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Poster for The Twilight Samurai
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Released
2002 · FILM

The Twilight Samurai

A low‑ranking samurai struggles to provide for his daughters and aging mother while honoring the rigid code of his fading era, only to have his quiet life upended when a childhood friend returns, forcing him to choose between duty and the love that could save them both.

Directed by
Yoji Yamada
Written by
Shuhei Fujisawa, Yoji Yamada
Runtime
129 min
Language
JA
DramaRomance

Synopsis

Seibei Iguchi faces a difficult life as a low-ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a modest income, he struggles to support his two daughters and his senile mother. New possibilities arise when Tomoe, a childhood friend and beautiful woman, returns into his and his daughters' lives. However, as the Japanese feudal system begins to collapse, Seibei remains bound by the samurai code of honor and his own sense of social order. How can he find a way to act in the best interest of those he loves?

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 21

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Iwao IshiiShot by Mutsuo NaganumaScored by Isao TomitaDesigned by Mitsuo Degawa

Box Office

2002 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.5× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$7.4M

Budget$5.0M
Worldwide gross$7.4M
break-even (2.5×)

Re-release box office

200416 theaters
$860K($1.5M today)

Domestic gross earned in theatrical re-release, by year · adjusted for inflation

Also known as

  • Samurai der Dämmerungde
  • Samurai in der Dämmerungde
  • The Twilight Samuraien
  • El ocaso del samuráies
  • Le Samouraï du crépusculefr
  • Il crepuscolo del samuraiit

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