Last Samurai, Lost Perspective

I finally got around to watching The Last Samurai the other day. It left me feeling somewhat confused. Now, I'm not saying that it wasn't an entertaining and technically well-made film. Nor I am saying that Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, et al didn't give good performances. Indeed, I'm not even going to be critical of any historical inaccuracies or the fact that it fictionalizes real events so as to give a Westerner the central role in a significant phase of Japanese history. No, what confused me was the message I assumed that I was meant to be taking from the film: that the Samurai system with its codes of honour and loyalty, was somehow preferable to the subsequent industrialisation and modernisation of Japan. It seemed pretty clear to me that I was meant to mourn the passing of the Samurai and all they represented, whilst booing and hissing those nasty industrialists and politicians who had persuaded the Emperor to drag Japan into the modern age.

My problem with this is simple - the Samurai were ultimately oppressors of the lower classes in Japan. It was their martial skills which enforced and maintained a feudal system, where peasants were effectively indentured to their masters. Whilst I'm no great fan of unfettered capitalism, the fact is that at least the 'modernisation' of Japan in the late Nineteenth Century heralded an end to this system. The lower classes at last had the opportunity to sell their labour freely in exchange for wages - a huge step forward from serfdom. Now, I know I'm not an expert on Japanese culture and history and that I'm greatly simplifying all this, but the bottom line is that nowadays we have a highly romanticised view of the Samurai (much as we have of medieval knights), which obscures their true historical role . Indeed, just like those knights of old and their code of chivalry, the Samurai code of honour only applied to their own sort and the aristocracy. It was primarily designed to prevent too many of the ruling elite from being killed or disabled - there had to be enough of them to keep the peasants down! Let's not forget, one of those 'anti-Samurai' measures the Emperor introduced in the 1870s was revoking their right to cut off the head of any peasant who didn't show a Samurai sufficient respect!

Finally, let's not forget that those Japanese soldiers mowing down hordes of Samurai with cannon, rifles and Gatling guns during the film's climactic battle were themselves former peasants, finally given an alternative to lifelong servitude to a feudal lord by the new Japan. In reality, I doubt very much that any of them shed any tears for those dead Samurai. They'd finally got the better of their former oppressors. Like I said, nice film, but very confused politics!