When he made this film, Teinosuke Kinu­gasa was at a relatively early stage in his directorial career (he had originally en­tered cinema as an onnagata, ie, an ac­tor specialising in female roles). He would go on to make his avant-garde master­piece, Kurutta ichipeji (A Page of Mad­ness, 1926), the following year. Tsukigata Hanpeita was the first film produced by a short-lived Nara based film production company, Rengou Eiga Geijutsu Kyoukai (Associated Film Artists). The company was launched by the celebrated author Sanjugo Naoki in 1925, only to fold in 1927.
The popular character of Tsukigata Han­peita, an opponent of the Tokugawa Sho­gunate which governed Japan up to the Meiji Restoration of 1868, originated in a 1919 kabuki play, which established his characteristic hairline and the circular moon emblem that marks his costume. He is based on a combination of the liberal thinker and statesman Ryoma Sakamoto (1836-1867) and his childhood friend Takeshi Hanpeita (1829-1865), a mas­ter swordsman whose interest in Western culture is believed to have sparked Ry­oma’s later political thinking. The name ‘Tsukigata’ probably derives from a third historical figure, Senzo Tsukigata, another opponent of the Tokugawa regime. The character of Tsukigata shares a political outlook with these real-life models, but was also given distinct character traits, in particular a perhaps excessive fondness for wine and women.
The story of Tsukigata Hanpeita was to be filmed numerous times from the silent era well into the postwar years; other prewar versions include Daisuke Ito’s for Nikkatsu in 1933, featuring his regular star Denjiro Okochi, while Kinugasa himself was to remake it in 1956. This 1925 version, starring Shojiro Sawada (nicknamed ‘Sa­washo’), an actor who had made his name with the Shinkokugeki theatre troupe, is the earliest version known to survive, albeit in condensed form. Sawada’s per­formance became known for its startlingly realistic and emotional traits as well as for intense, explosive swordplay. The film became a benchmark against which later versions would be measured.