This was the first film of a film career that would last only six years and span 24 films, of which three survive. Known as "Sleeping with a Long Sword", only 72 seconds of the film remain. It's available on the DVD released by the Masters of Cinema of all existing Yamanakas.
As explained by Tony Rayns, the reason why this short excerpt exists at all is thanks to the business model of then-Japanese film studios to sell short versions of recent hit films in the 9.5mm format. Similarly an even shorter fragment of 23 seconds exists of his 1935 film, "Kaito Shirozukin: Zempen" (1935), in English known, or perhaps more precisely, unknown as "The White Hood".
The point here is not to make an informed analysis on what the film might have been about, or its merits, but merely to testify it exists. According to Alexander Jacoby in "A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors", the film was "admired for eschewing scenes of swordplay completely", and the fragment that we have testifies of this because it was exactly such a fight sequence that was sold for the home market, obviously among the highlights of the film. The action is fast, the editing intense (for example the fall of one of the swordsmen is not present in one, not two but three cuts), and one is left wondering what the complete film would have been like. Or dreaming of an old box in an abandoned shed somewhere in Japan to where, by accident, someone might arrive to and find what has been lost.
Well, one can dream, right?
