The last of the Kurosawa films with the legendary Toshiro Mifune. It's a desperatly underated film and I strongly urge anyone who loves the better known Kurosawa films such as 'Seven Samurai', 'Yojimbo', 'Rashomon' and 'Ran' to check this out.
This was filmed in 1945 but not released until 1952 as was banned by the US occupational censor. Don't know if that requires a correction to the year. I've gone off wiki but IMDB has it as 1945.