Originally designed as a tribute to actor Kazuo Hasegawa, whose 300th film this was. The film was based Teinosuke Kinugasa's Yukinojô henge: Daiippen (1935) which also starred Hasegawa in the same dual role.
During an exchange about half-way through the film, two characters are discussing the southern city Nagasaki, and they pronounce it 'NaNgasaki', which indicates the convention of speakers from Tokyo/Edo and the north of Japan, despite both characters notionally coming from the south (i.e. Osaka and Nagasaki), where terminal 'g' is not pronounced 'ng'.
This film is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #912.