TLS article

Way of the samurai

‘A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.” In the months to come, cinema will be offering plenty of cryptic oriental wisdom like this. And it will come amid scenes of elegant dismemberment and improbable sprays of blood. Because, in the realm of action movies, samurai is all the rage.

Think of Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu in Quentin Tarantino’s samurai tribute Kill Bill, the first volume of which opens this week. In a few months, we’ll also be able to see Tom Cruise learn the way of the eastern warrior in his epic The Last Samurai, and Japanese tough guy Takeshi Kitano swapping guns for swords in his award-winning Zatoichi.

But there’s more than weaponry behind the samurai vogue. There is the samurai code of honour, bushido – “the way of the warrior”. The west, and its movies, have always had a bizarre fascination with bushido. Based on Zen and Confucian wisdom, its seven principles – courage, honesty, courtesy, honour, compassion, loyalty and complete sincerity – are almost the opposite of everything Hollywood stands for. Perhaps that’s why it appeals to elite players like Cruise, who seems to be on a personal quest to transcend his movie-star status. “Bushido is really the reason I wanted to make this film,” Cruise says of The Last Samurai. “I strongly identify with those values of honour, loyalty and passion. It’s a very powerful code; those are wonderful things to aspire to in life.”

The Last Samurai is being talked of as Cruise’s Gladiator. It is set in 1870s Japan, when the samurai’s sword-based supremacy was being undermined by firearms, and its story is tailor-made for the star. Cruise’s character is a disaffected American soldier brought over by the emperor to train the Japanese army in western warfare; instead he regains his purpose through his adoption by the samurai. Cruise trained for the part with samurai-like rigour: eight months learning swordfighting, hand-to-hand combat, horse riding and the Japanese language, and no doubt thumbing through samurai text Hagakure in his trailer.

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