“The Beauty of Falling Petals” and the Man of 50,000 Deaths

Praised in Japan as the “flower of jidaigeki,”* the elegant sword-fighting styles exhibited by samurai film’s greatest stars gain much of their mystique from the thousands of grunts, thieves, and lackeys who die by the hero’s sword – and for nearly six decades, much of that mystique has been earned at the expense of veteran kirareyaku actor Seizo Fukumoto.
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