Re Last Samurai

[j.izbicki at att.net]

First, I have to support Peter Larson’s comment earlier that “People are 
always shaped and directed by their environments, the Japanese are not 
special in this regard. While I think that Japanese society likes to purport 
this idea of themselves being somehow completely different from the rest of 
the world, I believe that they are only unique in the way that every single 
culture, society or community on earth is.” 
Japanese people internalize common cultural experiences as do people in other 
countries.  There might be more social rigor in Japan than in some places 
about defining and conforming to the common culture but the basic urge to 
naturalize what is actually historical is –yikes, I’m getting in trouble here—
as close to universal as you can get. Let’s keep in mind the broad historical 
context in which the assertion of ‘uniqueness’ of Japan (in Japan) arose: 
within the imperialist context of the late 19th and early 20th century (Okay, 
earlier than that, but I mean in the sense the term carries in the modern 
world).  It is not a cultural phenomenon but a political one—however 
much “nihonjinron” (“Japaneseness”) debates might at times try to isolate 
a ‘cultural’ aspect to uniqueness.  19th and 20th century claims to Japanese 
uniqueness were a justification of Japanese imperialist actions toward other 
Asian peoples.

Related to that, and as one of the lurking historians on the list, I’d like 
to pick up the thread of “The Last Samurai” and of Aaron’s entry on it. After 
seeing the trailer, I expected the worst.  However, since it’s likely to come 
up in two courses I’ll be teaching this coming semester I felt compelled to 
see it.  Like Michael Arnold and Peter Suchenski, I found it was not as bad 
as I expected—in the sense that the movie was skillful enough to overcome my 
mental winces at the historical liberties and to let me get lost in the story 
and even to tear up when Katsumoto dies (My movie brain is so conditioned 
that a movie has to be truly stupid for me not to cry!).  But like Aaron, my 
first question to a student who had seen it earlier was “Who was the last 
samurai?  Cruise?”  The student didn’t answer and seemed perplexed by the 
question.  Thinking about this later I realized that the student might have 
had no idea that the Katsumoto character was based on a historical figure.  
That gave me real pause:  I don’t expect or require that a period film ‘stick 
to the facts’ (to the extent there are any) and I meant the question in the 
sense that Aaron so well articulates as the “classic strain in colonialist 
ideology” in terms of “‘we are more you than you are yourself'”.  But after 
seeing the film I realized that historical accuracy might be more relevant to 
the ideological practices and processes of a film than I’ve recently been 
allowing.  

The final scene with the Meiji emperor asserting his authority in the matter 
of a treaty was not only historically ludicrous but as Aaron comments “what 
does it mean that some contemporary Japanese, at a time of renewed 
nationalism, are enjoying a idealistic vision of bushido that has too many 
similarities to the version espoused in 1930s militarism?”  I might question 
the term “renewed” (overt might be more appropriate) but the theme of ‘honor’ 
so clearly foregrounded at the film’s beginning and the ‘banzai’-like charge 
at the end are uncomfortably available for evoking the particular brand of 
ultra-nationalistic, anti-modern ideology of the 1930s.  Moreover, 
Katsumoto’s insistence that he served only the emperor and that the other 
government officials were bad advisors was explicitly the ideology of the 
young officer assassins and rebels of the early 1930s—as were the band that 
tried to destroy Hirohito’s surrender recording the night of August 14, 1945. 

The idea of an American soldier being the final sidekick of Saigo Takamori, 
and Saigo’s speaking English (not likely, though I don’t know for sure) 
aside, one of the major problems of the movie lies in the total 
decontextualization of Saigo’s rebellion.  The movie tells us almost nothing 
about what Saigo was really resisting; that would’ve cut into the 
romanticization of him and the samurai as a class and might have allowed some 
thinking about what indeed was positive about the changes occurring in Japan 
at the time.  And of course, as Aaron reiterated from Japanese critics “it 
wholly erased all the (bad) reality of the samurai class.”  There is no hint 
of the oppressive class character of samurai relative to other classes, nor 
of the total rarification of the military aspect of samurai identity during 
the preceding 200+ years of non-war (the movie makes it seem as if samurai 
were continuously fighting for a thousand years).  There’s also no hint of 
how completely unfeasible the bakuhan system was at that point even for its 
own internal economics.  Nor is there much sense of how, given the 
international climate of late 19th century Euro-American imperialism, any 
Japanese rulers regardless of their overall politico-social goals would have 
had to deal with modern military technology and self-defense against 
rapacious nations from east and far west of Japan. The film has an almost 
completely reactionary approach to emerging modernity.  

Since young viewers in this country (the U.S., and probably most older 
viewers, too) are unlikely do to know all those historical precedents when 
they see the movie, they won’t grasp the specific ways it is reactionary.  
What I realize now is that that ignorance is necessary for the movie to 
accomplish the wish fulfillment Aaron mentions and enables the attitude of 
superior cultural adeptness on the part of the ‘western’ audience. 
(Tellingly, as I passed a 14- or 15-year-old outside the theater I heard him 
say, “I want to be a samurai.”)  

However, as the film went on I felt it wasn’t simply (or only) reactionary; 
although ‘honor’ is the major explicit theme (not much interest for me 
there), the film does highlight modern warfare’s increasing abstraction of 
the enemy and dehumanization of the soldier.  Except for the utter defeat of 
Saigo’s rebellion (okay, a rather big ‘except’), the film also foregrounds 
that technology can’t always overcome fighters utterly committed (through 
conviction or a sense of no other choice), despite their lesser technology.  
After all, the rebels do give one hell of a fight (battle shots were quite 
striking, I felt).  From one point of view, that’s a positive realization--
Vietnam illustrates in point as does the sitting-duck circumstance of US 
troops in Iraq today.  

But as indicated above, honor in the face of certain defeat can also be 
absorbed into the virtually suicidal battles engaged in by the Japanese 
military toward the end of the Pacific war when supplies and reinforcements 
were non-existent.  In other words, for both defense and offense, guns really 
are more effective than bows and arrows, and no struggling force that’s 
really trying to win will deliberately opt for lesser technology.  But that 
hopelessness is precisely the appeal of the movie and is perhaps what--was it 
Jasper--referred to when his students said that the movie ‘got it right.’  
Namely that defeat was preferable to living under circumstances that were 
deemed repugnant and going out fighting was an act of consummate courage.  
This is where the film gets some emotional power but likewise where its 
colonialist underpinnings are most insidious:  the ‘nobility’ of the savage 
arises.  And surely the parallel with Algren’s anti-Indian past was 
deliberately set to evoke the ol’ noble savage saw.

I have to read more about Saigo and his rebellion for all those questions 
students will probably be asking, but one thing the film can get some credit 
for is that Saigo is not portrayed merely as a reactionary as far as the 
Meiji Restoration is concerned. And by letting “Katsumoto” speak English, the 
character comes across as savvy about Japan’s emerging international position—
and as culturally more sophisticated than the Tom Cruise character.  In that 
sense the film does not set Algren as more Japanese than the Japanese; Algren 
never grasps the significance of the rebellion or that the end of the samurai 
class is the end of a whole system—after all, he goes back to the village.
One last comment.  I don’t necessarily agree with Aaron’s comment about the 
Japanese film industry’s having a “deep-seated complex towards Hollywood.”  
There was an article online earlier this week (can’t remember where) about 
the veteran Japanese bit-part actor, Fukumoto Seizo, who played Algren’s 
bodyguard (Title of the article is “The Silent Samurai.”)  He mentions that 
during production he and a fellow actor agreed something to the effect 
that ‘this was the way a movie should be made.’  That isn’t necessarily a 
complex but rather perhaps an experience of seeing how a movie can be made 
when its producers have enough money at their disposal.  Aaron’s point 
about ‘gyaku yunyu’ is well taken, but does it apply so well to Japanese 
culture today?  Besides, is it so unusual after outside interest is shown 
that people rethink the value of something they took for granted?  

Here’s to a better global year in 2004.
Joanne
jizbicki at ithaca.edu