A typical jidaigeki from the 1970s, although quite dark, with a roughness and moral ambiguity rich in nuances. Kinnosuke Nakamura, before changing his name to Yorozuya Kinnosuke, is a vagrant ex-samurai in the Edo period called Ryunoshin, seeking redemption, which he finds in the first episode when he discovers the whereabouts of Kisaburu Kano, the only rogue and now bodyguard of the Onikan clan, a scoundrel whom he defeats and through whom he can prove that he did not steal the government money or murder his father. Kisaburo’s wife didn’t even know what kind of jerk her husband was, and while the young Gohei helps her with her housework, we see Kisaburo’s unnecessary display of violence towards the boy, until Ryu arrives, beats him up and takes him to the authorities to make his confession.

That means the story could have ended in the first chapter, but the villagers are looking for the yakuza with the cross on his chest, the epithet by which the fugitive is known and which he has earned over time, the people of the village and then his former sensei, the samurai Goemon Fuyuki.

A somewhat phlegmatic but unyielding veteran of the law, he has also been fooled by the vox populi into believing that his apprentice committed the misdeeds attributed to him. When Ryu arrives in the village, closely followed by the brutish but good-natured character Jerry Fujio, who calls him ‘brother,’ although this infuriates the yakuza, the people are in an uproar over the Onikan’s abuses, and Ryu himself enlists in the army or the twenty or so volunteers to enforce the rule of law against the Onikan in order to go unnoticed and continue his search for Kisaburo. He bears the mark of the fire in which he almost died and for which he was blamed.

At the end of the first episode, his master Goemon catches up with him as he is about to leave, and the old man assumes that he is doing so because of his guilt and urges him to fight a duel on the hilltop of a lush hill. If it weren’t for Jerry Fujio’s beggar character, who can’t even read, who knows what would have happened, but he distracted his ‘brother’ and the samurai barely managed to wound Ryu, who fell down the slope and was presumed dead, but that was not the case. The music has a delightful Ennio Morricone feel to it, and the scene cuts have an appreciable 1970s flavour. I loved the tender rawness of this series.