Abstract:

The last film from renowned Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman in the Dunes). A sequel to his 1989 film, Rikyu, which followed the martyrdom of a great tea ceremony master in 16th-century Japan, the lush, studied Basara follows one of Rikyu's disciples as he ascends to the position of his master. The new tea master invokes a series of rituals and esthetics which forever alter Japan's concept of art and subtly express revolutionary discontent. He soon inspires a princess to invoke her form of discreet protest.