This jidai-geki is a work by a little-known but prolific director, Tetsuroku Hoshi, who directed more than fifty films between 1928 and 1941. It tells the story of Sa­kyo Takenaka, charged by the shogunal authorities with secretly entering the Satsuma Domain in Japan’s westernmost main island of Kyushu, and exposing its illegal trading activities. The lead role is played by Chojiro Hayashi, better known in the West by his later pseudonym of Kazuo Hasegawa, under which name he starred in both the 1935 Kinugasa ver­sion and the 1963 Kon Ichikawa version of Yukinojo Henge (An Actor’s Revenge).
The film was originally released as a silent film in 1931, but the extant print is a kai­setsu ban (‘version with benshi explana­tion’) re-release dating from the Occupa­tion era, in which most of the intertitles have been removed, and a soundtrack featuring accompaniment music and ben­shi commentary has been added. In the process, the film was retitled from Renbo Satsuma bikyaku (approximately trans­lated as ‘The Loves of a Messenger in Satsuma’) to Sakyo the Handsome Man. Despite its postwar date, it is believed that the benshi track actually dates from before the war.