# Sanshiro Sugata Part Two
**Sanshiro Sugata Part Two** (續姿三四郎, *Zoku Sugata Sanshirō*) is a 1945 [Japanese martial arts](https://www.edgepedia.org/japanese-martial-arts) drama written and directed by [Akira Kurosawa](https://www.edgepedia.org/akira-kurosawa), the sequel to his 1943 directorial debut *Sanshiro Sugata*. Produced and distributed by Toho, it was released on 3 May 1945, near the end of the Second World War, and continues the story of the young judoka [Sanshiro Sugata](https://www.edgepedia.org/sanshiro-sugata) after his return from training travels.[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=40821) • [2](https://eiga.com/movie/18257/) • [3](https://akirakurosawa.info/sanshiro-sugata-part-ii/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | 續姿三四郎 (*Zoku Sugata Sanshirō*); also released internationally as *Sanshiro Sugata Part II* or *Judo Saga II*[3](https://akirakurosawa.info/sanshiro-sugata-part-ii/) • [4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sanshiro-sugata-2) |
| Release | 3 May 1945, Toho; black and white, 35 mm[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=40821) |
| Runtime | 82 minutes per Japanese database listings; some sources list 83 minutes[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=40821) • [5](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/134862) |
| Director and screenwriter | Akira Kurosawa, based on the novel by Tsuneo Tomita[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=40821) |
| Principal cast | Susumu Fujita (Sanshiro Sugata), Denjiro Okochi (Shogoro Yano), Ryunosuke Tsukigata (Gennosuke Higaki and his brother Teshin), Akitake Kono (Genzaburo Higaki), Yukiko Todoroki (Sayo)[6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/290058/sanshiro-sugata-part-2) |
| Position in Kurosawa's career | His third film, and one of only two sequels he ever directed, the other being *Sanjuro* (1962)[3](https://akirakurosawa.info/sanshiro-sugata-part-ii/) • [7](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1539-eclipse-series-23-the-first-films-of-akira-kurosawa) |
| Critical standing | Widely considered Kurosawa's weakest film, largely because of its overt wartime propaganda content[3](https://akirakurosawa.info/sanshiro-sugata-part-ii/) • [6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/290058/sanshiro-sugata-part-2) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The story is set a few years after the first film. Sanshiro Sugata has returned from his travels and resumes his apprenticeship under Shogoro Yano, the founder of judo, while seeking a balance between physical prowess and spirit.[6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/290058/sanshiro-sugata-part-2) In Meiji-era Tokyo he rescues a young rickshaw man from a brutish American sailor, and is then courted by Fubiki, an interpreter at the American consulate, who proposes an exhibition match against an American boxer; Sanshiro declines, citing the prohibition on appearing in sideshows, but attends the bout, in which a middle-aged jujutsu fighter stands in for him.[1](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=40821)
A second thread concerns revenge. The two younger brothers of Higaki Gennosuke, the rival Sanshiro defeated at the end of the first film, come to Tokyo and provoke Sanshiro by attacking his companions. Sanshiro wants to face them even at the cost of being expelled from his dojo, over the objections of his teacher Yano, and a written challenge eventually reaches him.[9](https://www.wowow.co.jp/detail/001975) The film culminates in a ferocious fight between Sanshiro and the vengeful Teshin Higaki in deep snow on a freezing mountainside.[2](https://eiga.com/movie/18257/)
## Production background
The 1943 *Sanshiro Sugata* was a box-office success, and Toho wanted more of the same. Kurosawa had no intention of making a sequel. In his autobiography he wrote that Japan's film companies "continually remake films that were successful in the past. They don't attempt to dream new dreams; they only want to repeat the old ones," and that making the sequel was "a question of refrying to a certain extent. I had to force myself to arouse the desire to go back to it and continue it."[6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/290058/sanshiro-sugata-part-2) As an up-and-coming director dependent on the studio's backing, he was in no position to refuse.[3](https://akirakurosawa.info/sanshiro-sugata-part-ii/)
Wartime conditions shaped the production. Japanese sources record that principal photography was finished by the end of the year before release.[8](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1945_n.html) The film stock available late in the war was so poor that only scraps of recycled material could be found, and during editing Kurosawa and his collaborators could barely make out the actors on screen; the problem is most visible in the snowy mountain climax.[6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/290058/sanshiro-sugata-part-2) [Post-production](https://www.edgepedia.org/post-production) proceeded amid widespread power outages in late winter, in unheated buildings, with air raid sirens repeatedly sending the crew to shelters carrying the unfinished film.[6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/290058/sanshiro-sugata-part-2)
By the time the film premiered on 3 May 1945 there were barely any theaters left in Japan to show it: more than three-quarters of Toho's theaters had been damaged by Allied bombing and more than half completely destroyed.[6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/290058/sanshiro-sugata-part-2)
## Wartime propaganda
Unlike the original film, which avoided the conventions of wartime Japanese cinema, the sequel is openly propagandist. Sanshiro defeats an American boxer, and early scenes stage the hero protecting a helpless Japanese boy from a large foreigner. Donald Richie, the American critic and historian of Japanese film, wrote in *The Films of Akira Kurosawa* that "It escaped no one in the... audience that the hero was protecting a poor, helpless Japanese from a big, brutal foreigner," and that the first film "managed to avoid all of the clichés of the wartime Japanese film; the second subscribes to most of them."[6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/290058/sanshiro-sugata-part-2) The BFI account states that after the first film's success the government recognized its propaganda potential and ordered the production of a second.[10](https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-sanshiro-sugata-part-two-1945-online)
## Style and place in Kurosawa's development
Although Kurosawa had little personal investment in the project, the film continued his technical development. It contains his first axial cuts, in which the camera cuts forward or backward along the lens axis, and the first instance of Kurosawa drawing on Noh theater conventions; the deranged brother Genzaburo wears a shaggy black wig and carries a small bamboo branch, both Noh signs of madness.[3](https://akirakurosawa.info/sanshiro-sugata-part-ii/) • [11](https://fictionmachine.com/2022/01/04/review-sanshiro-sugata-part-ii-1945/) A Japanese academic study likewise identifies the film, together with *The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail*, as the earliest appearance of Noh-derived expression in Kurosawa's work.[12](https://tohoku.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/71734/files/Cho-Ko-02-08-0065.pdf) The final silhouetted snow fight has been described by one critic as bordering on abstract cinema.[4](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sanshiro-sugata-2)
## Reception and assessment
The film is widely regarded as Kurosawa's weakest. The film scholar Mitsushiro Yoshimoto, in *Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema*, called it "more like a bad remake of the former" than a true sequel.[6](https://www.tcm.com/articles/290058/sanshiro-sugata-part-2) Richie summarized it as "an entertainment film — quite different from an entertaining film," and observed that in it "we have what the original *Sugata* might have been had an ordinary director done it."[3](https://akirakurosawa.info/sanshiro-sugata-part-ii/) Critics attribute its deficiencies to the dull propaganda passages, inferior film stock, and Kurosawa's evident lack of enthusiasm.[11](https://fictionmachine.com/2022/01/04/review-sanshiro-sugata-part-ii-1945/)
It was also the last time Kurosawa followed one of his films with a sequel for nearly two decades: Toho pressured him again after *Yojimbo* (1961), producing *Sanjuro* (1962). After this film his commitment to original storytelling became paramount.[11](https://fictionmachine.com/2022/01/04/review-sanshiro-sugata-part-ii-1945/) • [7](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1539-eclipse-series-23-the-first-films-of-akira-kurosawa)
## Later remakes and home video
In 1965 Toho released a new *Sanshiro Sugata* that combined the content of the 1943 and 1945 films into a single 159-minute feature closer to Kurosawa's original screenplay, directed by Seiichiro Uchikawa and starring Yuzo Kayama.[13](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/program/toho202209-58/) The 1945 sequel is available on DVD from BFI (UK), [Criterion](https://www.edgepedia.org/criterion) (US), and Madman (Australia); the only Blu-ray edition is a Japanese release in Toho's Masterworks collection, without English subtitles.[3](https://akirakurosawa.info/sanshiro-sugata-part-ii/)
## References
1. [続 姿三四郎 - KINENOTE](https://www.kinenote.com/main/public/cinema/detail.aspx?cinema_id=40821)
2. [續姿三四郎 : 作品情報・キャスト・あらすじ - 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/18257/)
3. [Sanshiro Sugata Part II • Akira Kurosawa Information](https://akirakurosawa.info/sanshiro-sugata-part-ii/)
4. [Judo Saga II | Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sanshiro-sugata-2)
5. [続姿三四郎（1945） - allcinema](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/134862)
6. [Sanshiro Sugata Part 2, by Scott McGee, Turner Classic Movies](https://www.tcm.com/articles/290058/sanshiro-sugata-part-2)
7. [Eclipse Series 23: The First Films of Akira Kurosawa, by Stephen Prince, The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1539-eclipse-series-23-the-first-films-of-akira-kurosawa)
8. [日本映画レビュー─1945年](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1945_n.html)
9. [続姿三四郎 | 映画 | WOWOWオンライン](https://www.wowow.co.jp/detail/001975)
10. [Watch Sanshiro Sugata part two online - BFI Player](https://player.bfi.org.uk/subscription/film/watch-sanshiro-sugata-part-two-1945-online)
11. [REVIEW: Sanshiro Sugata Part II (1945) – FICTIONMACHINE](https://fictionmachine.com/2022/01/04/review-sanshiro-sugata-part-ii-1945/)
12. [能表現から見た黒澤明の映像 (Tohoku University repository)](https://tohoku.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/71734/files/Cho-Ko-02-08-0065.pdf)
13. [東宝の90年 モダンと革新の映画史（2）-58-1 – 国立映画アーカイブ](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/program/toho202209-58/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Franchise and series entries as standalone works › Franchise and series film entries — overview and cross-series topics*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license