Eijanaika (Why Not?)

This film is a dramatised record of one of the most tumultuous events in Japanese history. It examines in careful detail the political machinations surrounding the fall of the Tsugawa Shogunate. Genji, a farmer who had been shipwrecked 6 years ago and taken to America, has just returned to his native land. He is immediately thrown into jail as a possible foreign agent. When he is released, he locates his wife, Iné and learns that she was sold into prostitution by her ailing father. Now she works in a peep show and has become the mistress of Kinzo, a local gangster. Attempting to persuade her to return to America with him, Genji too begins to work for Kinzo, who is himself paid by the restorationists to destabilize the Shogun’s regime.