Please Help Find This Film: esoteric buddhist dharma protector demon … and ninjas!

[proclus]

Hello all!

This is my first post, and I'm writing for help to try and find a film that I watched maybe 10 years ago but whose name I cannot remember and which I have not been able to find via google searches, etc.

It was definitely a japanese film. I watched it during law school, which means that it was produced before 2005. My memory of the production quality leads me to believe it was a fairly recent movie at the time I screened it.

The story revolves around a somewhat renegade esoteric buddhist monk in Japan who steals a buddhist holy sword from a temple because he had a vision that he was to make use of it in some way. He meets an enlightened buddhist monk who basically tells him that his vision was false, and he has to start over.

He ends up in conflict with a couple of ninjas (also esoteric buddhists, if memory serves, who subsequently behead the aforementioned enlightened monk), and in the climactic scene when he is impaled on one of their swords, he raises his own sword to heaven and kills the both of them by channeling a lightning bolt. He dies seated in the pose of an Acala (Japanese "Fudō-myōō"; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acala). Pretty epic stuff.

The whole film was basically a dramatization of how the concept of the Fudō-myōō might have come to be in Japan. In fact that word "Fudō-myōō", or perhaps translated into english as "demon protector" or something like that, may have been in the title of the film.

Anyway, if this rings a bell for anyone at all, please do reply here. I would *love* to be able to find this film and watch it again.

Many thanks!

[Gwai LO]

Can't help ya.. But that movie sounds awesome!

[proclus]

Thanks, Guai LO.

Here's the thing … I'm dying to track down this film.

Does anyone have any idea if there is anywhere else online where I should be looking or posting this question?

Much obliged for any and all help!

[proclus]

Could anyone else perhaps point me in the direction of a place online (another forum, perhaps?) where I might have a chance at tracking this film down?

Much obliged!

[Gwai LO]

Could anyone else perhaps point me in the direction of a place online (another forum, perhaps?) where I might have a chance at tracking this film down?

Much obliged!

If you have Facebook try contacting "martial arts movie junkie"..I actually tried look a little for this movie, but honestly didn't know to much what I was looking for. This is hands down by far the most active "kung fu/martial arts" forum. So I don't think u can get to much help elsewhere.

[Gwai LO]

Try sending a private message to forum member Takuma.. It's my understanding he is pretty much the Japanese movie guru here. Hope this helps..also you should join in some other topics, always good to get new forum members

[Takuma]

Won't help I'm afraid, I don't know what movie that is...

edit: There was a Facebook page on samurai films that Daisho was telling me about once... oh right, this one:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/167638363377339/

Maybe someone there could help...