Lodge in one’s heart, SAMURAI SPIRIT
The movie “Last Samurai” was wildly enthusiastic over not only Japan, but also in countries those literally never shared norms of Japanese Samurai spirit. This movie was first released in 2003, and got an academy award of the year. Basically, the story takes place in Japan in the Meiji period (which refers to 1868~1912 in dominical year), years of Westernization for Japan, and the old notion of “Bushido” (Religion of Samurais) was diminishing. To drill Japanese warriors how to fight in the Western style, U.S. captain, Nathan Algren land in Japan. Although he was cease to his life from his experience of the Indian Wars, he recovered himself from meeting Katumoto Moritugu, a Japanese warrior who was resisting to the Japanese commander because he hoped Japan to keep “Bushido”, the Japanese way of living, not Westernized. Living in Japanese society, which kept Samurai spirit, Bushido, Algren started to become profoundly impressed with the lifestyle of samurai.
To start with, it is essential to talk about fundamental ideas about “Bushido”. As Nitobe mentioned, Bushido is “The soul of Japan: an exposition of Japanese thoughts”.[1] First of all, in samurai society, their esthetics are thought that regulations are not actually considered important, perhaps morality is. Also one of the important aspects of Bushido is that this is extremely altruism. On the other hand, many sociologists claim that the world we live in right now is more of egoistic and the world with the right of the strongest. One of the main aims of releasing the Last Samurai in Hollywood, not in Japan, was to deny the world with those notions.
As I mentioned before, this typical Japanese background movie was released in Hollywood. Therefore, people who knew nothing about Japanese samurai spirit and ritual practices in western world were able to come into the world of samurai. A doubtful point is, was it proper to promote Tom Cruise as a main character? In my opinion, this is one of the issue which “performativity” could answer as well as the positive effect of using mass media to globalize the religion of those that aren’t generally known. Most likely Tom Cruise is not a follower of the “Bushido spirit”, but he was chosen to act just as he originally believed in that religion. Choosing a first rate movie star who is from the western country, there is a dramatic effect of spreading “Bushido” worldwide. Of course, this is only done because of the development of the mass media. Like Pradip mentioned, “There are positive effects and demerits when using religion in media”[2], but in the case of “Last Samurai” there were more of the benefits, because the message that desire altruistic and cooperative world in this movie is the goal worldwide, and by using media, this message is delivered to every major part of the world.
As a Japanese, I would also like to emphasize the importance of Bushido and try to act altruistic and share moral values throughout one’s life.
