Last Samurai: The Death of Tradition & Why Japan's Preservation of it is Important
The Most Tragic scene in the movie
Anyone familiar with this
knows that I’ve written to some extent about Last Samurai, analysing the movie both with regards to the American lead, and the Japanese characters. Notably I was keen to present different points of views on how best to understand these gripping characters.But just as every tale must pull to an end, and much as I wish to analyse Algren’s personal ending first, I can’t. I have to get to that final part of the final battle, when Algren finds himself not on the side of modernity, not on the side of America but on that of the Samurai.
Throughout the film, there is a celebration of tradition, of the pre-modern and of the traditional roles in society. All things that were to be the subject of a number of dvd documentaries and extra documentaries for years, rejecting, insulting and almost screeching about how ‘ackshually the samurai were evul’ and other such things. The yelling about ‘patriarchy’ eventually grows tiresome so I doubt many really cared to view these things for very long.
But in all seriousness, there was a dark side to the Samurai in that they were warriors. Warriors often without a purpose who brutalised, assassinated, raped, tortured and did all sorts of nasty stuff. But there were also those such as Sanada Nobushige, Miyamoto Musashi, Kusunoki, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, and plenty of those who had achieved some sort of peaceful status in the Edo period. What I mean is that from violent beginnings the Samurai had gradually learnt to temper their violence with a dignity, and artistic bent that served them well in peace-time.
If one watches Sanada Hiroyuki’s Twilight Samurai that came out just before the Last Samurai, one can get a glimpse into what life was like for the lower caste of Samurai. It was a tough life, and one hardly better than that of the ‘peasants’ as a great many Samurai WERE peasants for all intents and purposes. That in mind, when Katsumoto is grumbling about selling out the nation and slowing down the flow of imports into the nation, he’s looking at the destabilising factors that are wreaking havoc on Japan.
This is what he’s protesting and fighting against. But just as his real life counterpart learnt, and he learns in the story; if you’re not the one issuing the orders in government, often times they whip out the howitzers to ‘solve’ the problem. As most politicians and modern merchants are not used to the word ‘No’ and don’t like it and will kill to get ahead.
This helps to add to the tragedy of the death of the Samurai at the end, as they were not saying ‘No’ but rather ‘Not yet, slow down’, which got them a death sentence. The modern cannot tolerate the pre-modern, ‘progress’ cannot stomach rurality and Omura full of envy and hate for Katsumoto could not stomach him living.
It is for this reason that when the guns go quiet, he is stricken with rage and is promptly ignored. Hardly a brave man, he came to watch a spectacle, not to risk his own hide, so that he perceives some sort of risk as the leftenant shuts off the howitzers and bows before Katsumoto’s corpse.
Katsumoto who had sacrificed all for the Emperor, ends up begging to be stabbed to death, which Algren does if reluctantly. This act sees thousands of Japanese men weeping and bowing before their history and their past in the form of Katsumoto, the last great man of a prior era.
This is pure cinema, but it is important. It is what separates Japan from so much of the rest of the world.
When entering the modern world; France burnt her way there, as did China, Russia and a portion of the Slavic world, and so did Germany. They all burnt their countries to ashes then built the modern world atop those ashes. Britain entered it seamlessly, Ireland was dragged in kicking and screaming by Britain, and America and Canada chose to erase their pasts forgetting their Irish, Anglo and Scottish roots to become apart from Europe.
And what did they get at the end of the day? Plastic toys and goods? Machines to do the work of most men? War, taxation and loneliness?
All these and more. There’s been some good, some bad.
But where some nations have become properly dystopian such as Canada, Korea and others. Some have forged a new destiny as is the case with Kenya, Vietnam and even Finland. Some warred and warred throughout this era such as Spain, and still others are haunted by their past as is the case with France, who longs for it, while Germany shudders at it.
Japan has in turn chosen the better path; she has always honoured it. Okay, say the Japanese; so modernity has no room throughout most of the world for the traditional. Well we’ll keep the traditional and all the perks of the modern world.
This is how they have managed to differ. They have rejected a lot of the basic premises of modernity, and it is for this reason that so many out there scorn them.
And the Last Samurai, expresses this point about honouring one’s ancestors very well. Our ancestors weren’t inferior to us (in many ways they were better), it is upon their remains that the world as we know has been built.
And this is what the Japanese at the end of the film realise, this is what they bow to. This is what they weep for; they have murdered their past. It is an act they at once regret, and take back on some level but it cannot restore the likes of Katsumoto, Ujio or Bob back to life.
Meiji’s words that he cannot forget the past or where he and his people come from is very apt to how the Japanese feel to-day. Still to this day, I have friends who proclaim their Samuraic heritage, others who know people who claim descent from the likes of Taira no Kiyomori, Ashikaga Takauji, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Sanada Yukimura/Nobushige, from Musashi’s adoptive sons and many more. They are enthralled by their past, their heritage and as someone who’s family history has been erased I cannot help but envy them and long for that sort of connection.
But many of us in North America are a people without a past, without a history so that we are bereft and without a past or a present.
And this is what sets the Japanese apart, they do not shun the past as North America does, they do not hide from it as Germany does, and they do not sleep through it like Spain seems to do (sorry couldn’t resist the joke about the Spanish).
This is why this scene is so relevant and so very Japanese, just as that with Meiji is.
If I’m to leave you all with one last parting phrase, let it not be, of how so many died but rather the words of Algren as he fulfills his destiny at long last; ‘I will tell you how he lived’…. which can be said for all the ancestors, both of Japan and other nations.
There is a statue of Saigo Takamori, the real last samurai, by Ueno Station right in the middle of Tokyo. For you Americans, that’s a bit like having Robert E. Lee a few stops away from Grand Central.
Krynn Brothers: I hope you know I love your work, and I love the impulse here to preserve history, tradition, and things like honor in the face of relentless modernity. So I say this without bitterness:
This seems to me to be selectively chosen history, and ignores a Mt.-Fuji-sized elephant in the room: Japan chose this “modernity” with more zeal than most, rapidly transforming itself into a predatory state from the time of Meiji until the utter collapse of that society in 1945—a collapse that was precipitated by several aggressive wars of Japans own choosing.
Japan burnt its society to ashes, taking huge swathes of Asia with it.
Modern Japan is built upon the ashes of the 1936-1945 Asia Pacific War, in which millions died so that Japan could become as “modern” society as possible. The current society is built largely with the help and benevolence of the “plastic toy” wielding America that you seem to dismiss here.
The “bushido” of the IJA/IJN wasn’t the bushido of the samurai any more than the “chivalry” of the SS was that of King Edward III. But saying that “Japan chose a better path” is, to me, choosing to ignore millions of graves, including those of my own countrymen.
Maybe there’s a case here that the older, pre-modern ideas about honor and self-sacrifice were lost and then that allowed for the horrors of the mid-20th Cent…. But I don’t quite think that’s what you’re saying.
Again, I say with respect and thanks for this post. I’ll be chewing on this all day, in a good way!