Samurai Assassin

“Here, at the Gates of Sakurada, the Shogunate will fall.”

Tsuruchiyo Niiro (Toshirō Mifune) is a low-born swordsman with no clan of his own, drawn in 1860 to the men of Mito, who are gathering near the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle to kill the shogunate's tairō, Naosuke Ii. Kihachi Okamoto follows them through an anxious wait, the plot closing in on a single morning. Beside Niiro stands Okiku (Michiyo Aratama), and what ties them together matters more to him than the cause.