Love and Honour (Japanese Movie)

Third in director Yamada Yoji's samurai trilogy, it tells the story of a low ranked samurai, Shinnojo, serving as his liege lord's food taster. Although he gets by on his annual allowance of 30 kokus, he dreams of leaving his job and starting his own sword training dojo. He is supported in his aspiration by his lovely wife. Kayo.

One day, he fell ill while tasting an out-of-season shellfish and as a result of the poisoning he became blind despite recovering.
Despondent and in despair over how to survive and feed his family he wanted to end his life.

Kayo was forced by his relatives to appeal to his Senior Duty Officer to help her husband. He agreed but the price was high and he continued to take advantage of her by threatening to tell her husband.

Eventually, rumours reached him and he found out what hi wife was doing and he divorced her. Angry and humiliated he took up his sword training and reached an even higher plateau of achievement in being able to sense his opponent's movement without seeing. His sword master taught him to fight with no thoughts of surviving, thereby attaining a psychological edge over his opponent.

He was to challenge this senior officer to a duel and he defeated him. In humiliation, the officer later ended his own life but never told of who had so handily defeated him, a senior disciple of a famous master.

Not to spoil the story for you, there is a happy ending here. Yes, I'm a sucker for happy endings.
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Cast:
Kimura Takuya as retainer Mimura Shinnojo
Dan Rei as wife Kayo

Rating: 4/5
Don't expect lots of sword fighting as that's not the director's focus which is on story telling based on the main characters. He'd rather dwell on their emotions than on the external appeal of swordsmanship.
But, the fight when it happens is exciting as we are rooting for the young blinded samurai defending his honour.