1992 Basara - The Princess Goh (1992) 1080P for Gift 1-Disc All RegionPlay Seal Box Blu-ray

Plot Summary

Haoji "is the final masterpiece of the famous Japanese film master, Hiroshi Kawahara. The film continues the story of his previous work, "Li Xiu" (which won the Best Artistic Contribution Award at the Montreal World Film Festival), and the main theme that Kawahara Hiroshi wants to explore is how politics persecutes artists. The film meticulously examines the atmosphere and details of the times, achieving the utmost grandeur. Among the two main characters, Tatsuya Nakadai has long been a well-known personality superstar, with famous works including Masaki Kobayashi's "Abduction" and Akira Kurosawa's "Shadow Warrior" and "Chaos"; Although the female lead, Rie Miyazawa, was just starting out at the time, she had already shone brightly. In 2002, she won the Best Actress award in Japan with Yoji Yamada's "Twilight Seibei" and regained the position of Chief Actress, which can be described as a beautiful story. The plot of "Haoji" follows closely from the previous part "Rikyu", starting with Toyotomi Hideyoshi and his tea advisor, Rikyu's disciple Oda Oda Oda (Rikyu's famous disciple is known as the "Rikyu Seven Masters", namely Pusei Township, Hosokawa Sanzhai, Seta Sobu, Shibayama Kanmu, Takayama Youjin, Makimura Militia, and Guta Oda Oda Oda Oda) discussing Rikyu's death, which is very meaningful. Toyotomi Hideyoshi spoke with insincere remorse about his "accidental killing" of Toshio. The weaving department insisted on questioning why Toshio was killed, whether it was because Toshio had sculpted a statue for himself and smuggled pottery, or because he did not follow instructions to kill Tokugawa Ieyasu? It seems that Hideyoshi denies all three of them, but through his confident expression, it can be inferred that the protagonist's upheaval is the cause of Rikyu's death, and his power is his reason. This meaningful stroke can be seen as the ominous tone of the entire film, laying the groundwork for the fate of the following woven parts. Toyotomi Hideyoshi regarded his adopted daughter, a noblewoman, as his heiress. She was originally the daughter of the Maeda family. Perhaps due to the premature death of her own parents, Haoji dressed up as a tomboy and learned tea ceremony from the weaving department. The Weaving Department came from a martial arts family, so he made a drastic transformation of Li Xiu's tea ceremony, sweeping away Li Xiu's simple, leisurely, and introverted tea style, and changing his style to vigorous, vigorous, and magnificent. For example, he changed Li Xiu's plain colored tea bowl to a deformed shape with multiple colors of "shoe shaped bowl", which is bright and unrestrained, just like him. Under his influence, Haoji also developed a lively and brave male personality, capable of riding and shooting, quirky and charming, and deeply loved by people. One day, during a tea ceremony, the Ministry of Weaving discussed with Pu Shisheng Township and Hosokawa Sanzhai that the head of Toshio was hanging under his statue and was being watched by people, suspected to be instructed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Upon hearing this, with the tacit approval of the Weaving Department, Haoji and the Weaving Department's servant Afei Masked snatched back the body of Li Xiu overnight, broke through the blockade of Fengchen's troops, and sent it back to Li Xiu's hometown. During this time, the two of them developed feelings of ambiguous affection. However, Ah Fei had to flee to the mountains and forests to avoid harming his master with his actions. The camera abandons the weaving department and Haoji here, closely following Ah Fei's life as a wild man in the mountains and forests. As the saying goes, one day in the mountains has been a thousand years in the world. Afei spent several years on the mountain when he suddenly heard the fact that there had been a change of dynasty in the world: Toyotomi Hideyoshi had passed away, Tokugawa Ieyasu was in power, Takauji had married Ukita Hideie, her husband had been exiled to the borderlands due to his failure to oppose Tokugawa, Takauji had been driven back to her mother's Maeda family, and Shibata had become Tokugawa Ieyasu's tea consultant. The imperial envoy Kawahara Hiroshi briefly passed through this period of wind and thunder, without rendering, cutting through the short hemp with a swift knife. He simply switched from singing and singing to mourning, and then to a period of rapid decline. What was beyond his control was the drifting fate of each person. From Ah Fei's perspective, with his hair cascading into the mountains as the boundary, the fates of Oda, Haoji, and him are vastly different in the first and second parts of the movie. Haojifu was expelled, and he felt like he was under house arrest. The heroic spirit of a man in previous years had vanished into thin air, and he was unhappy. Although Shibata served as a tea consultant for Tokugawa Ieyasu, he only managed to get by. Tokugawa Ieyasu knew nothing about tea ceremony and was indifferent to the tea making practices of the weavers, believing it to be too outdated. In the former's eyes, power and status are everything. Seeing the extraordinary friendship between Haoji and the weaver, when she found out about the weaver's news, she eagerly prepared to hold a tea party with Naishi, with the date chosen as the anniversary of Li Xiu's death. But once Tokugawa Ieyasu's kingdom was established, he was greatly wary of the emerging Christian and other associations and brutally suppressed them. As a former vassal of the former dynasty, Odawara no longer trusts this, and it is said that there are also Christians at the tea party he attended, so he cannot let it go. Sure enough, before the end of the tea meeting between the weavers and the noblewoman, Tokugawa had already sent someone to arrest and execute them. From beginning to end of 'The Concubine', the haunting soul of Li Xiu lingers around the head of the weaver, implying that his fate will not escape Li Xiu's destiny. If the death of Li Xiu was due to his immense fame triggering a fear of power among those in power, then the death of the Weaving Department should be attributed to the power game of one emperor and one courtier. There is no need to correspond to the cause of death of Rikyu at the beginning, as Shibabe actually died on charges of being arbitrarily fabricated by those in power. Therefore, the deaths of both masters and disciples were inevitable fates for the artistic masters who ventured into the political sphere. The tragedy is not the irreconcilable conflict between art and politics that happened to them, but rather that they never realized that art requires independence and freedom as far away from politics as possible. Their deaths were not due to their insistence on independence and freedom of artistic ideas, but rather to the quagmire of political power that was unrelated to art and had no connection to it. This is the most tragic aspect of tragedy. Director Hiroshi Kawahara rose to fame internationally in the 1960s and 1970s with his adaptation of the novel by existentialist author Gongbu Abe. After a period of hiatus, he inherited the mantle of the Kusanagi school from his father, the head of the Japanese Hanamichi school, Hiroshi Kawahara, and engaged in both Hanamichi and pottery art, achieving remarkable results. He held several exhibitions and even became the new leader of the Kusanagi school. Like "Rikyu," "Haoji" is a film he made after more than a decade of hiatus from acting. The two films combine his expertise in tea ceremony and flower arrangement with the director's exquisite skills. With gorgeous scenery and costume design, professional tea ceremony and flower arrangement performances, and brilliant performances by Tadayoshi Nakadai, Ryuzaburo Sangoku, and others, they recreate the chaotic era of Japan's Azuchi Momoyama period. The conflict between tea ceremony art and political power, as well as the tragic image of the tea ceremony master as a victim of power, are unforgettable.