The Last Samurai

Americans haven't attempted many samurai films. Well, I should say, they haven't attempted any "good" samurai films. Most have been B-martial arts movies. Apparently, any movie that has a guy who knows karate and picks up a sword from time to time qualifies as a "samurai" movie. Here's a list of some of America's "samurai" films:

• Black Samurai - Jim Kelly fights the bad guys off as an angry martial artist in Hong Kong (they don't even go to Japan!)
  
  
• American Samurai - David Bradley and Mark Dacascos team up for this Blood Sport-type movie where they fight a bunch of swordsmen from around the world.
  
  
• Samurai Cop - It's got everything you want in a film, boobs, racism, bad fight scenes, samurai wigs, and a whole-lot more!
  
  
• Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai - Not as horrible as these other films, but still not really a "samurai" film. Forest Whitaker is a guy with a sword who follows the samurai code. That just aint enough for me.
  
  
• The Last Samurai (1990) - Yes! There was another movie with this same title back in 1990! Lance Henriksen and John Saxon star in this African crime/action flick. Again: a guy with a sword somehow made this a "samurai" film.
  
  
• Samurai Cowboy - An Asian business man dreams of becoming a cowboy in Montana (that old story again?!). Sure enough, the locals don't like no "Chinamun" on their turf and try to run him out of town. But a lovely vet and an old cowboy help him out anyway.
  
  
• Shogun TV mini-series - James Clavell's epic novel is turned into a TV mini-series. A valid attempt at depicting samurai culture through Western eyes.
  
  
• Samurai Escort - And last but not least, we need some kind of sex/samurai combo to top things off.

As you can see, up until Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai, American depictions of the samurai genre were mostly our equivalents of chop-saki flicks.

Directed by Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond, The Siege) and written by John Logan (The Aviator, Gladiator), The Last Samurai tells the story of American Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) who's hired to help the new Japanese government train their soldiers in Western ways. Set in the 1870's, Cruise is a Civil War veteran with a haunted past of war and alcohol. He's hired on by the new Imperial Japanese Army to help them bring their soldiers up to speed in the ways of modern warfare.

Prior to this, Japan was still a "closed" nation with little influence from the outside world. They still fought mostly with swords, lances, bows and arrows, and outdated rifles. That all changed with the Meiji Restoration where the Emperor was returned to the throne and a rush to modernization was underway. Sure enough, there are a number of samurai who don't want to modernize. Modernization would eradicate the samurai way of life forever. In steps, Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe). The leader of a samurai rebellion against modernization. He and his men are determined to preserve the samurai way of life that has served them so well for centuries.

The film does a decent job of summing up the historical underpinnings of this transitional time in Japanese history, but there are complications that make the Meiji Restoration period more complicated than the film depicts. A little background is needed to fully appreciate what the film is trying to accomplish.

Katsumoto is a character based on a real-life samurai leader named Saigo Takamori (pictured to the right), who led the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877. In a very, very, small nutshell, the story goes like this: the samurai class for the last few hundred years was the elite, warrior class of Japan. This warrior class was ruled by the Tokugawa clan who united the warring clans 200 years earlier. The Tokugawa clan minimized the power of the Emperor by making the Shogun the supreme leader in the land (a Shogun is essentially the highest warlord of the land).

As Japan was beginning to open up to western "barbarians," some samurai were getting upset at the Tokugawas for fear that they were letting the westerners come in and negatively influence their proud samurai heritage. Thus, rebellious samurai leaders like Saigo Takamori made a move to restore the Emperor to power and abolish the Shogunate. They thought by installing a Emperor as supreme spiritual and political leader, the old ways of Japan and the samurai would be safe. Little did they know, that the Emperor and his puppet-masters around him had other plans. Realizing they were way behind the rest of the modern world, they convinced the young Emperor Meiji to rush to modernization. They wanted a strong military, strong economy, and all of the things the modern world had to offer. Part of this modernization involved giving more equal rights to the lower and middle classes, which meant the aristocratic samurai class would now be abolished. Being a sword-wielding samurai was made illegal. They were the old guard and the new guard was modern, liberal society who relied on an organized army, not a class of do-nothing samurai warriors.

Most of the samurai of this time were already practicing bureaucrats under the Tokugawa rule. There had been few wars in the last 200 years, and most samurai were either state bureaucrats or master less wanders putting a drain on society. Since there were few wars to fight, the samurai culture had stagnated and was usually only preserved in form and not function. However, there were still many who could not transition so easily into non-warrior status.

Feeling betrayed, Saigo Takamori fought the Imperial forces that were trying to bring order to the country. Ironically, Saigo Takamori was fighting against the Emperor he fought to restore in the first place. He, like the fictional character Katsumoto, felt as though he were actually protecting the Emperor against his puppet oligarchy surrounding him. Which, perhaps he was, but regardless, progress is an unstoppable force. And to the credit of the Japanese, they made the transition from a strict feudal society to a modern state in only a few decades. A remarkable feat never before seen in history. This is the important backdrop that The Last Samurai summarizes in order to create a comprehensive and entertaining Hollywood film.

Tom Cruise's character Nathan Algren is loosely based on a real-life French army captain named Jules Brunet (pictured to the right). Brunet was an envoy of Napoleon III and trying to establish trade via military stability with Japan. In reality, the United States had little to do with the modernization of Japan during this era. After the American Commodore Perry opened up Japan to trade in 1854 (and when I say "opened up" - what I mean is, he brought his biggest gun ships, pointed them at Japan and demanded trade or else), the US wasn't able sustain interest in overseas ventures due to the drain of the Civil War. Thus, France, the UK, and Germany stepped in to be the first to tap this virgin trade territory. Nathan Algren and the United States involvement is a consolidation of all of these countries and Jules Brunet's efforts.

Before the Emperor was returned to power, Brunet sided with the Tokugawa shogunate (pictured to the right is Brunet with his rebel samurai allies) in attempts to preserve the samurai order and prevent the Emperor from taking the throne. The Emperor's partisans were victorious in the Boshin War of 1868-1869. The French military led by Brunet were unsuccessful in helping the shogunate and were ordered to leave Japan. Brunet stayed behind. He resigned his post in the French army and headed north (along with several of his French comrades) to join the remaining samurai rebellion factions in hope of launching a counter-attack against the Emperor's Imperial Army. Brunet led and fought several battles along side the samurai rebels. The final, and decisive battle that finally crushed the rebellion occurred in the northern island of Hokkaido. 800 of the rebellious shogunate supporters made their stand against 8000 Imperial troops. As in the final battle of The Last Samurai, the odds were stacked against them, but they went out fighting.

There is no evidence that Jules Brunet became a "samurai" as his fellow rebels were. He taught them modern warfare techniques which was the only thing that allowed the rebellion to survive for so long. Although it seems Brunet sided with the rebels, there is no indication that he wanted to be one of them as the character Nathan Algren was. There's no evidence that he stared wearing kimonos or took up a sword. This makes for a great Hollywood movie, but is historically inaccurate. In fact, Brunet survived the battle at Hokkaido along with several of his French comrades who stayed behind with him. Fully defeated, they had no choice but to flee the country. Brunet went on to fight briefly in Franco-Prussian War (where he was promptly captured by the Germans), then later rejoined the French army becoming General and Chief of Staff. So, there was no battlefield blaze of glory death for the real(?) Last Samurai.