It's been a while, but it has much in common with Samurai Rebellion. It deals primarily with honor, but again with most of these films it isn't always what it shows, but how it shows it. It has been a couple years since I've seen it, but I was quite blown away by it at the time, and just from the little I can remember would still vote it as Kobayashi's best. The focal point of the film is the honorable notion of suicide, but it takes a much more humanist approach to it, similar to the "overwhelming will to live" displayed in Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain.

I did watch Samurai Spy a few weeks ago, but unfortunately its plot is far too complicated to get much written about it. It comes off much more as a film noir than a samurai picture or western.