The Spirit of the Sho-Gun: A Flickering Ghost of a Parade

Should you watch The Spirit of the Sho-Gun? Honestly, only if you’re a massive nerd for early 20th-century travel footage or silent film curiosities. If you’re looking for a narrative or anything resembling a modern movie, you’re going to be bored to tears within about three minutes. 🎐

It’s basically a parade. That’s it. It’s just priests, floats, and people in costumes shuffling down the street in Japan. There’s no drama, no twist, just pure observation.

Tom Terriss is here, but don’t expect a powerhouse performance. He’s more of a guide than an actor in this context. The whole thing feels like you’ve stumbled into someone’s attic and found a reel of film that was never meant to be a "feature."

The pacing is… well, it’s not really paced at all. It just exists. It reminded me a bit of the random movement you see in Taming the East, where the environment is doing all the heavy lifting while the people just sort of drift through the frame.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of The Spirit of the Sho-Gun (1931) through its definitive frames.

Some random notes from my notepad:

• The clowns look genuinely terrifying in black and white.
• The banners keep fluttering in a way that makes the frame look like it’s vibrating.
• I swear one guy in the back is just looking at the camera the whole time.
• The "religious gaiety" promised in the blurb feels a lot more like a long, hot walk in the sun.

It’s funny how movies like this get labeled with such grand titles. The Spirit of the Sho-Gun sounds like a epic, but it’s really just a document of a Tuesday afternoon from a hundred years ago. It lacks the punchy energy of something like The Devil Horse, but it has this weird, sleepy charm to it.

There’s a specific shot of a float wobbling on the uneven road that lasts way too long. You can tell the camera operator was just holding the crank and hoping for the best. It’s awkward, kind of shaky, and completely unpolished. I kind of loved that bit.

If you have a short attention span, skip this. It’s not trying to win you over. It’s not trying to entertain you in the traditional sense. It’s just letting you stare at a parade from 1920-something for a while. Sometimes, that’s enough. Other times, it just makes you want to go take a nap. 😴

It’s definitely not a classic, but it’s a weird little artifact. Much more interesting than the stiff drama of The Marble Heart, at least in terms of pure visual history.