Destiny's Son

Destiny's Son (the film also known as Kiru) accomplishes so much with its scant, 70 minute runtime that, thinking back on it, you'd swear it was far longer. Director Kenji Misumi's film offers an unhurried and elliptical overview of a life lived within the strange, death-obsessed system of Bushido. Raizo Ichikawa plays Shingo, the child of an assassin who bumped off a black toothed concubine and the man who would be, in the fullness of time, her executioner. Misumi's film doesn't belabour this point but Shingo does, therefore, seem to have an uncanny aptitude for extinguishing lives. Forced to compete in a local Kendo tournament - and pressed to wield a real katana rather than a bamboo sword - Shingo proves so intimidating that he unseats a twirling champion just by adopting an unusual stance and staring straight at his opponent's throat. These abilities never take hold of Shingo though, he remains almost childlike in his desire to seek father figures who delight in his expertise. Perhaps the strength of Destiny's Son is that it immerses us in the thought patterns of someone who has been thoroughly deranged by his closeness to so much death? 

Cinematographer Shozo Honda captures images both alluring and alarming; while editor Kanji Suganuma ensures that these striking tableaux intrude just at the right moments, when Shingo is at his most troubled. Presumably a virgin, Shingo has little interest in taking a wife and drunkenly boasts that he cannot dishonour the memory of three women who are important to him. Cherished recollections of a bratty younger sister, who was murdered by jealous rivals, and second-hand reports of a mother he never knew make a juvenile sort sense when considering Shingo's reluctance to connect with another but it's the third woman who represents a more adult, and even alarming, perspective. Masayo Banri's Sayo was thrust suddenly into Shingo's life with an edict to protect her from a gang of rampaging samurai. When her brother came under attack, and looked to be losing, Sayo disrobed and placed herself between her brother and his assailants. Quickly struck down by her enemies, flickers of her boldness clearly lingered on with Shingo. It's only as the film begins to wind down that we fully understand the impression that she actually made. Shingo's recollections revolve around her nakedness: strings of her dark hair matted to a sweating neck or a dribble of blood that slowly snakes towards the cleft of her pale chest. As he sadly heaves a sword into his own body, we learn that death carries an erotic charge in the mind of this deeply depressed man.