Movie Report: The Last Samurai (2003)

When I picked this DVD up last month at an estate sale, I said that my beautiful wife and I saw it in the theaters. Not so, gentle reader, as the barest Internet research would have led me to this post from 2004, “Lessons from The Last Samurai“, where I clearly indicate that we watched the film at home. Twenty years ago. We must have seen it on cable as I don’t think we have it already–although perhaps I should look more closely when dusting or, heaven forfend, organize something.

At any rate: Tom Cruise plays Algren, a calvary veteran who fought against a variety of Indians in the west but who is haunted by some of the things he did in the military, particularly punitive raids on Indian villages. The film starts with him, drunk, doing a presentation for Winchester Rifles at a fair. His old commanding officer finds him and has an offer for him: Come to Japan and help to train the westernizing army there. He does, but when the poorly trained and inexperienced conscripts are pressured into a battle with samurai and break and flee before them, Algren with a death wish makes a valiant stand, and instead of killing him, the warlord in charge of the samurai take him prisoner to learn what they can from him. Algren starts to appreciate the idyllic ways of the peaceful village where the samurai and their families live, but that all comes to a head when the new restored emperor is weak and lets the business interests of Japan attack the samurai with Algren’s former commanding officer leading the other side.

It’s a nice little period action film, pretty to look at, and it romanticizes the samurai way of life, but thematically, of course it does–stories like this always romanticize the past.

Here’s what I said in 2004, lessons from the film:

• An all-volunteer army is better than a conscript army. Ergo, it’s against the mock draft proposal being floated around by those who want us to fear the militarization of the Republican police state.
• Apparently, Sun Tzu was not translated into Nihongo until sometime after 1877. I mean, when you’ve got 500 men with swords and bows against two regiments with cannons and machine guns, Sun Tzu would have pointed out that narrow mountain passes that completely block in winter might present better terrain to your strengths than open fields.

In the 20 years since, I’ve read Japanese culture and history intermittently, and I appreciated some of the things that the film got correct. In the obligatory sepukku scene at the beginning, the samurai leader allows the Japanese general to commit suicide and, as they were friends, acts as the one who decapitates him after the seppukku (I was surprised to learn that happened when I read Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai). When the samurai come to Tokyo for a parley, guards harrass one and take his topknot. Which was a thing. And the samurai charging machine guns sort of happened in the Battle of Nagashino (although far earlier than the Meiji restoration).

And, yeah, the life in Japan prior to the Meiji restoration was not as pastoral as depicted in the film. But it’s a movie, not a history book, and I liked it well enough to maybe watch it again. Maybe in 20 years.