“Excuse me, Mrs. Crane. This coffee made me think how good whiskey would taste.”

– Dan, Starret's foreman

“Roy, this is the land of milk and honey for the health racket. Every woman in California thinks she's either too fat or too thin or too something.”

– 'Doc' Banton

“Time to empty our slop pails and run a little water over our faces, then back to our cells for the entire day.”

– Fontaine

A clock face for Tick Tock Day, USA.

 

After World War II, the Japanese martial arts of #kendo was banished by the occupying forces in an attempt to “remove and exclude militaristic and ultra-nationalistic persons from life”. With that in mind, it makes complete sense that nationalist author and former kendo practitioner Yukio Mishima wrote a short story – Sword, originally published in literary magazine Shincho in 1963 – about the art.

– So what is your goal in life then?

– Satisfaction of the present. The sword, and nothing else.

Both the story and Kenji Misumi's 1964 film adaptation follow arrogant kendo student Jiro, played by sublime kabuki actor Raizō Ichikawa who also appears in an earlier Mishima adaptation, 炎上 [Enjō / The Temple of the Golden Pavilion / Conflagration] (1958).