Azumi II : The Death of Hattori Hanzo

U e t o--- A y a
I s h i g a k i--- Y u m a
K u r i y a m a--- C h i a k i

AZUMI II
DEATH OR LOVE

PAGE 1	PAGE 2	PAGE 3


The legendary ninja of Koga in real life, Hattori Hanzo, seeks Azumi out to join forces with her, since they both work for the Tokugawa clan, in this case the patriarch himself, Tokugawa Ieyasu. The real Hattori was one of the few persons that Tokugawa really trusted since 1580's.		They almost kill each other because Hattori got in when Azumi was out. Only the wounded Nagara was around. Azumi attacks whom she thinks of as an intruder. Moreover, there are Hattori clanspersons, too, with him; Azumi naturally thinks they are ambushed.


Azumi was given three targets by her mentor, all three were real-life warlords: Asano Nagamasa, Kato Kiyomasa, and Sanada Masayuki. They must be eliminated because Tokugawa Ieyasu thinks of them as dangerous opponents. In real life, the Asano and Kato clans stayed in submission to the Tokugawa shogunate since 1600 until 1868, although they only did so because they were forced to. Asano Nagamasa was a relative of the late Chancellor Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Kato Kiyomasa was one of Toyotomi's best Generals.		The real Sanada clan never served Toyotomi Hideyoshi, so it was only natural that they had never surrendered to the Tokugawas after Toyotomi Hideyoshi was gone. They didn't bother to pretend to do so either. They took the side of Hideyoshi's son, Toyotomi Hideyori, when the latter was attacked by Tokugawa Ieyasu and the Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada in 1615. Tokugawa Ieyasu lived away from his Shogun-son Hidetada, in Sumpu, and said he was retiring from the biz of politicking and warring, but actually he was still the decision-maker of the clan.


"I cancel the plan to kill Sanada Masayuki," says Tokugawa. "We've never won a war against him, and we will fail, too, in assassination." That's historically-correct. The Sanadas were Tokugawa Ieyasu's nightmares in real life. Whenever they confronted each other in battlefields, the Sanadas beat the Tokugawas senseless. And the Tokugawas were the best army in Japan at the time! You can imagine how Ieyasu might have felt about such a military snub.		"Sanada hires a group of cold-blooded killers, not from any respectable ninja school or clan," Hattori adds. "Those are real monsters. They are called Ueno-kogashu, from Iga. You won't stand a chance against them. You'll die there." In real life, Iga and Koga were both ninja-infested areas, and Tokugawa Ieyasu combined the two in his 'Central Intelligence Agency' since 1581 when he sheltered some Iga ninjas surviving from Oda Nobunaga's all-out attack of the Iga province that year.


"I was raised as an assassin, My Lord," says Azumi. "I have killed my own friends, who were like brothers to me, for this mission. I won't back down. I must finish the target. I will kill Sanada Masayuki even if I must lose my life."		"I'll go with you," says Gozue, a member of Hattori's corps. Full-time ninjas from known schools or clans like her and Hattori dressed very neatly, unlike 'freelance ninjas' such as Azumi. She has to adapt to the life of a streetwise ninja.


Hattori's Koga ninjas are trying to sneak into Ueda, to spy on the Sanadas. In real life, every Koga ninja had been trained since 3 years old to never botch such a mission.		The ninjas Hattori sent went M.I.A. Hattori decided to take his boss to some sanctuary, because the last report he got mentioned Sanada's plan to attack them there.


They can't go far. Hattori halts his pedestrian group. Just why on earth there is not even a single horse and no palanquin in Hattori's camp, I really have absolutely no idea. Unless, of course, they have to walk so the next scenes in this movie could be shot.		The next scenes involve a pedestrian ex-monk rogue with a Phantom of the Opera mask and a giant boomerang, who causes the halt of Hattori's progress. This decidedly anime-like bad guy is hired by the Sanada clan, according to the script.


Hattori loses nearly all of his clanspersons. He charges now.		And so he loses himself, too. The boomerang slices through him.


The bandits who help Azumi also fight against the evil Iga ninjas. Some of them win.		While Hattori Hanzo lays there, very dead. Only some bandits are left to fight the Sanadas with.

		Click here for the real Hattori Hanzo Click here for the real Iga-Ueno ninjas
Looks like they all have been lured into the evil Uenoese's nest.

Quentin Tarrantino's worldwidely-splashing series Kill Bill have been very successfully wrecked all facts around Hattori. He put the veteran actor Chiba Sonny as 'Hattori Hanzo' in there, whose role is to give Uma Thurman some Japanese sword to start her revenge with. This 'Hattori' is said to be a master swordsmaker. If you take whatever Tarrantino dishes out seriously, that's your own biz, but messing up with real history of Japan is a different thing.

The picture at the right is the real Hattori Hanzo's grave in Tokyo.

Reality Check | The real Sanada clan of Ueda | The Tokugawa clan & shogunate, 1603 - 1868 | How, when & where the real Sanada Masayuki and his son Yukimura died, and what happened to Yukimura's older brother | The real Hattori Hanzo of the Koga ninja clan, plus when, where, and how he died | Status of ninjas in the Japanese society | What real ninja's jobs were in Azumi's times | How ninjas differ from samurai in their codes & beliefs | Where all the events in the movie are supposed to happen | Why the heck people fought against the Tokugawas so that Azumi had to kill them?

Kaneshiro Takeshi - Ito Hideaki - Odagiri Joe - Sorimachi Takashi - Asano Tadanobu - Sanada Hiroyuki - Donnie Yen - Nakai Kiichi - Nomura Mansai - Sato Koichi - Johnny Depp

AZUMI (I)
Ueto Aya in AZUMI (I)
Odagiri Joe in AZUMI (I)

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