1. The world is really, really messed up. Buddhist thought considers “this transient world” to be a pretty nasty place, and it’s not good for the soul to be too attached to it whether out of greed for money, power, lust, violence, and so forth. In short, the future Tokyo of AKIRA takes everything people saw as vulgar “worldly affairs” in 1980’s Tokyo, cranked it to an Xtreme level (to use a modern cliche) and used these images to demonstrate why salvation is necessary.
2. We’re not ready to be saved – yet. Our protagonist has the universe hand him incredible psychic powers on a silver platter. Does he stand up for world peace? Eliminate hunger? Save the environment? No, he blows stuff up, kills the people who cross him, kills some of his old friends who annoy him, gets his best friend spending the latter third of the film trying very hard to kill him, and in general demonstrates that handing a little kid a laser cannon is not going to lead to good things.
3. But anyone can be saved who turns towards the Path. Yet by the end of the film, not through being a better human being like the titular Akira, or a lost soul like one of the stunted growth psi-children, our protagonist Tetsuo loses control, leaves the boundaries of the flesh, and, while his former best friend is saved by an act of mercy by the aforementioned psi-child, Tetsuo, by leaving the shackles of the flesh behind, discovers a greater, more enlightened universe awaiting mankind. Even evildoers who spend a great deal of time off the path can still be saved if they get on the path at the end – if not by their own agency, but rather the acts of others and the whims of the universe. Tetsuo, facing agonizing death, was finally ready for the change, and found it.
4. There is thus hope for us all. If that bastard can do it, then as the final words of the film suggest, perhaps not so far in the future, we can, too, in spite of, well… humans sucking in general as they are currently constituted.

So that’s it in a nutshell. Humans suck, but there’s still hope for us, we can be saved, we just need shock therapy and to get with the program already. After you’ve watched a few Evangelion movies it’s hard to be shocked by the notion anymore. Besides, this all fits in neatly with left-wing academic thought of long standing, whereby modern progress is destroying Gaea, humanity must radically change to embrace the planet and renounce, if not all modernity, then certainly excessive wealth and production, and just in general, humans need to suck less, cooperate to settle their differences and then… maybe… in spite of our previous unworthiness, we can find Nirvana, perhaps right here on this planet. Or, at least make the vulgar world more livable in the meantime. I don’t necessarily subscribe to all this in a blind smattering of huge, but that’s not the point. The insanity in AKIRA is not a bug; it is a feature of a much older philosophy that shaped Japan through the centuries. If the movie is hard to understand, it’s nothing against the intelligence of the viewer; it’s simply not having been exposed sufficiently to a particular world-view and its accompanying intellectual argument. So yeah, in my case, watching more anime (and reading a little) made me “get” it.

One theme that arises in Japanese drama, be it film or anime, is a character dramatically cutting off her hair. This is signals some kind of dramatic, life-altering change.

The only reason this is an issue for women alone in modern drama is because, well, there’s no samurai anymore. Male samurai wore their hair in a famous “top knot” style that became emblematic of their status in society. If a samurai was to abandon his societal role, either to join the priesthood or to choose life as a peasant (for samurai were, in later times, forbidden to work the fields, and thus, could quite seriously starve if unemployed), such a man would cut off his top knot and undergo a dramatic decline in social status.

(Of course, lower social status was preferable to starvation for many!)

Even so, the Japanese woman has long been associated with long, meticulously kept hair, and vice versa. An expression holds, “A woman’s hair is her life.” This exaggerates, but only for the purpose of underlining the great importance given to hair as a symbol of womanhood. For instance, geisha have long, ornately worn hair.

Thus, a woman of high status cutting her hair, such as to disguise herself to escape villains after her life, is a dramatic, perhaps even desperate act. When done out of volition rather than grim necessity, it vividly represents one individual’s resolve to make a dramatic break with her own past: to divide time between “the old me” and “the me there is now”.

To this day, this remains a symbol of a dramatic break with the past. It retains its ancient power over the Japanese mind, and thus avoids easy pigeonholing as a mere cliche. In art, symbols matter, and powerful symbols, used well, create strong cinema.

I wrote this post out of curiosity at reading a forum thread on a certain website where one person knew the correct reading of a character cutting off her hair, and others did not, treating the correct view as one opinion among many. In this case, it’s a symbol everyone (in Japan!) is expected to know. For those who know Japanese, and for those who do not, cultural knowledge is an important part of watching Japanese drama. – J

One enduring feature of Japanese storytelling is that, if there is ever to be a good ending, protagonists must appropriately suffer before it, and so must the viewers. Some shows can get very hard to watch. And not all endings are sweet.

I won’t name names, to protect people from spoilers, but I just finished one of the shows I have liked very much in recent times, and while the ending is not a “bad” one, the show spared no effort to create vast doubt about this until the last moment. Fortunately for my memories of the show, the ending was not a bad one, but the general point is worth commenting on.

From what I understand, in older times, Japanese stories had lots of suffering… and then bad endings. That was the dramatic element: tragedy as eternally destined, something to bring tears rather than a warm heart. But Japanese storytelling, too, has evolved over time.

Again, not all endings leave me with an ureshii feeling, but I’ll take what I can get.

(P.S. Heading reads, “That was quite a hardship.” – J)

A fair bit of what I have translated professionally (in the past) is what might be called pulp fiction, manga and “light novels” that fit neatly into popular culture. However, the Japanese publishing industry is both large, and intensely competitive. When only the strong survive, the general quality available improves accordingly.

I think that Japan has always had a strong storytelling culture. It is hardly alone in this, but the rise of broad-based literacy propelled local mythology into national lore. Once Japan’s nationalistic/ WWII phase was fully resigned to history, and Japan was finally recovering economically and spiritually, manga and, still in its early strides, anime, rose to deliver broad-based entertainment to the masses… but have never displaced the hon (本), or book. Indeed, more and more highly successful anime are now adapted from successful books, giving them a strong plot and a built-in audience.

A manga I have just begun to read is called Cage of Eden. If I was to summarize it in one sentence, I would call it a cross between Lost and Jurassic Park. That is, Japanese high school students returning from a field trip stranded after a mysterious plane crash on an apparently uncharted island filled with prehistoric, and deadly, wildlife.

You can do this in a black and white manga for immensely less cost than a big budget movie. The only limit is the finite number of pages a chapter can bear and the creativity of the manga-ka (and his or her staff). The tools are roughly the same for everyone, but it’s what you do with them that sets the great storytellers apart.

Anyway, I just thought I’d write a few things about it. – J

Gundam 00 Movie:

Awakening of the Trailblazer

Spoilers Under Tags Below

Non-spoiler review HERE.

Now, the point of this review is not to spoil the plot. It is to write in detail about various things of interest to the Gundam community, especially details which are not explained within the four corners of the movie itself.

But, no discussion of these things without spoiler tags. So, let’s dive into the spoiler space, minna-san!

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And Now, The Review

So for people who didn’t want to go through all those details, here’s my simple, spoiler-enhanced short version of a review. But, it too will be under spoilers. See the non-spoiler review for er, a non-spoiler review.

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And that’s all for now. Comments welcome. Anyone reading this post has been repeatedly warned, so don’t bother worrying about spoilers in the comments.

Thanks. – J

No Spoilers Here

Spoilers, under appropriate tags, will be included in a separate post. This post is spoiler-free so that I can link back to it for people who don’t want to know any of the plot.

The Skinny

This is a must-see for fans of the Gundam 00 series. If you haven’t seen any of the show, or much of it, you can still enjoy it as a movie, but the movie does not stop to hold your hand and explain who characters are (beyond pointing us at the main character) and what their relationships to each other are.

This movie has spectacular visuals. If you have a large HDTV and want to make it sing, get this on Blu-Ray when you can and feel your optic receptors explode. The battles are very visually intense. Judged purely by visual hedonism, this movie is 10 of 10.

The theme – again, without spoilers about how it ends – is first contact with an alien species. As such, it is best approached as more traditional science fiction that just happens to have giant robots (Gundams) in it, rather than dwell on it being a “Gundam” anime.

Now, to be completely honest, I always found Gundam 00 to be very predictable in overall plot, however ornate its handling of technical details (minor and major). The movie is no different. The movie retains the series’ penchant for over-wrought dialog, but that’s the nature of the beast.

In its favor, the movie has a minimum of human beings acting like jerks, largely thanks to the single unifying threat in the show.

Running time: 2 Hours (120 minutes). Bring extra popcorn.

Overall impression:

It is what it is. If you’re into Gundam 00, or into the sci-fi genre, watch it, enjoy it for what it is, and sit back and enjoy the pretty colors.

I saw this word being used as a cultural principle over at the Japan Times in an article about a modern production of the Tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin (known natively as the Chuushingura – “chuushin” (中心) means loyalty). They are also known as 47 Ronin, 47 Samurai and so forth, in the West.

Apparently – and I didn’t know this prior to reading the article – the story was considered such an inspiration for the WWII Japan regime that MacArthur’s occupation had it banned in its entirety. I have no idea when or how it became un-banned, either. Anyway, this is a more modern creation, a movie / film that covers the story.

Here we see inserted “gaman” as a principle, defined here as endurance.

Well, I don’t think this is a very good translation, myself.

The Literal Side

The first kanji, 我 (ga), uses the “on-yomi” (Chinese phonetic reading) of the kanji used for the formal 1st person pronoun waga (in native Japanese). Being part of a compound word, the on-yomi is not at all unusual.

The second kanji, 慢 (man), has a normal meaning of ridicule / laziness. Well, I personally think it is the first version which fits, but we have to start with the dictionary version and work our way to reality. The root of the kanji is actually sloth, but as the lazy tend to be ridiculed, we can see those aspects. However, it is also true that “boastfulness” and “conceitedness” are borrowed from this concept; so let’s go with conceit.

Other words using the latter kanji are 自慢 (jiman), self + conceit for boastfulness; 高慢 (kouman), high + conceit for haughty; 傲慢 (gouman), pride + conceit for arrogance; 怠慢 (taiman), neglect + conceit for negligence.

It’s not the fault of Japanese, but English uses “pride” both for the positive aspects, and for the deadly sin version. In Fullmetal Alchemist, the homunculus known as Pride (taken as an English loan word in the Japanese version) represents the deadly sin of 傲慢 (gouman), per above.

There is one more good word for our purposes here: 緩慢 (kanman), slacken + sloth. This means slow, sluggish, dull, languid. Thus, it takes our “sloth” not in the sense of a vice, but behavior.

So now that we have context for the kanji, let’s look at gaman itself once more.

The Figurative

So, 我慢 (gaman) is really the imposition of physical reluctance upon the self. It is to behave in a restrained manner.

The easiest way to explain gaman is by calling it perseverance.

In other words, it means to double down and endure, yes, but that’s not the whole picture. Specifically, it means psychological endurance, not being able to take a punch. Hence, perseverance.

This is also being self-effacing, and through that, it is an expression of patience and self-control (even though “patience” is properly 辛抱 (shinbou) in Japanese). It is also in this sense that it means tolerance, for to tolerate behavior is to not react to it even when one otherwise would.

For instance, one scene in the first chapter of Sakura Taisen (which I mention a fair bit here), the main character, Ichiro Ogami, is pressed into service as a ticket clipper for the theater where the “secret military unit” comprised of all girl pilots (before his arrival) was under er, shall we say, very deep cover. Not exactly trained for this, Ensign Ogami has to pretend to be just a lowly ticket clipper and act polite and nice when a quite annoying young boy demands his ticket clipped.

The player can permit Ogami to let slip his annoyance, or to even scold the child, but the proper thing to do is to 我慢する (to persevere). That is, to exhibit self-control in the face of a… spunky and annoying little kid firm in the belief that you, the ticket clipper, are his servant.

Well, that does take some perseverance.

Movie Context

So from the link above,

But in Shigemichi Sugita’s slow-paced and didactic, if well-acted, “Saigo no Chushingura (The Last Ronin),” the old “Chushingura” spirit is still alive and well. Far from being revisionist, the film is unapologetically traditionalist in sentiment; with some tweaking, it would have made an excellent home-front film, circa 1940, since it extols the value of self-sacrifice and gaman (endurance) for a higher, feudalistic good, even in nonviolent anonymity.

So it’s not exactly endurance, but rather than do the normal samurai thing and slit their bellies upon the wrongful death of their lord (from their point of view), these 47 ronin choose two years of life in utter disgrace, mocked by all who knew them, before gathering together in secret and taking the life of the high official who had wronged their lord and caused their lord’s death. They turned themselves in and then slit their bellies, for that was the only proper way it could have gone. They just made sure they got their business done first.

Now, this particular film explores two ronin who were supposed to be part of the whole thing. One was ordered to not participate in the last part so that he could report upon their noble deeds; the other, well, ran off, hid, and became a merchant, which was considered the lowest class of all. (…By the government, which wanted samurai flattered and feeling important.)

Anyway, you can read the rest of the article at the link at the top of this post and judge this movie for yourself. I just wanted to give this cultural principle some context so that there’s no misunderstanding here. It took some explanation, as you can see.

Yakuwari (役割、やくわり)

A yakuwari can be a duty, a role, or a part to play. The first kanji can be read as “of use,” which is a concept used in service (for if you are of use to the Emperor, you serve him and his interests). The second kanji is emphatically read as divide, as if splitting a log in two. Consequently, if this is a part, it is a part created through the division of labor.

Yaku (役), The Suffix

When we speak of such-and-such yaku, we speak of such-and-such role. This can apply to the theater, but linguistically speaking, life is just one big stage. This terminology can apply to real life quite well.

For example…

Senpai Yaku (先輩役)

This is playing the role of the senpai, the senior comrade. (Kanji: “Ahead” and “comrade”) Put at its most simplest, this would be the senior detective paired with a junior detective.

In Tokyo dialect, the “n” is pronounced “m” (for “sempai,”) but this is an issue of dialect (and ease of saying the word really fast). It is never written with an “m” in actual Japanese. It’s one of the relatively few cases of nouns not being pronounced as they are written.

Broadly speaking, it is the role of the senpai to engage superiors and peers on behalf of the team (even if it is a two-man team). This requires adequate speaking and leadership skills to say what needs to be said, and remain polite while doing it. This means being able to convey a lot of information in high level Japanese, when required.

Yet, even in Japan, the Western archetype of the senpai who bends the rules (a little) exists. The room for maneuver may not be very wide, but that is precisely why someone who knows and understands the barriers and the walls to each side can navigate the labyrinth of Japanese bureaucracy to attempt to lead things to a positive outcome.

Put another way, this is knowing what is black and white, and what is a gray area where initiative (usually discouraged by the system) can be invaluable – if it is done properly.

Kouhai Yaku (後輩役)

This is the role of the kouhai (spoken with a trailing “o” and a nearly mute “u”). Kanji: Behind + comrade. So, this is the junior comrade.

In a police drama, this would be the young detective paired with the veteran. As in American dramas, this can mean the rookie is either in need of adult supervision, or is far too accustomed to black and white cases. In either case, a dose of “the real world” (from the senior detective’s point of view) is delivered.

Fundamentally, the kouhai is not expected to be on the same level. Also one should keep in mind that this is as much a linguistic issue as a “respect hierarchy” one; you need to know how to address others, and dividing into senpai and kouhai is a quick and dirty, and therefore useful, way of organizing social roles in a simple and uncomplicated way.

The thing I really like to remember is that the senpai is expected to actually take care of his kouhai (singular or plural). In other words, the kouhai getting the coffee is not the limit of the relationship; it isn’t just lip service. Peers will not respect a senpai who doesn’t look after his people.

Conversely, the kouhai is expected to support the senpai in any way possible. This is because, where teams are concerned, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Japanese society never sees things in terms of just the individual, because society’s too big to squish things down to that (unless you’re a Shogun or something).

Otori Yaku (囮役)

An otori (囮、おとり) is simply, in English, a decoy. The kanji suggests a cage and the kanji for “become”; therefore, the deceived one becomes trapped. Thus, the concept of a decoy: that which lures and ensnares the enemy.

In many video games, this is an unofficial role, but in some, you can deliberately set someone to be a decoy and draw enemy fire from other members of a team in the field. The latter occurs in “Super Robot Wars: Scramble Commander”, a game I have played. Drawing off fire allows other units to attack uninhibited or charge up a special attack.

Thus, using a particular command from the battle tactics menu, under “Support,” allowed the player to assign someone to decoy duty. This is a temporary role, and decoy duty can be changed.

I use this to demonstrate that not all roles are permanent, but they are roles nonetheless.

Division of Labor

No one can be all things to all people. Japanese society thrives on this principle, and always has.

This is not to say that all of Japanese society was always based on castes. For instance, samurai were only made a permanent hereditary class at the end of the Sengoku Jidai (戦国時代), or Warring States Period, to end the upward mobility offered by chaos and strife (and therefore dampen the chaos and strife). Also, as shown in Seven Samurai, a samurai could cut off his top knot and shave his head and become a monk.

Put another way, if you couldn’t go up, you could go down.

Even so, many social roles are very long-term in nature. More to the point, Japanese society is comfortable with roles and collectively wants people to play them. This is an issue often decried by left-wing activists (as they would in any society with strong roles not defined by political value), but whether simply a matter of cultural sympathies or a strong, rarely changing societal mandate, the idea of roles is a big one to keep mental track of when dealing with Japanese culture.

Roles are not absolute, but they are important.

Shichinin no Samurai

(Japanese: 七人の侍)

Seven Samurai is known to students of movie-making for its introduction or popularization of a variety if filming techniques, particularly for the use of visual imagery to represent one aspect of the story without resorting to words. It is known to critics as a masterpiece of renowned filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Finally, it is known  to fans of film as one of the greatest samurai films of all time – perhaps the greatest.

From a cultural perspective, Seven Samurai is not only a contribution to Japanese (and global) culture in and of itself; its trappings are thoroughly Japanese, set in historical Japan (the Sengoku Jidai, or Warring States Period), but its narrative is steeped in the American western. It is a tale of good, evil, and a great deal of gray.

The Good People

The introduction to the film’s plot lays out good and evil. On the “evil” side are a band of ronin under a nameless leader that have joined together to plunder villages of their harvests, inflicting yet another hardship upon the village at the heart of the movie. The good people, as they are viewed by Kurosawa himself and by the movie plot, are beset by taxes, forced labor, and now bandits that threaten to destroy them – for that is the price of resistance, and these people naturally want to resist being pillaged.

The Warring States Period saw many villages rebel as part of the Ikko Ikki (一向一揆) movement. The words essentially mean fully fledged insurrection. As a result of the period’s great political and military instability, numerous villages were permitted a wide amount of autonomy so long as they paid their taxes (in rice). And so it is here: a village that acts as a group. It is not so much a democracy as a small tribe, with an elder acting as a chief, but nonetheless, decisions are by the village, for the village.

The peasants mourn their lot and discuss appealing to the magistrate for help, but the whole point of autonomy was so that villages would pay their taxes and stay out of the hair of magistrates who are occupied with bigger problems. Furthermore, in such a difficult time, sending men to defend every village assaulted by bandits would be spreading precious armed men thin. The villagers predict the magistrate will be deaf to their cries for good reason.

So, their elder tells them they will hire samurai.

But what samurai? All that they had was rice for a temporary job. No money. Granted, official retainers were all paid in rice anyway – but money was rising in importance very rapidly, so risking your life for some dinky little village seemed not a good idea without a monetary reward. Or, failing that, so much rice that it could be used for currency – and the villagers didn’t have that level to use here. Certainly not in this time of crisis.

So their elder tells them to go find hungry samurai.

And so it begins.

The Bad, The Apathetic, And Finally, The Good Samurai

The search itself is quite a captivating part of the film. Being peasants, they don’t have a clue what is good in a samurai, but they happen upon the film’s chief protagonist, Kambei, cutting off his samurai top knot without hesitation and having his head shaved and his clothing altered to that of a monk. Kambei, a serious Zen practitioner, passes as a monk very well, and uses his guise to trick his way into a hut to rescue a child held hostage by a thief.

This act of selfless charity defines the character, who is a wise veteran “of many losing battles,” so he claims, who eschews all ideas of glory, but who takes pity upon the village when it is pointed out to him that he is being served rice by those who would deny themselves rice and eat coarser millet instead, all for the forlorn hope that someone, anyone, would save their village.

And so, forming a debt of honor, Kambei raises his bowl to the peasants in thanks, and tells them that this rice will not go to waste.

The vast majority of the samurai presented in this part of the film are haughty, vain, prideful, and scornful of weakness, poverty, and unwanted charity. These are not who Kurosawa considers to be heroes whatsoever, and indeed they were not; they were samurai, and that is not the same thing.

Yet out of the samurai passing through the well traveled town where the peasants had gone to search, an unlikely band of seven are formed, led by Kambei himself, who will Fight Bandits For Food, but the food is just a convenient excuse. Really, it is to fight to protect the Good People from the Bad Ronin, because that is right and just, and because when push really comes to shove, it’s a more pure cause than fighting for flag, the dollar coin, or a retainer fee.

Katsushiro is a young samurai, handsome and well dressed, untested by real battle but eager to learn from a courageous and mature master like Kambei. This puts Kambei in a difficult position initially, but Kambei knows a minimum of seven will be needed, and Katsushiro’s sincerity will be a virtue.

Gorohei is an archer of some skill who becomes the second in command of the group. He assists with planning and strategy. What impresses him is Kambei’s character, for while the peasants certainly arouse some sympathy from him, it is that a man of Kambei’s wisdom and stature is willing to go this far to help them that inspires him to assist.

Shichirojo is an old friend and subordinate of Kambei’s who survived one of Kambei’s losing battles, if quite narrowly. Meeting Kambei by chance, he resumes his former role, even though his former commander tells him in all truth, this could be the fight that does them in. But loyalty takes him far, and if you are going to die, you might as well do it beside the people you choose.

Heihachi is introduced to us viewers as a samurai willing to chop wood for food. Gorohei calls his bluff about being better at chopping men… but Heihachi is certainly a samurai who will work for food. He also has a lighthearted and sensible attitude, not wanting to die nobly if there is no necessity to do so.

Kyuzo is a man of great fencing skill who easily earns Kambei’s full respect and admiration as a man devoted to nothing higher than the absolute perfection of his craft. Initially declining Kambei’s offer to join the group, he changes his mind, for if one is truly devoted to mastering his craft, the banner one fights under matters not; it is the battle itself. Or put simply, with someone like Kambei giving it a serious go, why not?

Finally, Kikuchiyo, played by the great Toshiro Mifune. is essentially a SINO – Samurai In Name Only. He has a forged pedigree to “prove” it, too. Bearing an over-sized sword (to compensate for the fact he’s not a samurai), Kambei sees right through him. Nonetheless, he pushes his way into the group, searching for acceptance from real samurai.

Kikuchiyo is a window into this world for us, the viewing audience. He is at once a buffoon, but also a tough and hardy man whose courage under fire proves second to none. It is important to note that during much of this period, samurai hailed from any background; it is only late in the period that all class mobility was rendered illegal, and enforcing this thoroughly required a more stable country that did not yet exist. At any rate, Kikuchiyo may not be a samurai by blood; if he was not born samurai, he certainly died samurai.

A reader wishing to pick up on cultural issues may want to re-read these bios and understand that each character represents an aspect of what Kurosawa believed to be heroic, with the fact they are samurai (or Samurai In Name Only) as a detail, an issue of culture and history but not character and worth as a human being.

The Gray

The most “gray” part of the film is where Kikuchiyo comes into a house in the village with the samurai lodging, draped in pieces of samurai armor that he says he found by pulling up floorboards. His peasant wisdom held that you can find the most incredible things under the floors of peasants who cling to the image of poverty and having nothing. (This pearl of wisdom actually comes up later, but it is not the point here.)

Kambei and others look at Kikuchiyo like he is wearing human hides cut from dead fellow samurai. Finally, out of a mixture of disgust and understanding that the buffoonish Kikuchiyo simply didn’t know, they explain to him that there is only one way the villagers could have such armor: by murdering traveling samurai.

This does not, however, undermine the perceived goodness of the Good People of the village whatsoever. Their cowardice, their fearfulness, and yes, even their disdain of samurai and the murdering of traveling samurai in the past, these are all absorbed by a filter of understanding and sympathy for their plight: they are weak people, banding together in a group for survival, and they are doing whatever that survival seems to require. Acting in the director’s stead, Kikuchiyo explains precisely these facts to the offended samurai.

In another scene, Kikuchiyo rings the alarm to fake a bandit attack, berating the samurai-hating villagers for running straight to the samurai for salvation. It is through his intervention that both sides come to understand that in a gray world, different people either work together, or all is reduced to ash. Stand together or be divided – with a sword.

When the daughter of one of the main villager characters falls for Katsushiro, it is the villagers, not the samurai, who are the truly outraged ones, but Kambei puts down their anger by saying that in any castle on the eve of a big battle, this is what happens. Love is part of human nature. Applaud rather than sneer. This, a very modern message, was not exactly a common message in Japanese films! But, Kurosawa put it in anyway.

Finally, when the battle is won, four samurai are dead, the villagers sing as they plant their crops, the brief romance is long forgotten, and the surviving samurai leave, reflecting that this was not a winning battle, either. It is the villagers that won, not the samurai.

What is left unsaid is two things.

1. This is the only way it could end from the start.
2. This is the only way it should end, for heroes do not fight for their own glory. They fight for the Good People.

And so they depart.

Cultural Legacy

The battles that I am glossing over were very well done and very gripping. It’s something like a horror film, except with a lack of cheap tricks like cramped places and flickering electric lighting. Both attackers and defenders suffer setbacks leading up to a climactic final battle, one where the entertainment factor is high indeed.

Those unaccustomed to the period may find the presence of firearms surprising. Although not exactly common in general, the big victors of the era got that way through the skillful adoption of gunpowder weapons from Western contacts and a budding domestic manufacturing industry. This was long forgotten – or made irrelevant – by the time of the Meiji Restoration, where samurai continually renounced the use of firearms to engage the enemy by sword alone, going to their deaths.

In this sense, Seven Samurai presents a much more “real” sense of the era, in microcosm, than modern era popular culture would give credit for. Even though it is not Kambei’s group that uses guns, their use, while some may feel is quite cowardly (an impression not exactly discouraged here), was not historically impossible in the slightest. Rare, yes. Unheard of? Not at all.

Ultimately, Seven Samurai is revered because before being anything else, it is simply a great film, with great acting, great directing, and a great story. Samurai make a great attraction, but the setting is simply the stage: the story is the human heroism at work, heroism that goes unrewarded without any legacy except the survival of the village.

But the village belongs to the villagers, not the samurai. The samurai are as if foreigners in their own country,  a transient, temporary group of warriors who, for many different reasons and in many different ways, fought and died in the innumerable, nameless battles of the era, and not just the ones chronicled in the history books.

That is actually the best description of the samurai that I can possibly give you. The advantage of watching the film is that no one has to tell you. You can just see and experience it for yourself.

That is culture.

This is a question posed to me by Andre Klein, the guy who owns the server this blog runs on and the man behind Learn Out Live. A German national, he has a family member who’s into anime, over in Germany. Clearly people watch from all over the world but, why is that?

Well, I think the first answer is, quite simply, creativity.

Generally, the first thing that strikes a person is the following effect: you are instantly transported into another world. That world may resemble the one we normally live in, and certainly resembles it more if we relate to things Japanese people regard as “normal” (such as their high school life, which is frequently portrayed in anime, even for shows watched by young adults), but creativity defines the medium.

Anime is an extremely competitive business. Anime, and its manga and novel roots as well, must fight through quite a bit of hurdles to reach the screen. More to the point, the mature, competitive Japanese anime industry demands the appearance of uniqueness to compete for fan attention.

When jaded fans look at a show with wildly different characters, setting, backgrounds, and plotlines, and they say, “Oh, that’s just like Love Hina,” they are demonstrating the sky-high expectations fans have. Granted, genres exist, and shows in genres can resemble each other quite a bit in certain respects, but we’re still drawing parallels between the upper floors of tall towers of creativity.

To compare, the Korean domestic anime and video game industry is renowned for exceptional artwork that really tends to impress at first glance. Yet, Korean domestic video games and anime tend to be systematically lacking in creativity and plot depth. This is not to criticize any particular person, and again, the size and depth of the industry in Japan is simply on a different scale and influences the outcome. Even so, when averaging out, the Korean industries simply do not match the Japanese industries in terms of creativity and plot.

As such, a lot of very nice productions have occurred as a result of collaboration between Japanese authors and producers (and voice actors, or seiyuu) and Korean animation studios.

The point being, creativity is where it starts. Creativity is what made the first anime – which used knock-off, Disney inspired drawing techniques – gripping enough to viewers to catch on.

Comparisons To “Live Action”

Live action – as in, what passes for normal TV drama and film – is a different animal. In certain senses, it has a much easier task; we relate well to fellow human beings. It is to compensate for this that anime uses the freedom of the drawn cel to engage in things like cartoon slapstick humor at a moment’s notice, or using exaggerated, manga-style effects to show us how a particular character is annoyed.

Furthermore, as a result of the sort of “special effects” required by even typical level anime, translating the spectacular content anime can use into something made for live action would be astonishingly expensive. It’d be Avatar level for your average TV drama. Japanese live action shows don’t do this, and neither would any Western shows, of course.

Having said this, I’m not really seeking to compare Japanese live action to US live action. Rather, it’s more like this:

Japanese anime tends to have much deeper plotlines and much more unique characters that American live action television and film, which gives the Western anime watcher something seemingly unique and radically different to work with.

So that is why, in simple terms, creativity in anime draws people away from live action Western content.

Now, the Japanese public has a large appetite for seeing American movie stars on the big screen, just like the rest of the world. The human factor is very compelling and important. Also, viewers get interested in what is not typical for them. There’s a lot of anime in Japan, but your Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie are just a slight bit more exotic to Japanese people than they are to Americans.

I say a slight bit more because, well, they’re not normal or typical for America, either. That would take all the fun out of it.