‘Hakkenden’ has fun with Edo-era pulp fiction

Premodern Japanese literature in translation mostly draws from a small pool of universally acknowledged classics. But as Fumihiko Sori’s enlightening if unwieldy action film “Hakkenden: Fiction and Reality” reminds us, one writer from the Edo Period (1603-1868), Takizawa Bakin, churned out pulp fiction that had a large and lasting impact on Japanese pop culture.

Are you a fan of Akira Toriyama’s “Dragon Ball” manga series, which spawned a massively successful franchise? How about Kinji Fukasaku’s 1978 “Message from Space,” the Japanese film industry’s answer to “Star Wars”? They, as well as countless other media properties, took inspiration from Bakin’s magnum opus, “Satomi Hakkenden,” which was published in 108 volumes over the course of 28 years, from 1814 to 1842.

Unlike previous film versions, Sori’s “Hakkenden” presents both a bio of Bakin (Koji Yakusho) and a live-action digest of his novel, with the latter featuring the sort of snazzy digital effects characteristic of Sori’s sci-fi work, including his “Fullmetal Alchemist” trilogy (2017-22).

Co-scripted by Sori and adapted from Futaro Yamada’s novel, the film is refreshingly upfront about its protagonist’s anxieties and insecurities. As played by Yakusho with nuance and humor, Bakin is an earnest, upright sort who strives to regain his family’s samurai status by making his son, Shigenobu (Hayato Isomura), a physician to a lord. (The film assumes viewers will have a knowledge of Edo-era social climbing.)

But Bakin is also friends with the genius artist Katsushika Hokusai (Seiyo Uchino), who illustrated Bakin’s work. As the film begins, however, the contrary Hokusai has decided to end their collaboration — he wants Bakin to use Hokusai’s son-in-law as an illustrator. When Bakin bridles at this proposal, Hokusai dashes off a clutch of “Hakkenden” drawings and blows his nose on them in front of a dismayed Bakin. (Variations of this gag appear throughout the film.)

Interspersed with the serio-comic drama of Bakin’s tempestuous home life, with Shinobu Terajima supplying laughs as his perpetually exasperated wife, is the “Hakkenden” story.

Loosely based on historical events in the 15th century, Bakin’s tale revolves around a curse placed on the Satomi clan by the black-hearted Tamazusa (Chiaki Kuriyama), the wife of a tyrannical lord defeated in a war with the Satomis.

To cut to the chase (and skim past reams of plot development), eight warriors arise who can end the curse. Each possesses a mystic orb that gives them supernatural powers when combined. They have many obstacles to overcome before they reach this point, however, reflecting the reality that, to Bakin’s legions of contemporary fans, “Hakkenden” was a pop-lit page-turner that made the difference between good and evil obvious to even the casual reader.

The film’s period action, not unexpectedly, is on the simplistic side, with the warriors played by young ikemen (handsome guy) actors who are interchangeable rather than individual.

Bakin’s present-day story holds more human interest, with the author beginning to doubt his vocation after he meets Nanboku Tsuruya (Danshun Tatekawa), a kabuki playwright whose hit “Yotsuya Ghost Story” combines crowd-pleasing scares with then-new psychological realism. “My fiction is unsubstantial,” Bakin laments.

Nonetheless, after he becomes blind in his old age, he continues to write with the aid of his devoted daughter-in-law (Haru Kuroki), while Hokusai keeps turning out masterpieces into his 80s.

As “Hakkenden” reminds us with a melodramatic clarity Bakin himself would have appreciated, creativity doesn’t die when the hair goes gray. And its products can have a long afterlife — substantiveness optional.