“Now the monks working for Kashinkoji are specifically described as Negoro monks, who were a real-life group operating out of the Negoro temple in Kii province, who were famously and obviously much more military than they were monk-y. They were legendarily accomplished not only with muskets, but with gunsmithing, and archery, and would be a major playing pieces in the samurai battles of the 1570s and 1580s.

“After their temple was destroyed in 1585, some of them ended up fighting for other clients, most notably forming some of the best musketeer platoons in the army of Tokugawa Ieyasu. And this film is set, as best as I can tell, somewhere in the late 1560s, shortly before the historical death of Matsunaga, so possibly the temple has yet to be destroyed.

“So the opponent here is a monk called Suijubo, the Fluid Spitting Monk, played by Gajiro Sato, who was a familiar face to mainstream Japanese audiences. He played another monk, although not one who vomited viscous gunge, in almost every installment of the Tora-san movies, for decades. He only missed one, due to a car accident, but he was still credited on the poster!

“That punch perm you see really marks him out as an unusual character in a period drama, but it was a part of his general look, and was a feature of many of his onscreen appearances throughout the 1960s and 1970s.”

From my commentary track to Arrow’s forthcoming UK/US release of Ninja Wars, one of the inaugural discs in their Toy Robot collection.