Samurai Bullshit
I just finished watching Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. The movie has a novel method of storytelling, which was re-used recently in the popular movie, Hero. In Rashoman, a husband (a dangerous-looking samurai) and wife are travelling through a forested mountain region. They are fallen upon by a famous bandit who binds the husband to a tree and rapes the wife. Sometime afterwards, the husband is killed. This much is certain. The events that play out after the rape and leading up to the husband’s death are recounted to a magistrate by the bandit, then the wife, then the husband (via a medium). Each has a somewhat self-serving story. The bandit claims that he slew the husband in honorable combat over the woman. The husband claims he commited seppuku, or ritual suicide.
The story of their testimony is recounted by a man who was present at the trial. He later reveals to his companions that he secretly witnessed the real events. The man’s account involves a swordfight in which both the husband and the bandit are clearly terrified to be in a swordfight. The bandit is violently shaking, and the husband isn’t much better. The two fight rather incompetently, until the bandit, still terrified, eventually kills the husband.
I was rather moved by this portrayal of a sword fight. The two men behaved the way I would expect a real person to act in a sword fight, rather than in the bravado-drenched scenes we normally see in anime or samurai flicks. At one point, one of the men in the story remarked about the husband’s retelling, “Why would a dead man lie?” The answer was that he was dedicated to preserving this image of samurai bravery and honor, even after his death. I think this speaks of the power of the importance of this samurai image, not just to the man, but also in Japanese culture.
Akira Kurasawa and legendary director of American Westerns, John Ford, were mutual admirers. When trying to understand a samurai movie, I think it’s important to analyze with the idea of a Western in mind. Westerns also place a huge importance on bravado and a code of honor, the so-called “Way of the West.” Now, these days, most of us can look at those Westerns and recognize that they’re really fantasy. The “Way of the West” was, for lack of a better term, bullshit. Entertaining bullshit, surely, but obviously a gross exageration of reality. Now…does this extend to bushido, the code of the samurai? Were samurai really as hard-boiled as they are portrayed, or is that more bullshit? I think I sort of blindly accepted what I was shown of samurai as being historically accurate. But…maybe…do you think that samurai were really just regular guys underneath it all?
It puts an interesting new perspective on the American movie, The Last Samurai. It’s a movie which attempt to debunk any glamour surrounding the American calvary - sort of an offshoot of Westerns - yet totally buys into the honorable samurai mythos.
I guess the lesson of the day is: never stop questioning what you’re told. Everybody has some kind of agenda to push.