General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Hana (花よりもなほ) (2006 film)

Hana (花よりもなほ, Hana yori mo naho, released internationally as Hana) is a 2006 Japanese period drama directed, written, and edited by Kore-eda Hirokazu, about a young samurai sent to Edo to avenge his father who comes to question the meaning of revenge.¹ It was Kore-eda's first jidaigeki (period drama), made after Nobody Knows (2004), and was distributed by Shochiku from June 3, 2006.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Japanese title	花よりもなほ (Hana yori mo naho); international title Hana⁴
Director, writer, editor	Kore-eda Hirokazu (original concept, screenplay, and editing)²
Release	June 3, 2006 (Japan), distributed by Shochiku¹
Running time	127 minutes per Shochiku and JFDB; 128 minutes per the National Film Archive of Japan¹^•⁵
Setting	Genroku 15 (1702), Edo (present-day Tokyo)⁶
Lead cast	Okada Junichi as Aoki Sozaemon, Miyazawa Rie as the widow Osae, Asano Tadanobu as Kanazawa Jubei⁴
Music and photography	Tablatura (music), Yamazaki Yutaka (cinematography)²
Production	HANA Film Partners⁴

Spoilers

Story

The film is set in Genroku 15 (1702), an era of peace when samurai clans offered monetary rewards to samurai who carried out acts of revenge.⁶ Aoki Sozaemon (Okada Junichi) leaves his home in Shinshu Matsumoto and comes to Edo to avenge his father, living in poverty in a dilapidated tenement row house while he searches for his father's killer, Kanazawa Jubei (Asano Tadanobu).¹ Success would restore his honor and bring a reward from his domain.¹

Sozaemon, however, is hopeless with a sword, to the point that the tenement's residents are exasperated by his ineptitude.¹ Although he wears a sword, he opens a small neighborhood school (terakoya) teaching local children reading, writing, and arithmetic.¹^•⁷ His neighbors are good, solid folk who can never hope to rise out of their poverty, including a habitual drunk, an unsuccessful would-be petty official, a ragman, a doctor, and a scrivener.⁷ He grows fond of the widow Osae (Miyazawa Rie), who lives across from him with her son Shinnosuke.¹

Living among these people, Sozaemon begins to cherish life and to question the meaning of revenge.⁶ Walking away from a revenge act could nonetheless ruin his family: he would forfeit the reward and, as a samurai, an unavenged father would be cowardice and a disgrace to the family name.⁷ The plot is also entangled with the Ako ronin, the masterless samurai plotting the raid on Kira that history knows as the revenge of the forty-seven ronin, who are hiding in the same tenement.⁸^•⁹

Production and intent

Kore-eda Hirokazu (born 1962), who came to feature films from television documentary, conceived the film after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when, as he described it, the spirit of vengefulness was at a peak.¹⁰ He wanted to make a film on the theme of revenge with comedic elements, and asked himself what it would look like if a samurai compelled to avenge a death did not really want to.¹⁰ He has said that, while weaving the Ako ronin raid into the background, he set out to make "a story in which the weak are affirmed as weak."⁸ The National Film Archive of Japan describes the film as the work in which Kore-eda, who had kept a conscious distance between fiction and nonfiction, first threw himself fully into a story world.⁸

The title's meaning was a point the director addressed himself: the full Japanese title, Hana yori mo naho, roughly translates as "something more than a flower," so the Western abbreviation Hana ("flower") is, in his words, misleading.¹⁰

Kore-eda reused key collaborators from Nobody Knows: cinematographer Yamazaki Yutaka and sound recordist Tsurumaki Yutaka, with production design by Isomi Toshihiro and Banba Masao, the latter a veteran of Kurosawa Akira's Rashomon, and costumes by Kurosawa Kazuko.²^•⁷ The score is by Tablatura.²

Cast

Okada Junichi, then a member of the group V6, plays Sozaemon; Miyazawa Rie, known for The Twilight Samurai, plays Osae.¹¹ The supporting cast is large and characterful: Furuta Arata, Kagawa Teruyuki, Tabata Tomoko, Natsukawa Yui, Kase Ryo, Terajima Susumu, Ishibashi Renji, Kunimura Jun, Nakamura Katsuo, Endo Kenichi, Tanaka Tetsushi, Kachi Kenji, and Harada Yoshio, among others.⁸ A Japanese critic writing for Eiga.com noted that in this ensemble human comedy not a single character is lost, crediting the director's balancing of so many skilled actors.¹²

Release and reception

The film premiered in Japan on June 3, 2006, on 35mm color stock.¹ It was invited to the 31st Toronto International Film Festival, screened in competition at the 54th San Sebastian International Film Festival, and was invited to the 2006 Busan International Film Festival.⁹^•⁶

Its awards were mostly for the cast: Okada Junichi received the Ishihara Yujiro Newcomer Award at the 19th Nikkan Sports Film Awards; at the 21st Takasaki Film Festival the film won Best Film and Best Supporting Actor for Kase Ryo, with a special prize for the cast as a whole; and it placed eighth on the 49th Asahi Best Ten Film Festival list.⁹ On the Japanese review aggregator Filmarks it holds a user rating of 3.3 out of 5 from about 2,900 reviews.¹³

Place in Kore-eda's career

Hana followed Nobody Knows, which had won the youngest Best Actor award in Cannes history for its lead, Yagira Yuya.⁴ Kore-eda said he wanted to make a bright film after that work.¹² The film also marked his first period drama, a genre he had long been fond of; his university thesis was on jidaigeki screenwriting before he moved into documentary television.¹² Thematically it continues the questions of his earlier films about life and death, here turned on whether killing another person can ever be right, and on what a samurai's duty means in an age of peace.¹⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026