One of the best and most poignant samurai films.
What makes this film one of the great samurai films ever made was how moving and heartfelt was how Nadakai's character struggles with and ultimately discards the samurai code and do the decent and honorable thing after spending years regretting his prior inaction in preventing the massacre at the hands of his Tenba's scheming and avaricious best friend/comrade-in-arms.
On a film level, Goyokin was also one of the last truly great samurai films done in the classical style a la Kurosawa. Afterwards, it was all downhill for the genre when they upped the sex and violence quotient as in the Lone Wolf and Cub and Hanzo The Razor series in the 1970s.