What is 'G.I. Samurai'?

‘G.I. Samurai’ (Time Slip) and Sengoku Self Defense Force is a 1979 Japanese feature-length film focusing on the adventures of a modern-day Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) team that accidentally travels in time to the Warring States period.

The film stars one of the top male Japanese actors Sonny Chiba and was based on a novel by Ryo Hanmura, a well-known writer of historical novels and science fiction.

On their way to a manoeuvre, a wildly mixed group of Japanese soldiers with a tank, an armoured personnel carrier, a patrol boat and a helicopter suddenly find themselves stranded 400 years in the past and under attack by samurai forces. Their designated leader, Lieutenant Yoshiaki Iba (Sonny Chiba), befriends and joins forces with Nagao Kagetora, the war leader of lord Koizumi. Seeing the stranded soldiers' war machinery in action, Kagetora persuades Iba to aid him in his struggle for supremacy in Japan.

Initially, the producers approached the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) for props and vehicles, but the army cut their support after reading that soldiers go AWOL in the script. For that reason, old and sometimes out-dated equipment (like M3 submachine guns) had to be used. The tank featured in the movie was even built entirely from scratch.

The vehicles, including a tank and a helicopter, continue to run despite there being no replenishing fuel supply in the 16th century – a logical problem which was resolved in the remake of the film (2005).