In Popular Culture
There are generally two ways in which Goemon has been most often portrayed in the modern popular culture: either a young, slender ninja, or a powerfully-built, hulking Japanese bandit. Goemon is the titular character of the long-running Konami video game series Ganbare Goemon (Legend of the Mystical Ninja) as well as an anime series based on it. He is the subject of the Shinobi no Mono novels and film series, starring Ichikawa Raizō VIII as Goemon in the first three installments. In the third Shinobi no Mono film, known in English as Goemon Will Never Die, he escapes execution while another man is bribed to be boiled in his place. In the film Goemon, he is portrayed by Yosuke Eguchi and depicted as Nobunaga's most faithful follower and as associated with Hattori Hanzō as well as Kirigakure Saizō and Sarutobi Sasuke of Sanada Ten Braves.
Goemon appears in the video game series Samurai Warriors and Warriors Orochi (where he is a self-proclaimed king of thieves, wielding a giant mace and a handheld cannon), as well as in the video games Kessen III, Ninja Master's -Haoh-Ninpo-Cho- (depicted as a giant bandit hero, also carrying a cannon and seeking to plunder Nobunaga's castle), Shall We Date?: Ninja Love (a romance option or the player character), Shogun Warriors, and Throne of Darkness, where he has been spared by Tokugawa Ieyasu on the condition that he would join the onimitsu. Goemon was a subject of several pre-WWII Japanese films such as Ishikawa Goemon Ichidaiki and Ishikawa Goemon no Hoji. He is a villain in Torawakamaru the Koga Ninja, and a tragic antagonist in Fukurō no Shiro (and in its remake Owls' Castle, played by Takaya Kamikawa). He also appears in the taiga drama series Hideyoshi, the film Roppa no Ôkubo Hikozaemon, the manga series Kaze ga Gotoku, and the manga and anime series Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo.
GOEMON was a stage name of Koji Nakagawa, a Japanese hardcore wrestler in the Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling. Various fictional characters inspired by or nicknamed after Goemon appear in the film Abare Goemon: Rise Against the Sword (played by Toshirô Mifune), the manga Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms and the tokusatsu series Kamen Rider X, and the method of poison delivery sometimes attributed to Goemon's supposed attempt to kill Nobunaga inspired Aki's death scene in the film You Only Live Twice. The character Goemon Ishikawa XIII in the manga and anime series Lupin III is purported to be his descendant and the opening sequence in the Lupin III TV special Burn, Zantetsuken! even shows him weeping while watching the famed kabuki performance based on Goemon's life. Goemon is also an ancestor of Misaki Kureha in the anime series Divergence Eve and Misaki Chronicles (Goemon himself appears in two episodes).
Read more about this topic: Ishikawa Goemon
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