'The Last Samurai' distorts Japan's transition to modernity

By PAUL DUNSCOMB
Daily News correspondent

from: http://www.adn.com/life/story/4509995p-4487543c.html

(Published: December 12, 2003)

COMMENT: The film doesn't follow the facts.

Next year is the 150th anniversary of opening relations between the United States and Japan. This eventful, troubled relationship has been frequently made more so by the ignorance of Americans about Japan.

This is regrettable for Alaskans because the Japanese are not simply the residents of a distant land but our friends and neighbors. As a specialist on modern Japan teaching East Asian history at the University of Alaska Anchorage, I awaited the opening of the new Tom Cruise vehicle "The Last Samurai" with dread. I didn't care so much about the inevitable flood of inaccuracy (cherry blossoms in late May; I don't think so) as I was concerned that the Japan I saw depicted might have little connection to any Japan I know, historically or today.

And so it proved. The filmmakers, no less than the Tom Cruise character, feel the need to expiate America's sins at the price of several thousand Japanese lives. To do so they've create a mythical Japan and utterly distorted the experience of Japan's transition to modernity. The three greatest distortions are that it was the force of evil global capital that destroyed the samurai, that the Japanese were naturally deferential to the authority of the samurai and, finally, that the end of the samurai class is to be regretted.

It was the Japanese who transformed Japan into the first non-Western "modern" nation and engineered the destruction of the samurai class. By 1876, the government (dominated by former samurai) abolished the last of their traditional privileges: the exclusivity of office holding, the right to wear swords and, most importantly, the commuting of samurai stipends (which had allowed them to exist as a parasite class for over 250 years) into one-time bond issues.

It was this most of all that inspired numerous samurai revolts from 1875. If the character Katsumoto, played by Watanabe Ken, has an analog it would be Saigo Takamori. Saigo was a member of the small group that overthrew the Shogun in 1868 and began the transformation of Japan. He left the government in 1874 after losing a dispute about whether Japan should compel Korea to recognize the new government by force (Saigo was in favor).

As the most prestigious opposition figure, disgruntled samurai looked to Saigo to lead them. In 1877, he agreed and, heading an army of 50,000 ex-samurai, left his home in southern Kyushu to "chastise" the government in Tokyo (not the other way round, as the movie would have it). The Satsuma Rebellion of 1877-78 was a vitally important event for the victory of the new peasant conscript army (trained by the French, led by the Japanese) proved not merely that the Meiji government would endure but that the new society would be the property of all Japanese.

Japan's "commoners" were hardly the meek, submissive recipients of authority that the filmmakers depict. During Japan's "warring states" period, 1467 to 1568, leagues of peasants and townsmen willingly asserted their rights through force. Especially in the 20th century, the citizens of Japan have been ready to protest government policies they did not approve of, from demanding the rejection of the "humiliating" peace treaty ending the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 to protesting renewal of the U.S.-Japan security treaty in 1960.

So why are filmmakers trying to elicit our sympathy for a privileged social elite? America has its flaws, but our advocacy of individual freedom and democracy is not among them. It was that aspect of American society that most attracted another ex-samurai, Fukuzawa Yukichi, the greatest popularizer of Western things in Japan. Inspired by Lincoln, Fukuzawa specifically rejected Confucian notions of social hierarchy when he proclaimed, "Heaven puts no man above or below another man.''

Paul Dunscomb teaches East Asian history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.