Notes on the Last Samurai

I was surprised by how caught up I was in the story. The battle sequences are some of the best this year. I was thankful to be spared from the heavy cutting that has hurt other action moments, Cold Mountain and Master and Commander come to mind. The production design is stunning. I felt transported to the modern and agrarian worlds of Japan in 1876. The movie has fundamental flaws in its romanticized vision of samurai, and demonization of technology.

It comes off as a bit of a polemic against technology. Modern living means living without honor. I wish the train building capitalist Omura had been able to give voice for what trains would mean for all the people of Japan. In fact, I was surprised by how the samurai come off as terrorists. Their absolute dedication to one way of life comes off as religious zealotry at times. No thought is given to compromise between the samurai life and Western progress. The Japanese army was just as willing to die for their cause as the samurai, and in greater numbers. Why should democracy be subverted? The emperor says as much himself when he tells Katsumoto that his power comes from the will of the people.

The movie connects the plight of the samurai with that of Native Americans. Besides the commonality of the end of a way of life the contrasts are far stronger. The samurai were the warrior elite of the country. They were part of the government, in ways Native Americans never were. The fact that the samurai have taken up arms against their former friends comes off as capricious. Native Americans however were oppressed and brutalized by a regime they had no part in creating. The samurai insurgency does not have the same nobility of cause. They had a voice in the council and chose to forsake it, and could offer up no other solutions than warfare. Native Americans never had that same political standing, and saw treaties repeatedly broken by the US Government.

Perhaps the comparison to terrorism doesn’t seem quite right since all we see are battles between professional armies. There are no attacks on civilian infrastructure in the movie. But then what is hampering the building of the railroad if they are not attacking the workers and destroying track? What threat do the samurai pose if they just retreat to their mountain Shangri-La to live their old way of life?