When I saw Yoji Yamada's "Tasogare Seibei (The Twilight Samurai)," a lyrical, low-key 2002 drama about a low-ranking, family-loving samurai forced to kill for his clan, it struck me as a throwback to the genre's 1950s Golden Age. But this, I later discovered, was the first feature based on the fiction of author Shuhei Fujisawa (1927-1997), who was born and raised in Yamagata Prefecture and set many of his stories there.
It wasn't to be the last: The critical and commercial success of "The Twilight Samurai," including an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, launched a cottage industry of films made from Fujisawa's work, including two more from Yamada — 2004's "Kakushiken Oni no Tsume (The Hidden Blade)" and 2006's "Bushi no Ichibun (Love and Honor)" — and five by other directors, the latest being Tetsuo Shinohara's "Ogawa no Hotori" ("On the Bank of the Stream").
These films tend to be slow-burning, un-melodramatic affairs, with an everyman (by samurai standards) hero confronting a moral dilemma rather than hordes of attackers. The stories tend to have a sameness, but also a sturdiness, with fleshed-out characters whose problems have a contemporary resonance. They are also more showcases for actors than directors, though Yamada put his individual stamp on what has come to be known as his "Samurai Trilogy."