Sansho the Bailiff

Sansho the Bailiff (1954; also called Sanshō Dayū, Japanese: 山椒大夫) is a film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi that Japanese cinema fans, or any cinephile, shouldn’t miss if they want to see this director at the peak of his craft.

A noble governor is banished and must leave behind his wife and two small children. He gives his son a statuette of Kannon, the goddess of compassion, and tells both children, “Without mercy, man is like a beast. Even if you are hard on yourself, be merciful to others.” With these words, they too depart, bound for their uncle’s home.

But in a fateful turn of events, they’re waylaid en route by a deceitful priestess. In a heart-rending scene, the mother is torn away from her terrified children by bandit slave traders, who take her by boat to Sado Island. The children are also sold (for “seven silvers”) into slavery, at an estate where the merciless bailiff Sansho brands the foreheads of those who resist.

They are told that no matter what happens, they must endure—a recurring theme in Mizoguchi’s work, often alongside the suffering of women and the harshness of poverty and servitude. And endure they do. The story resumes in their late teens. Anju, the daughter, who has held fast to her father’s words, urges her brother Zushiō to escape. He seems to have forgotten both the words and their meaning, and has nearly lost hope. But he changes his mind after being forced to carry a dying slave into the mountains, where the overseers expect her to perish out of sight. Zushiō flees toward Kyoto, but the tragedy continues. What remains is a narrative that feels complete and deeply affecting, pressing us to reflect on the nature of cruelty and mercy.

As an aside…

Japan maintained an official slave system from the 3rd century until 1590, when it was abolished by the feudal lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (only to resurface much later, when the Japanese government facilitated the use of foreign sex slaves from 1932 to 1945, as well as prisoners of war captured by the military). Japanese slaves were sold not only domestically but also, especially from Kyushu, to the Portuguese, and then resold for labor or sexual exploitation in Portugal, other parts of Europe, and even in India and Macau. Japanese women are believed to have been among the first Japanese people to set foot in Europe under such conditions. Hideyoshi, angered that his own people were being sold abroad, moved to end the practice. He blamed the Portuguese and the Jesuits, and subsequently banned Christian proselytizing and missionaries. He later ordered the execution of a group of Catholics known as the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan, some Japanese and others from as far away as Spain and Mexico. Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence (adapted into Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film of the same name) depicts a time some decades later, when persecution of Christians had intensified.

While Sansho the Bailiff is based on legendary folklore and set in the Heian period (794–1185), centuries before Hideyoshi’s rule, it reminds us that slavery did exist in Japan and offers a rare cinematic portrayal of the brutality and hardship endured by those subjected to it.