The series was co-produced by Union Motion Picture Co, Ltd. (ユニオン映画) and Studio Ship (スタジオシップ), a company formed by manga author Kazuo Koike, and originally aired on Nippon TV in Japan. It was subsequently broadcast in the United States as "The Fugitive Samurai" in the original Japanese with English subtitles, and released for the Toronto, Canada market by CFMT-TV (now OMNI 1) in the original Japanese with English subtitles as "The Iron Samurai". It has also been aired in Germany dubbed in German, in Italy dubbed in Italian; around 1980, a Portuguese dub was aired in Brazil as "O Samurai Fugitivo (The Fugitive Samurai)" on TVS, actually SBT, and in Spanish, as "El Samurai Fugitivo" on the American Spanish TV station Univision.