Eureka Blu-ray Film Review

Samurai Reincarnation (1981) • Blu-ray [Eureka! Masters of Cinema]

Rebel leader Shiro Amakusa returns from the dead and resurrects historical figures to overthrow the Shōgunate, while the heroic rōnin Jūbei Yagyū stands against him.

The events of Kinji Fukasaku’s highly entertaining Edo-period chanbara fantasy Samurai Reincarnation / Makai Tenshô take place in the wake of the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion, a real piece of 17th-century Japanese history. In late-1637, a group of Catholic rōnin, led by charismatic teenager Shiro Amakusa, took up the peasants’ cause in resisting the overbearing rule of the Shimabara region by its feudal daimyo.

The uprising was eventually put down by the Tokugawa shōgunate with the infamous massacre of 37,000 Christian rebels and peasants in mid-1638. Many had died in battle against overwhelming numbers of the Shōgun’s soldiers, sent to suppress the rebellion, but it seems the majority were rounded up and executed by beheading. The daimyō, Matsukura Katsuie, enthusiastically persecuted Christians and…