary tale. Determined to instill the same rigorous mindset in the new recruits, Jiro never let his foot off them. He constantly drove them harder and harder. The younger competitors needed breathing room and time to relax and have fun, something the tightly wound character could not comprehend. Jiro had no vision for the future, only the present which he focused all of his energy on maximizing. Kokubu failed to realize his students required at least a modicum of praise for their dedication. As Kagawa’s influence over the kendokas strengthened, Jiro’s unrelenting sense of perfectionism took its toll on him.

Misumi constructed a highly pleasant film aesthetic. Though filmed in black and white, the movie was stunning and edited well. Whether this story was about the clash of traditional ideals and modern morality or about what truly makes a man, I have no idea, maybe a little of both. I also don’t know if Jiro’s tunnel vision for purity of spirit and sport was being idealized. The dojo fairly pulsed with repressed emotions, extreme competitiveness, and in two cases a strong homoerotic atmosphere. In Kobuku Jiro’s mind he left no room for imperfection or failure. Without the strength to accept fallibility in himself and others, Kobuku set himself up for a pain worse than defeat in a kendo competition.

15 January 2025
Trigger spoiler alert below:





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2 suicides

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