Japan is building her first steam ship, which can be converted to a war ship with a few guns on deck. The problem is that the construction is under the supervision of westerner Sôjin Kamiyama -- whom people may recall from Fairbanks' THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD and as the screen's first Charlie Chan -- and an awful lot of counterfeit money is coming through his establishment. Kamiyama can't be taken off the job until the ship is completed, but the government's top spy, Kanjûrô Arashi can be sent in to investigate, when he isn't busy taking care of blind Otoji Koto and her kid brother.
Arashi had played the same role in a bunch of movies in the middle of the 1930s, and the setting of this one, the early days of the Meiji restoration, is a fascinating time, full of clashing cultures, as is made clear in the opening sequence. Any one who has seen a James Bond movie will recognize many of the tropes from that series; they were certainly not original with this movie either. The evil Westerner is pretty much a given from the start, since this was 1942, and Japan was at war with the US and Great Britain, and had basically seized control of the Dutch East Indies. The night sequences as shot by DP Hideo Ishimoto are beautifully composed.
