While earlier samurai period pieces were more dramatic rather than action-based, samurai movies post World War II have become more action-based, with darker and more violent characters. Post-war Samurai epics tended to portray psychologically or physically scarred warriors. Silver (1977), p. 37. Akira Kurosawa, Japan's most famous director, stylised and exaggerated death and violence in samurai epics. His Samurai, and many other portrayed in film were solitary figures, more often concerned with concealing their martial abilities, rather than bragging of them.

In Japan, the term chanbara, also commonly spelled "chambara", is used for this genre, literally "Sword fighting" movies, Hill (2002). roughly equating to western swashbuckler films. Chanbara is a sub category of jidaigeki, which equates to period drama. Jidaigeki may refer to a story set in an historical period, though not necessarily dealing with a samurai character or depicting swordplay. Historically, the genre is usually set during the Tokugawa era (1600-1868), the samurai film focuses on the end of an entire way of life for the Samurai, many of the films deal with masterless ronin, or samurai dealing with changes to their status resulting from a changing society.

Samurai films were constantly made into the early 1970s, but by then, overexposure on television, the aging of the big stars of the genre, and the continued decline of the mainstream Japanese film industry put a halt to the most of the production of this often startlingly original, artistic genre. Japan: A New Wave.