Samurai

Chanbara (チャンバラ), also commonly spelled "chambara", meaning "sword fighting" movies, denotes the Japanese film genre called samurai cinema in English and is roughly equivalent to western western (genre) and swashbuckler films. Chanbara is a sub-category of jidaigeki, which equates to period drama. Jidaigeki may refer to a story set in a historical period, though not necessarily dealing with a samurai character or depicting swordplay. Historically, the genre is usually set during the Tokugawa era (1600–1868). The samurai film hence often focuses on the end of an entire way of life for the samurai: many of the films deal with masterless rōnin, or samurai dealing with changes to their status resulting from a changing society.

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