User reviews

The movie is seemingly based on an event from Japan's past, but it is really Kurosawa's allegory on Japan's condition at the end of World War Two. A prince, estranged from his brother, and six of his loyal retainers wander through the forest. They all look disheveled and hard up. They must cross a barrier manned by officials who are not exactly friendly to them, before they can move on to improving their life. The prince is disguised as a lowly porter and we rarely see his face. his retainers are warriors but are now forced to don monk's robes and indeed in passing through the barrier manned by the unfriendly forces (read American's) the lead monk must read a treatise in which peace is extolled as the reason for their existence. basically, the monks are Japanese elite, the porter is the Japanese public, the prince is the emperor, the barrier officials are the Americans, whose leader is wise and although he knows the truth allows the monks to live. They are many truths within truths here. Indeed, in the end the adviser to the emperor says, "we must move on (read from the feudal system) if we are to survive". a very fine movie, short yet poignant. one can easily see even in this early feature of his that Kurosawa is a master at symbolic imagery. By the way this movie was made in 1945, but not released in Japan until 1952. After watching it, I can see why it was delayed. It would have been extremely painful as a Japanese citizen to watch this in 1945, with their country in shambles around them. highly recommended.

In 1185, the Seike family fights against the Minamoto family. After a bloody naval battle in the Pacific Ocean, Yoshitsune Minamoto (Shubo Nishina) defeats the enemy and the survivals commit suicide. When the triumphant Yoshitsune arrives in Kyoto, his brother, the Shogun Ioromoto, is lured and orders his men to arrest Yoshitsune. However, Yoshitsune escapes with six loyal samurais led by Benkei (Denjirô Ôkôchi) and they head to the country of his only friend Idehira Fukiwara.

Nearby the border, after crossing the forest disguised as monks, their smiley conveyor Suruga (Yoshio Kosugi) discloses that they are Yoshitsune and the six samurais and advises that the fearful Kagiwara and his soldiers are waiting for them in the border to arrest them. Yoshitsune disguises as a carrier and Benkei has to convince Kagiwara that they are six monks traveling to collect donation to build a large temple in Kyoto.

"Tora no o wo Fumu Otokotachi" is the third feature of Master Akira Kurosawa that shows his talent even with very limited budget. The acting is superb and Denjirô Ôkôchi performs a very wise samurai. Yoshio Kosugi is annoying and funny at the same time, with his chuckles. The conclusion is a little disappointing and gives the sensation that the story will be continued. The subtitles in the Brazilian DVD from Continental Distributor have synchronicity problems many times, and I had to use the rewind to read them. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Os Homens que Pisaram na Cauda do Tigre" ("The Men that Stepped on the Tail of the Tiger")

The film is not only based on an incident that happened in the 12th century, but also on the Noh play Ataka, and on the Kabuki play Kanjincho. Initially banned, the film was first released in 1952 and is the fourth film made by Akira Kurosawa. The Men Who Tread On The Tiger's Tail focuses on the exemplification of true feudal values that ruled Japan starting in the Heian period. In order to understand the movie perfectly, one has to know what happened before the events depicted in the picture. Here's a brief presentation of the story: after winning a bloody Naval battle with the rival Heike clan, the triumphant lord Yoshitsune Minamoto returns to Kyoto in order to take command. However, his jealous and envious brother Shogun Yoritomo orders his men to arrest Yoshitsune and all his comrades. Due to a lucky circumstance, Yoshitsune and six of his loyal samurai retainers are able to escape. In order to be truly safe they need to travel through the country and find shelter in the home of an only friend, Idehira Fukiwara.

The movie starts when a group of monks traverses through a huge forest. Being accompanied by a silly yet truly helpful porter (Kenichi Enomoto), the group rests and decides to figure out a perfect plan. It's the first time the audience gets acquainted with all the characters, in order to realize that the monks are actually the lord (Hanshirô Iwai) and his samurai companions in disguise. They plan to march to the gate where the keepers await, and trick them into believing that they're actually a group of friendly monks gathering money to build a large temple in Kyoto. Unfortunately, the gatekeepers are already aware that a group of seven men is traveling through the country in such a disguise. With the help of the porter the men finally arrive and face the enemy, in what seems to be a tranquil, yet strangely intense, battle of nerves. Benkei (Denjirō Ōkōchi), a warrior monk, and Yoshitsune's most loyal friend, takes the stand and tries to persuade the watchful sentries of their faked mission. After a few moments of danger, just when the whole situation seems to be in shambles, Benkei once again shows his unmistakable intelligence and self-control. He proves that his skills and experience are masterful, leading to a successful ending to this dramatic story.

The Men Who Tread On The Tiger's Tail is not Kurosawa's best, bust still a truly remarkable, detailed, and culturally conscious period drama, where the many ponderous Japanese virtues meet with an ostensibly stagnant atmosphere, all covered up in a package of truly minimalistic aspirations. Though short and not that interesting as many hope it would be, the film gives a fantastic glimpse at the rules that governed Japan in the 12th century, and presents a story, where wisdom and decisiveness are more valuable than bravery and prowess.

One can, for the first time, in my opinion, see what Kurosawa could do. He follow a group. of men trying to get through a checkpoint, disguised as priests. Their leader is disguised as a porter and therefore must dishonored to be protected. This is all part of a legend in ancient China and the audiences pretty much knew the story. Kurosawa provides comic relief with the true porter who is an unforgettable character. He is one of those pests that drives one crazy, yet he is so persistent in his efforts to be included. Apparently, historically, things don't bode well for the future but the standoff that occurs as they pretty much risk their lives to get through is quite breathtaking. There are incredible images of the landscape and the use of closeups is vibrant and sharp. The porter's dance at the end is terrific, against a bank of clouds, silhouetted against the sky.

So, seven outlawed noblemen are.... here we see the roots of THE SEVEN SAMURAI. Except that in an hour and writing by himself, Kurosawa winds up concentrating solely on one of them, Denjirô Ôkôchi.

Kurosawa would later note that he preferred to work with other writers, so that other characters could come to the fore. Anyway, they're trying to get past a barrier and to safety in a time of war. Sounds a bit like THE HIDDEN FORTRESS, doesn't it? According to my reading, all of Toho's actresses had been sent out of Tokyo because of bombing. Otherwise he might have made the other movie in 1945. There's surely a hint of it, when the noblemen they are trying to keep safe is said to look like a girl.

This is one of those films that has a really interesting historical footnote. It was in the middle of filming that Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Imperial Japan to the US Forces in the Pacific, also meaning that this was being filmed when two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. You can't tell from the film itself, it was a quickly written adaptation of existing kabuki material, filmed mostly on a single set and lasts only an hour. There are no sudden subtexts of the apocalypse or even defeat. It was made by a professional group, led by Akira Kurosawa, and they followed through on their script, with the film eventually getting suppressed by the ascending Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers after the war for thematic reasons.

With that historical notation out of the way, how's the movie? Well, it's pretty good. It's easily Kurosawa's shortest film, and it actually kind of feels like the third act of one of his later, longer ones. It is the tale of Lord Yoshitsune (Tadayoshi Nishina) having just won a war with an enemy but forced into hiding because the Shogun, his brother, has decided that Yoshitsune must be destroyed. This group of seven men, led by the lord's chief bodyguard Benkei (Denjiro Okochi), are disguised as monks in order to cross the provincial borders until they can get to the land of a friend. They have employed a local porter (Ken'ichi Enomoto) to act as their guide who steadily learns their identities and swears to protect them to show his worth (this is the kind of feudal, dying for a lord, idea that the US forces were probably not all that excited about a defeated Japanese people taking in during the movies).

The only two characters who get any real definition here are Benkei and the porter. The porter acts first as the audience's guide into this new feudal world, and then he becomes a purely comic character, the camera often cutting to him to witness him give strained expressions to events going on in scenes. This ends up going a bit too far as some key moments later, though. Benkei, on the other hand, is the ideal of Bushido, completely dedicated to his lord and incredibly capable. When the porter brings news that the border they're approaching is looking for a group of seven monks Benkei is the only one of the six men guarding their lord to look at the situation in a clear-headed manner. They will continue on, Yoshitsune will disguise himself as a porter, and they will develop a backstory of wandering the northern provinces soliciting funds for the rebuilding of an important temple.

The central bulk of the film is dedicated to the meeting with Togashi (Susumu Fujita) and his lieutenant Kamei (Masayuki Mori) at the border where Benkei needs to convince the province's officers of their story. It's a wonderfully tense twenty minutes or so where Benkei has to sell the group's status as monks, getting Togashi to disobey his orders which state that no monks should pass when, Benkei asserts, they obviously mean no fake monks should pass. His proof includes their ability to accept their arrest with calm acknowledgment and the impassioned reading of a prospectus for the temple project that Benkei makes up on the spot. A sword is never drawn, but this is still some really tense stuff.

Benkei, though, must do the unthinkable when Kamei, as the men are leaving, decides that the disguised Yoshitsune looks like Yoshitsune. Benkei, knowing that they are trapped if anyone gets a good look at his lord's face, beats his lord with a stick while declaiming him for invented shortcomings as a porter. Witnessing this, Togashi knows that the porter cannot be Yoshitsune because no servant would ever treat his master like that. It's an interesting example of a man needing to break Bushido in order to save his own master, and Yoshitsune takes the beating in the exact spirit in which it was given, forgiving Benkei.

The film ends with a curious little scene where Togashi sends some men with some sake for the monks to enjoy, and Benkei proceeds to get really drunk before the seven men disappear in the night, leaving the lowly, real porter alone to look out for them in the countryside the next morning.

At only 58-minutes long, this really feels like it could have been the second half of a film, or even the final third of a long film. Expand Togashi's character in the beginning, show the fleeing from Kyoto, and maybe give us a chase at the end when Togashi learns the true identities of the monks, being forced to go after men he respects despite his orders from his own lord. As it is, though, it's solidly good little film with a great twenty minutes that are just pure tension. Everything around those minutes are fine, but those twenty minutes are a doozy.

Written in one day, grossly underfunded, and shot entirely in a studio, "The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail" sounds like a slapdash piece of cinema. But amazingly, it isn't. Perhaps because of the limitations he had to work with, Kurosawa here shows himself a creative and assured director.

His script is an amalgamation of two Japanese plays, both based upon the same legend. The premise is expectedly simple: At the height of a Shogun war, a group of retainers attempts to pass an enemy guard post, disguising themselves as monks.

Kurosawa relays the tale in a single never-dull hour, about the perfect length for such a story. He has opted for a mildly stylised approach, that only benefits from the artificial dialogue and theatrical acting. You really get a sense of a folk tale being acted out.

The filmmaking is most impressive. Shooting during the closing days of the Second World War, Kurosawa had little more than a sound stage at his disposal, for which he compensated with dynamic framing and editing. Of particular notice is the rapid cutting between facial close-ups during one climax, a technique we nowadays associated with Sergio Leone. Did he borrow more from Kurosawa than the entirety of "Yojimbo"?

Certainly, Leone wasn't the first foreign director to appreciate Kurosawa's craft. Both Michael Powell and John Ford supposedly saw and admired "The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail". I see no reason to disagree with them.

A minor Akira Kurosawa Samurai movie, all story is told by an endless text introducing the story about a Shogunate family where suspicious a brother's betrays, then he running away follow by six valuable warriors in hope got a shelter in a semi-independent north territory, although to reach there they have to overpass many soldiers barriers along the way, in the middle of way the disguised group contracts a humble carrier to guide them through the craggy mountains and forest, but the news spreading faster, the Shogunate already knows that the group are travelling disguised as beginners Monks, they have two options, fight or deceices them, the leader implied an ambitious plan they introduces themseves to raise funds to re-build his destroyed temple, at first barrier will be a decisive challenge to them, many question are made by the territory leader, however an Shogunate's skilled agent was there waiting the unfolding events, this movie was clearly shot almost on sound studio, belittles the production, a bit of surrealism as well, plenty of humor in the odd figure of the little servant, also a whopping decoy is widely perceived, even treating an alleged Samurai picture there no fight, then under such point of view, just a Japanese tale!!

Resume:

First watch: 2020 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail, adapted from the kabuki play Kanjinchō, tells the tale of Minamoto no Yoshitsune, a feudal lord who must flee his lands with his most loyal retainers disguised as a party of itinerant monks. It is a simple film, with a straightforward plot, only a handful of characters, and a feel more akin to a filmed stage play than major studio production. Its running time, including credits, comes in at just under an hour.

Yet it has an endearing minimalist charm to it that. The story may be simple, but it is nonetheless compelling, with more than hint of danger and important lessons about friendship and honor. It is well acted, especially the part in which one of the retinue must bluff his way past the guards by reciting a history of their order from memory. The comic relief, provided by the group's porter, is also quite good, and the villain is convincingly dislikable.

I admit that this is not a particularly exciting film, nor a visually impressive one. The handful of sets are sparse, and only occasionally is there anything in the way of action. I also confess that western viewers unfamiliar with the art of kabuki (such as myself) will likely miss a great deal of subtext. It is by no means the kind of masterpiece that the director, Kurosawa, would later go on to film, but it is engaging in its own way. The average American audience may not find much here, but those familiar with Japanese culture and arts should find much to enjoy.

Akira Kurosawa was, well, a genius.

This early film is only further proof.

Before he made Rashomon, the Seven Samurai and Ran he made this and it's great.

The cast is fantastic. Kenichi Enomoto is especially great as the porter. That character is brilliant comic relief, which is especially evident in the scene where he attempts to dance.

Jason Biggs doing a stupid dance in American Pie is not funny. Kenichi Enomoto doing a stupid dance in Tora no o wo fumu otokotachi is.

The rest of the cast is great, too.

The characters are wonderful. There's of course the cowardly porter, and the clever character who, pretending to be a monk, has to think quickly and it's fun to watch.

Not only that, there is some very fine music and dialogue in this.

Only problem: Too short. . . but then again, I could say the same about the Seven Samurai and Ran. A great movie is always too short.

Highly recommended.

Before they turned goofy and became famous for the neverending Godzilla movies Toho films were actually quite dark. I mean really dark, everyone dies dark, suicides left right and centre dark.

The Men Who Tread on the Tigers Tail however is not, in fact it's tone is really quite odd. Due to one single character the entire movie is forced into the realms of comedy, and that really didn't make any sense to me.

It tells the story of a group of men who must disguise themselves as monks to get into enemy territory. Among them is a goofy character whose over the top behaviour and animated facial expressions reminded me heavily of the early silent cinema. He was good, but felt out of place in the film.

Also starring Denjirô Ôkôchi from the Sanshiro Sugata films this Kurosawa movie is short at just under an hour. It delivers the story competently but there really isn't much in the way of a story there.

Well shot and certainly well made, but as a movie this is hardly a memorable Toho title.

The Good:

Looks great

Well written

The Bad:

Story is absolute bare bones

Was it meant to be a comedy?

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Sanshiro must have forgotten judo

To apologise for holding someone up in makes perfect sense to ply them with alcohol holding them up even further.

I have watched this several times and enjoyed each viewing. It's a very early Kurosawa, apparently done on a shoestring of a budget. However, we can already see Kurosawa's talents in pacing and setting up shots. Kenichi Enomoto as the porter appears out of place at first with his over the top mannerisms and broad comedy, but he fits into the story and breaks up the slower pace of some of the scenes. For Kurosawa and samurai fans, I think this will be more than just a curiosity. This has an early appearance of Masayuki Mori (the murdered husband in Roshomon) and a fairly early appearance of Takashi Shimura (leader of the seven samurai). I recommend this for the usual suspects.

A Distinctly odd movie, The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail is a mix of broad comedy and somewhat static drama that foreshadows some of Kurosawa's themes and styles but is ultimately undone by poor pacing.

The movie plays out like a three-act play (I had guessed it was from a play when I watched it, and it is). The first act is easily the best, as a noble and his minions try to sneak through the forest with a porter for a guide.

This scene is mainly focused on the rubber-faced Ken'ichi Enomoto as the porter. He is very funny in a Jerry-Lewis way, and his lively over- emoting keeps things interesting.

The second act feels much, much longer, either because it is or because it's so dull. The movie has trouble keeping up the tension, and due to that has equal difficulty keeping my attention.

The third act is very peculiar, because basically the story is over and there's nothing to do. Does this have something to do with the structure of traditional Japanese theater? Maybe. But for me it seemed utterly pointless.

While I only really enjoyed the first act, the movie certainly shows off a lot of what made Kurosawa so great. There is that great sense of period and nature, acting that is forceful and direct, humor and drama. He would do much better than this, but if you're a fan, this is certainly worth seeing. Even if you're not a fan, it's worth watching if you want to see a Japanese guy doing Jerry Lewis before there was a Jerry Lewis.

(1945) They Who Step On The Tiger's Tail (In Japanese with English subtitles) JAPANESE PERIOD PIECE/ DRAMA with a little SUSPENSE

Originally adapted from a play by Nobumitsu Kanze and Gohei Namiki co-written and directed by Akira Kurosawa which in fact at times looks like one as well by all that talking and the set pieces full of gorgeous looking clouds up at the sky which aren't even moving! Contains no fighting at all but a lot of verbal psychological talking, made almost similar to Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film "Rope" where the camera focuses on one area. According to a popular known film critic, this was also heavily criticized by Japanese censors for it's inaccuracies about the folklore that it came from, portraying Japanese Army militants rebelling against the Japanese cause during WWII even though it's nothing more than a period piece. Extremely tame in today's standards in comparison to what director Akira Kurosawa has already given us on his later works like "Yojimbo" and all those other samurai films. But because it still has a superficial ending, I'm warranting this one a pass.

Perhaps it was too ambitious of me to sample one of Akira Kurosawa's earliest pictures, considering my extremely limited experience with his work {this would make only my fourth viewing from the director}. Often, delving into a well-known filmmaker's more obscure works is a job primarily for the aficionados and the completists, as they possess the knowledge to properly appreciate each film's importance in the development of the director's skills as an artist. Then again, perhaps being in the dark about Kurosawa's favourite themes and techniques gives me an opportunity to judge the film purely on its own individual merits, as though I'd been watching back in 1945. If this is the case, then I'm afraid that my assessment isn't entirely positive. 'Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945)' shows plenty of promise on occasion, but that it was filmed on a shoestring budget is instantly recognisable, and every technique in Kurosawa's film-making book seems so utterly workmanlike and uninspired that you can see where this film is going from the outset.

The film was adapted from an 1840 play, "Kanjinchō," by Gohei Namiki, which was itself based on the Noh play "Ataka," from an unknown playwright. Indeed, the film itself feels exactly like a play, unfolding almost entirely in four separate locations, decorated like simple stage sets, with actors delivering their lines as Kurosawa's camera idly sits around and watches. As opposed to films like Sidney Lumet's '12 Angry Men (1957),' which undoubtedly derived strength from their likeness to theatre, 'Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail' simply appears static, such that the narrative feels hardly to be moving along at all. This makes the brief 60 minute running-time seem much longer, and yet, paradoxically, the ill-developed story also feels truncated and incomplete. But there are strengths, of course: Kurosawa is able to develop some solid suspense in the battle-of-wills between Benkei (Denjirô Ôkôchi) and Togashi (Susumu Fujita), commander of the border guards. Takeo Ito also photographs some nice scenery, particularly the final shot of the Sun over the Japanese wilderness.

At least as far as the film's performances are concerned, Kurosawa's unevenness somehow works as a positive. Whereas every other character is relatively somber, excepting the occasional eruption of jolly laughter, the rubber-faced Porter (Kenichi Enomoto) positively exudes an extraordinary nervous energy. His hilariously-annoying cackle, exaggerated facial expressions and wide-eyed double-takes are at odds with everything else in the tone of Kurosawa's film, and yet his presence is indispensable. Denjirô Ôkôchi displays plenty of charisma as the apparent leader of the "monks," and, thankfully, the English subtitles meant that I didn't have to decipher his consistently-mumbled lines. At first, I found Kurosawa's choice of music – a selection of surprisingly merry and adventurous ballads – to be intrusive and out-of-place, but then I recognised their derivation from Western cinema, particularly the films of John Ford {whom Kurosawa ardently admired}, and I was better able to appreciate the tone that was being attempted. 'Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail' is certainly the weakest of the director's films I've seen to date, but might nonetheless warrant a rewatch somewhere down the track, when I'll know better.

This film is just less than an hour long and tells a simple tale about a warrior with his six followers (one is a "driver" who almost reminds me of a Japanese Stan Laurel) and their quest to move on. They disguise themselves as monks. The film is set in the year 1195. The second half of the film is better, where they have to prove to others that they indeed are monks. The tension, including facing otherwise certain death, is extremely well done. I labeled the film curious due to its simplicity in telling the story. Kurosawa is rarely this straightforward, usually there are interesting twists and turns. That said, this watchable, there is a little comic relief, but it is not A list Kurosawa. Thats fine in and of itself.

This was the last movie of Kurosawa on my completing list, and had in it the most of what I expected from him. Following his movies was not about philosophy, story, or the meaning I learn after watching them, but it is about living in MAGIC. Yes, he is a real magician, and all the joy of his movies are about the magical scenes that sharpens your senses, and fixes ones' eyes on the screen.

This movie has the most of this characteristic, though I expected the least from the rating, and the time of the movie. He penetrates deepest in the soul by showing us scenes that we don't have even smallest motive to care for them in the daily life. The facial expressions of the comic, the clouds, the grass, the respect, the attention to kindness (he cares a lot about this), the fairness, and so forth.

He is a magician archetype in the Jungian sense, and his potion makes us good people just by drinking it.

Kurosawa's film "The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail" (alternate titles exist) brings to the screen many of the themes the master director will explore fulsomely in later films. This early piece is charming, particularly rewarding for fans of classic Japanese film.

Some of the themes introduced are: Hidden/obscured identity: The Prince who poses as a porter prefigures (inversely), the great Tatsuya Nakadai role of the thief who poses as an emperor in "Kagemusha".

Comedic relief: The "real" porter of "Tiger's Tail", played by the comedian Enoken (hugely popular in the libertine Asakusa district of Tokyo during the war and early post-war period) prefigures the use of a similar comic figure in Kurosawa's last great period film: "Ran" in which "Peter" plays the fool for comic relief, and ultimately, pathos. Double your pleasure and double your fun with the two peasant figures in "The Hidden Fortress"! Japanese Culture: Kurosawa will dip into this well often, and bring something wonderful to the screen. "Throne of Blood" references Noh masks and performance, "Tiger's Tail" references Kabuki.

In summation, then, this film is valuable for itself, and for the indications of Kurosawa's future directions and interests in film. Recommended to the general viewer, and most highly recommended for those who appreciate classic Japanese films. For Kurosawa buffs, essential viewing.

Quite different from many of Kurosawa's other films on a number of points. Firstly, this one is very short - just under 60 minutes. The film is shot on only three or four stage sets, including painted backdrops. Perhaps wartime funding restrictions really bit this time !

Not very much happens in this film. A group of swordsmen are travelling to protect a fugitive nobleman , and are discovered by a rubber-faced coward with a very big mouth. The group travel to a border checkpoint, use trickery to convince the borderguard chief that they are really buddhist monks on a pilgrimage, and enter the territory. The end.

The only aspect of this film which I found entertaining was Endoken. This guy's rubbery face is just incredible to watch. He seems to be expressing all the feelings which all the other characters mostly suppress (they're a pretty serious lot, apart from occasional gales of laughter). This guy could have taught Rowan Atkinson all he knows.

Curiosity or completion value only.