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Silver Screen Samurai I'm not sure how they keep doing it, but following the success of Japanese Movie Posters, Secrets of the Ninja, Cosplay Girls and Anime Poster Art, cocoro books (part of DH Publishing in Japan) have another winner on their hands in the form of Silver Screen Samurai, the best of Japan's Samurai Movie Posters.
The title says it all really, but this is an absolute must for fans of Japanese cinema. The book is full of colour reproductions of movie posters together with Romanised Japanese title, English title (and where none exists, an approximate translation of the title), year of production, studio, director, leading actors and running time. There is also a brief synopsis of the movie and for the collector, the size and approximate value of the original poster.
The posters are divided up into four time periods: 1935-1959, 1960-1969, 1970-1989 and 1990-2003 with mini-features interspersed throughout, for example, a recap of the great actors from the golden age of Japanese Samurai movies and a topical look at the Zatoichi character (see our review of Beat Takeshi's take on Zatoichi here).
Okay, the cover and some of the design is a little lurid, making Martin Foster's excellent introduction to the genre a little hard to read, but don't let that put you off because you'd be hard pressed to find such an accessible book on the subject in the West. Cocoro, as usual, have packed an awful lot into the 112 pages, even managing to include three indices in Japanese, Romanised Japanese and English, making finding the movie poster you're after easy in any language.
The posters themselves are amazing examples of graphic design, usually with blood red calligraphy slashing down the page announcing the title of the movie. Perhaps more interesting are the exceptions to this traditional way of presenting Samurai movies, such as the beautiful posters for Kozure Okami: Sono Chiisaki Te ni (1993), Gohatto (1999) and my favourite, Azumi (2003).
If your interest in Samuari movies has been sparked by Kill Bill or you know your Sonny Chiba from your Utaemon Ichikawa, this is a handy little book that you'll keep referring to.
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