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Like his earlier masterpiece Hara-Kiri (1963), Kobayashi's film is a savage attack on the inhumanity of the absolute obedience required of samurai in the feudal society of Japan, and is executed with the same severity and formal rigor. Within the framework of the director's polemic on injustice is the moving story of Isaburo (Toshiro Mifune), a loyal subject of his lord whose many years of marital misery have made him despise that institution. When he finally sees the blissful union of his son and the lord's former concubine, it changes his life, and he comes to believe that no one, not even his lord, should have the power to dissolve it. Unlike the classic chambara structure of many samurai films, all traces of confrontation are muted for most of its duration, and violence is suppressed until it explodes in extremis after father and son refuse to turn over his wife Ichi (Yoko Tsukasa). As befits a director who spent years hand-painting the sets for Kwaidan (1964), his beautifully balanced compositions reflect his obsessive perfectionism, and like Toru Takemitsu's score for traditional Japanese instruments, they further enhance the film's gravitas.