Hiroshi Inagaki

Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island

Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island

A disillusioned Musashi Miyamoto (Toshiro Mifune) has turned his back on the samurai life, becoming a farmer in a remote village, while his nemesis Kojiro (Koji Tsuruta) now works for the shogun. Circumstances bring them back together for one final face-off. Though it’s marked by a memorably intense final battle sequence, the rousing conclusion to the Samurai Trilogy is engaged with matters of the heart as well, as Miyamoto must ask himself what it is that makes a warrior and a man.

Film Info

  • Japan
  • 1956
  • 104 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.33:1
  • Japanese
  • Spine #16

Available In

Collector's Set

The Samurai Trilogy

The Samurai Trilogy

Blu-ray Box Set

2 Discs

$55.96

Collector's Set

The Samurai Trilogy

The Samurai Trilogy

DVD Box Set

3 Discs

$47.96

Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island
Cast
Toshiro Mifune
Musashi Miyamoto
Koji Tsuruta
Kojiro Sasaki
Kaoru Yachigusa
Otsu
Mariko Okada
Akemi
Michiko Saga
Omitsu
Takashi Shimura
Court official Sado Nagaoka
Minoru Chiaki
Sasuke
Daisuke Kato
Toji Gion
Haruo Tanaka
Kumagoro
Kichijiro Ueda
Priest Ogon
Kokuten Kodo
Priest Nikkan
Credits
Director
Hiroshi Inagaki
Producer
Kazuo Takimura
Screenplay
Tokuhei Wakao
Screenplay
Hiroshi Inagaki
From Hideji Hojo's adaptation of Musashi, by
Eiji Yoshikawa
Art direction
Hiroshi Ueda
Art direction
Kisaku Ito
Lighting
Tsuruzo Nishikawa
Sound
Masanobu Miyazaki
Music
Ikuma Dan

Current

The Book of Five Rings
The Book of Five Rings

The warrior and philosopher protagonist of The Samurai Trilogy, Musashi Miyamoto, was a real-life seventeenth-century figure. Here, the translator of Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings tells us about this fascinating man and his principles of swordpl

By William Scott Wilson

The Samurai Trilogy: Musashi Mifune
The Samurai Trilogy: Musashi Mifune

Hiroshi Inagaki’s action epic is as responsible for creating Toshiro Mifune’s legendary cinematic persona as the films of Kurosawa.

By Stephen Prince

Samurai III
Samurai III
Samurai III, Duel at Ganryu Island, is the last and best part of Hiroshi Inagaki’s Trilogy. In contrast to the earlier, more action-oriented Samurai I and II, this final section shows its hero Musashi (Toshiro Mifune) struggling with questions as m…

By Bruce Eder

Explore

Toshiro Mifune

Actor

Toshiro Mifune
Toshiro Mifune

Akira Kurosawa once said, “The ordinary Japanese actor might need ten feet of film to get across an impression. Toshiro Mifune needed only three feet.” The filmmaker certainly gave Mifune a lot of space, however: over the course of sixteen collaborations, the actor and the director created some of the most dynamic characters ever put on-screen, all marked by an intense physicality and a surprising tenderness. Kurosawa first took note of the handsome actor when Mifune was twenty-seven, during an open audition at Toho Studios; he was soon cast in Snow Trail (1947), a film Kurosawa wrote for director Senkichi Taniguchi. Just one year later, Kurosawa gave him the lead in Drunken Angel as a consumptive gangster. Mifune proceeded to inhabit a variety of deeply felt roles for Kurosawa, including an artist hounded by paparazzi (Scandal); a bandit who may or not be a rapist and murderer (Rashomon); a loose cannon ronin who reluctantly protects a village (Seven Samurai); an elderly patriarch terrified of a second nuclear attack (I Live in Fear); and, probably most iconically, the wily, shiftless samurai Yojimbo. Mifune is known for more than his work with Kurosawa; see him in Hiroshi Inagaki’s Oscar-winning Samurai Trilogy and Masaki Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion. But it is Kurosawa’s greatest films that are most unimaginable without Mifune’s bravado streaking across them like lightning. The pair parted ways professionally in 1965.