On another note, Japanese culture definitely has a higher tolerance for schmaltz than I was accustomed to before coming here. I’ve read people who claim that this derives from the classical poetry tradition, where poets searching for the best single image would too often “cheat” by using a pre-loaded word like “dream” or “wind”, but I don’t think that can be entirely it — if only because the poets who get the most respect (Basho, etc.) are exactly the ones who intentionally avoided this trap.

Although, I guess if you think about the Lifetime channel, Oprah, Neighbours, etc., every country has wildly popular schmaltz. Maybe it’s just that in our home cultures we’re able to find the alternatives more easily.

I wanted to see it just to see how egregiously they would get everything wrong and just how hackneyed it would be. While it was not as profoundly silly as other similar efforts (“Shogun” springs immediately to mind) the cherry blossoms being blown away by the wind as Katsumoto was dying, among other Japanesque cliches with whch the movie was riddled, did not disappoint.

It is interesting that the movie is popular in Japan. This is baffling until you realize that the Japanese often have a pathetic need to be approved of by gaijin. A foreigner coming to learn about Japan is proof to the Japanese that their culture has worth. Thus, all of these posters and commercials about foreigners who, spending a few years in Japan learning ikebana, somehow know more about the “true” Japan than people native to the place.

So, not only did a major American star of the stature of Tom Cruise think it was worth making a movie about the glories of Yamato Damashii, his character in the film, realizing the spiritual wasteland that is Western “culture” decides at the end to make his home in The Land of Wa, the repository of all truth, goodness and beauty. What Japanese would not swoon over this thinly disguised “Wareware Nipponjin Ron” message? And made by a famous American, yet! What could be better?

Earl Hartman

I wanted to see it just to see how egregiously they would get everything wrong and just how hackneyed it would be. While it was not as profoundly silly as other similar efforts (“Shogun” springs immediately to mind) the cherry blossoms being blown away by the wind as Katsumoto was dying, among other Japanesque cliches with whch the movie was riddled, did not disappoint.

It is interesting that the movie is popular in Japan. This is baffling until you realize that the Japanese often have a pathetic need to be approved of by gaijin. A foreigner coming to learn about Japan is proof to the Japanese that their culture has worth. Thus, all of these posters and commercials about foreigners who, spending a few years in Japan learning ikebana, somehow know more about the “true” Japan than people native to the place.

So, not only did a major American star of the stature of Tom Cruise think it was worth making a movie about the glories of Yamato Damashii, his character in the film, realizing the spiritual wasteland that is Western “culture” decides at the end to make his home in The Land of Wa, the repository of all truth, goodness and beauty. What Japanese would not swoon over this thinly disguised “Wareware Nipponjin Ron” message? And made by a famous American, yet! What could be better?

Earl Hartman