American men who are still emotionally scarred from watching Takashi Miike’s 1999 horror movie “Audition” may find “13 Assassins” more up their Japanese film alley. This is a traditional samurai movie of ronin joined with a mission. You can surely handle that type of gore with a lurid Miike twist.

Miike also directed “Ichi the Killer” and “Ring” which were better received than “Audition,” but if you’re familiar with Miike, you might be surprised at the restraint he’s shown with what ultimately becomes a blood bath.

This jidaigeki film, 十三人の刺客 Jūsannin no Shikaku, in Japan is based on a true incident, but perhaps it is better to say it is inspired. The film is a remake of Eiichi Kudo’s black and white 1963 film by the same name.

The film begins with a  samurai commiting ritual suicide without an attendant. This is a protest suicide. The problem, we come to understand, is the younger brother of the Shogun, Matsubaira Naritsugu. Raping the wives of other samurai and killing his underlings, he threatens the peace that has reigned over Japan. Naritsugu will in time join the Shogunate council, increasing his political power and potentially throwing Japan into war.

A trusted Shogun’s samurai Shimada Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) begins to recruit men on this secret mission much in the way of Kurosawa’s 1954 “Seven Samurai” or the 1961 “The Guns of Navarone.” Few, but honorable men against a large army will make their stand in a small village.

Joinging Shinzaemon is his second-in-command, Kuranaga Saheita (Hiroki Matsukata) who brings with him his best students: Mitsuhashi Gunjiro (Ikki Sawamura), Hioki Yasokichi (Sosuke Takaoka) and Horii Yahachi (Yuma Ishigaki).

Shinzaemon also recruits his nephew, Shimada Shinrokuro (Takayuki Yamada), a bored samurai who has sunken into a wastrel’s life of women, wine and maybe even song (Yamada is also a singer).

Of course, to get the younger crowd to the screenings, the cast includes pop stars. Remember “The Guns of Navarone” had James Darren? One of the 13 is Masataka Kubota from the rap J-pop group ROM-4 (We want to rap and be hot yo).

The plan is to catch the Matsudaira Naritsugu as he and his retinue return to Akashi as part of the regular sankinkotai. And as the plan is set into motion, we only have 11 samurai.

Sankin Kotai was a shogunate policy during the Edo period by which the daimyo mus move periodically between Edo and his home territory. Daimyo would typically spend alternate years in each place with his wife and heir remaining in Edo was guest (but read hostages). Longer intervals were acceptable for daimyo from areas farther away. The expense of maintaining two residences and from the travel with large armies (and the hostage situation) prevented daimyo from being able to afford costly wars. The constant travel also helped build up the merchant class and establish a travel economy with inns, roads and entertainment along each route.

The place is Ochiaijuku,  the 44th of the 69 stations of the Nakasendo (one of five routes from Tokyo/Edo and one of two to the old capitol of Kyoto). Buying out the town, the 11 samurai to make it into the village of death.

Yet an old rival of Shinzaemon is, despite his better judgment, protecting this spoiled monster. Shinzeimon’s old friend and rival Kito Hanbei (Masachika Ichimura).

The villain, Matsudaira Naritsugu, is played by Goro Inagaki of the J-pop group SMAP. (The group’s name stands for Sports Music Assemble People). This is one of Miike’s surprise because J-pop stars are never used as villains yet Inagaki makes a perfectly chilling psychopath who after seeing so many men die horrible deaths exclaims, “It’s magnificent. With death comes gratitude for life. If a man has lived in vain, then how trivial his life is. Oh, Hanbei. Something wonderful has come to my mind. …Once I’m on the Shogun’s council, let’s bring the age of war.”

Although we know that ultimately Naritsugu will die the question remains how and when and who will do it. We also wonder who is the 13th samurai and which samurai, if any, will live.

In the end, much like “Seven Samurai” and even “Twilight Samurai” the winners aren’t the samurai. Shinrokuro realizes that being a samurai is a hardship and yet, he can’t quite bring himself to give up the sword.

Matsudaira is the name of an actual historical family that was closely related to Tokugawa. Matsudaira Naritsugu was the lord of the Akashi Castle. I’ve found no evidence that Naritsugu was a bad lord–not more than usual. This Matsudaira adopted a boy named Narikoto. During an annual visit to Edo as the procession was passing through Owari, a three-year-old boy caused a disturbance and Narikoto ordered the child to be slain. Matsudaira Narikoto died at age 19 in 1844. It might be that the movie’s Naritsugu was actually modeled after Narikoto.

However, there was also Matsudaira Tadanao (1595-1650) who was the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Tadanao became the daimyo of Echizen (current Fukui prefecture) in 1607 and while he fought in the Osaka sieges, he was dissatisfied and became a problem after Ieyasu’s 1616 death. He was known for executing people on a whim and even pretended to be ill in order to avoid the expensive sankinkotai attendance to Edo. He was eventually exiled to Bungo province (Oita prefecture) in 1623.

There was, of course, misconduct in the house of Tokugawa. Tokugawa Tadanaga, the younger brother of the third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu,  killed a retainer and committed other acts of violence in 1626. He was, at the time the daimyo of Suruga, Totomi and Kai provinces having been appointed in 1624. By 1631, he was under house arrest in Kofu. The next year, he was stripped of office and was forced to commit ritual suicide about a year later.

The actual incident seems to be based on the 1860 assassination of Chief Minister Ii Naosuke. Called the Sakuradamongai Incident, it involved 18 anti-foreign anti-Shogunate ronin from Ibaraki and Kagoshima prefectures who thought they were punishing Ii for capitulating to Western powers by signing the uneven treaties. The assassination was committed during the daytime and Ii’s death was not immediately reported. Of the 18 assassins, one was killed during the attack, four committed suicide after being seriously wounded, 11 were captured and executed and two survived.

This incident shook the confidence in the Shogunate and eventually, the Shogunate would be defeated in the Boshin war and the emperor would be restored as the head of the state during the Meiji Restoration which began in 1868.

Miike’s film catches the shogunate during its last decades as the samurai are no longer warriors fighting to unify Japan. The samurai have become burdened by a system of loyalty and honor. They live idle lives and the biggest threat they face is from within the system itself that demands one honor the dishonorable with blind loyalty. Like “Twilight Samurai,” Miike eschews romantic view of samurai life. The end is dirty, bloody and horrific. Perhaps the happiest assassin is the mysterious 13th one who doesn’t think much of samurai and finds them rather boring.