Kiyoshi Kurosawa wasn’t sure how American audiences were going to react to his newest film. The director of such acclaimed J-horror classics as Pulse and Cure took a big risk with his latest film, a jidaigeki (a Japanese term for stories set in the premodern era) film called The Samurai and the Prisoner. It was a big departure for a director mostly known for his digital-age horror films, and he worried that it wouldn’t translate for audiences not well-versed in ancient Japanese stories.
“Even in Japan, this film, because of its content, the old use of the Japanese language, the historical context and background can make the film a little bit inaccessible to people,” Kurosawa tells Inverse. “But I imagine that Americans know even less about 16th-century Japan.”
