Last Samurai Standing

Last Samurai Standing (Ikusagami) is a 2025 Netflix original live-action Japanese period action-drama adapted from Shogo Imamura's novel and directed by Michihito Fujii. Set in the early Meiji era, when sweeping reforms have stripped the warrior class of its purpose and standing, the story opens on a country full of out-of-work swordsmen with nowhere to turn. A mysterious organization gathers hundreds of these displaced fighters at a temple in Kyoto and invites them into a high-stakes contest with a single, life-changing prize for whoever finishes first.

The rules are brutally simple: each participant carries a set of tokens, and to advance they must race across the country from Kyoto toward Tokyo, contesting those tokens against rivals along the way. The competition, known as Kodoku, turns the open road into a gauntlet where alliances form and dissolve in an instant and almost no one can be trusted. The series frames the ordeal less as spectacle than as a test of nerve, judgment, and what each warrior is willing to risk for the promise on the other end.

At the center is Shujiro Saga, a once-feared swordsman who has long since laid down his blade. He enters the contest not for glory but out of desperation, hoping the prize can save his ailing family back home. As he moves through the field of competitors, he encounters both allies and ruthless opponents, and the journey forces him to confront the violence of his past and the question of what honor means in a world that no longer has a place for men like him. Junichi Okada stars as Saga and also serves as a producer and the production's action choreographer.