While I was back in the US, I went to see the “Last Samurai” and have been promising my family that I would share some of my thoughts on the movie here. There has been a flurry of mails going back and forth on the H-Japan discussion list about the movie so I had read quite a lot about the Tom Cruise Hollywood production before I went to see it…
The movie is a fictional story about an alcoholic American soldier and slaughterer of Native Americans who travels to Japan to supervise the training of Emperor Meiji’s new modern military. They are prematurely put into the field to fight a rebellion of samurai. The battle goes badly, Cruise is captured and passes an idyllic time with the rebel samurai in a mountain village where he learns the mystic ways of Bushido and eventually joins the rebellion. Cruise is morally distraught over his involvement in the killing of women and children of a Native American village and his experience with the “natives” ultimately banishes the turmoil he feels within.
The movie is great fun, beautifully filmed, and well acted. Cruise’s swordsmanship, broken Japanese, etc. are all well done. I agree, however, completely with the Washington Post reviewer who calls the movie, “Dances with Swords” or “Dances with Samurai”. The movie really does feel like a remake of Kevin Costner’s “Dances with Wolves” set in Japan.
There has been lots of discussion going back and forth on the H-Japan discussion list about the movie. As any student of Japanese history will recognize, the samurai rebellion is modeled on Saigo Takamori’s rebellion in the Meiji period. Much of the discussion on the list was either fighting over the historical (in)accuracies of the movie, over which Western military advisor inspired Tom Cruise’s character, and whether or not the movie should be celebrated for attracting new students to the “field”, or critiqued for giving students a distorted view of history. I found Mark Ravine‘s (author of a biography of Saigo Takamori) posting to the list to be the most interesting.
Although I still find it entertaining to compare movies with the historical events they portray or the periods they are set in, I have long ago given up judging a movie based on its historical accuracy. I think it is far more interesting to consider the portrayal of certain groups, people, or behavior and will therefore not spend much time here talking about those inaccuracies. I will only note what I found most ironic among the omissions in the movie’s reproduction of Saigo’s rebellions. The character modeled on Saigo could never have gained our audience’s sympathy as a loyal imperial servant who simply wishes to preserve a traditional culture if we were to learn that he was partly motivated to leave the government and rebel out of anger that it refused to invade Korea when he wanted it to. If he had stuck around a few decades, he would have seen his goal fulfilled.
There are lots of messages in this movie but rather than giving lots of commentary, I’ll just list some of them. 1) The Meiji emperor is urged not to be a slave to the lies and deception of his advisors and to follow his conscience. This connects directly into the narrative of Japan’s modern emperors not being able to prevent their nation from doing nasty things. 2) The beauty and moral purity of Japan’s traditions are constantly juxtaposed with the brutality of modernity. It is interesting to note, however, that the most tragic aspect of modernization portrayed by the movie is the ban on the samurai ability to wear swords and have a top knot. 3) Americans showed no regard for the life of Native Americans. 4) The gun industry and greedy merchants are bad. 5) The samurai rebels lived humbly in mountain villages in totally utopian classless world. Their oppressive rule over the peasants is not portrayed. 5) Except for their views about death and their fanatical loyalty, there is no portrayal of the more problematic elements of samurai morality.
The movie was lots of fun, but as with all such productions, the complete lack of moral ambiguity and complexity in the characters means I always tend to feel a degree of irking dissatisfaction.