THE AGE OF THE SAMURAI

 The Age of Samurai:  Battle for Japan, a 2021 Netflix docu-drama, is one of those Rotten Tomatoes scores with divergent results:  100% by reviewers and 54% by the audience.  I found it rewarding for one simple reason.  All my life I've watched samurai films, and had no idea how they fit into the history of Japan.  Now, I have a good sense and can reflect back on where certain warriors fit.

The production, in six episodes, begins in 1551 with the death of feudal lord Oda Nobuhide, and rise of his son Oda Nobunaga, transition to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who united the country, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who brought stability for more than a quarter millennium, 1603 to 1868 (called the Edo Period), the final conclusion of Japan's isolation, when Commodore Matthew Perry began to open up the country to the West in 1854 during the Meiji Restoration.  The Tokugawa shoguns had banned all foreigners.

A samurai (around 8% of the community were in this class) held a venerated position in the feudal history of Japan.  If you excelled, you could rise to daimyo, a landholding lord.  The strongest daimyo then became the Shogun.  However, from 1603 with Ieyasu, the Shogunate became hereditary.  The Emperor was the head of a separate royal family, and his role was mostly ceremonial.  Something to appreciate about Japan:  there have been 126 emperors, the first in 660 BC!  The Shogun controlled foreign policy and the military.  The equivalent today is the Prime Minister.

There was a four-tiered system where merchants were the lowest, considered to be parasites.  Artisans were more highly respected, and farmers/peasant even more so.  Above them was the samurai class.  During the Tokugawa period, farmers gave all the rice grown to the daimyo, who then passed some down to the growers as charity.  There was a fifth class, racial minorities.

During this 250-year era, samurai more and more lost power, for in an era of peace, their skills were unnecessary.  Many of them became bureaucrats or wondering troublemakers.

Note that Buddhist and Shinto priests are not mentioned in the above society.  This movie gave them a lot of power and influence, especially those that were organized.  Some of these religious organizations trained their members in combat and gained the respect of daimyos.  Only Shinto temples have these torii entrance.

I grew up with samurai movies.  My memory seems fixed on sword fighting.  Turns out that something called the arquebus (a matchlock gun from the Dutch, but brought to Japan by the Portuguese in 1853), or tanegashima (so called because this all began when a Chinese junk carrying two of these muskets were forced to land on the island of Tanegashima Tokitaka in 1543.  Within ten years, 300,000 of these guns were made) was changing the the nature of battles when The Age of Samurai begins.

Japan's most famous director is Akira Kurosawa, and many of his films were of the above period.  Seven Samurai, (RT:  100%/97%) for example, is a 1954 movie that takes place in 1586.  It has been rated as the best samurai film of all time.

The #2 film is the 1962 Harakiri, directed by Masaki Kobayashi, starring Tatsuya Nakadai.  The story occurs between 1619 and 1630 about the ronin Hanshiro Tsugumo.  Rotten Tomatoes, interestingly enough, also rated it 100%/97%.

#3 is Sanjuro, rated 100%/95% by Rotten Tomatoes.  

Sanjuro is the sequel to the  #10 1961 Yojimbo (Cine-files version--1 hr 32 min--RT 95%/96%), also starring Mifune under Kurosawa's direction.  The Japanese company sued the makers of the 1964 Clint Eastern Western, A Fistful of Dollars (RT  96%/91%), for it was an exact copy.  Without Yojimbo, Eastwood might have become a nobody and the Spaghetti Westerns might not have happened.  Below, Kurosawa (6 feet tall) and Mifune (5'9") on the set of Yojimbo.  

Chushingura, involving the 47 ronin avenging the death of their master, Asano Naganori, began in 1701, when the ruling shogun was Tokugawa Tsunayoshi.  Incredibly, around 200 films have been made of this story, but the impact is wider, for add kabuki and television, where just from 1997 to 2007, there were 10 different shows on your home screen.  Which specific film to watch?  Some say the 1962 Chushingura starring Toshiro Mifune in a a supporting role was the best.  In the U.S. it was called 47 Samurai.  Here is the full 3 hours and 42 minutes version of the 1941 movie 47 Ronin directed by Kenji Mizoguchi.  Many indicate that this was the very best, perhaps the #1 samurai film of all time.  And you can watch it.

Oh, a warning, one 47 Ronin you should avoid is the 2013 American production starring Keanu Reeves.  Rotten Tomatoes reviewers gave it a 16% rating.

The blind Zatoichi is of course a fictional character, but the background set is of the Edo period in the 1830's and 1840's.  From 1961 to 1989 Shintaro Katsu made 26 films.  He also was on television from 1974-79 with 100 episodes.

I can go on and on, but the value of The Age of Samurai is that I now better know where Japanese samurai films fit in the history of the country.  The documentary itself can be too gory and maybe in spurts boring, but this series will serve as a lifetime framework to organize your thoughts.

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