Sleepy Eyes Of Death 2: Sword Of Adventure 1964 Based on the novel by Renzaburô Shibata, screenplay by Seiji Hoshikawa, directed by Kenji Misumi. Kenji directed almost 70 movies, most of them in the 1950s and 1960s. He would direct 2 more in the Sleepy Eyes series, 6 in the Zatoichi series, Hanzo The Razor: Sword Of Justice, 4 in the Lone Wolf And Cub series and some other titles I mostly haven't seen.
Nemuri Kyoshiro arrives in town and fights a duel, he asks an elderly man to witness the fight. It turns out the elderly man is called Asashina and he's the Shogun's financial officer. As they part Asashina is attacked and Nemuri soon finds out that the old man has enemies because of his work. It's a time of hardship, crops have been poor, the finance minister wants to cut costs to the Shogun and put a stop to the rice merchants gouging the peasants.
The Shogun's illegitimate daughter is mad that her yearly allowance has been cut and she's mad enough to want the finance minister dead. The local merchants and money lenders are mad too. They all pile it on Nemuri and Asashina and most of their men die. The body count was 31 in this film, it was a massive 84 in the first with 52 of those killed by Nemuri's sword.
There's a bit of melodrama, a woman helps set Nemuri up for a fight, she hopes to free her Christian husband from prison. Another woman has a sad tale about her poor sister. The sister became a prostitute to help support her family and it eventually caused her to take her own life at a young age. Japan in the Edo period was tough on life at the best of times. The movie is a nice mix of melodrama, character development and sword play. I liked it better than the first one, I'll watch it again.
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