Japanese History X: The Last Samurai

I saw The Last Samurai. I enjoyed it, I thought the fighting and battle scenes were good, and the story was told well enough, even though it's nothing new. You've seen it before in Dances With Wolves, but then I liked Dances With Wolves, so I was willing to see how this movie handled things. I could have done without the romantic angle, but of course, he's Tom Cruise, how could any woman resist him? The movie was like two and a half hours long, but it didn't feel that long to me, which is a good thing. The fighting wasn't nearly as epic as, say, Lord of the Rings, but of course it wasn't that kind of movie. They obviously made an effort to be accurate with the style and quality of fighting in the movie, and even cast Japanese actors in most of the Japanese roles, even the extras in the Japanese army. So you won't see Amy Hill or Garrett Wang as Japanese villagers. Of course, for the big battles with an army of skilled samurai, they had to cast less specifically, and it seemed as though they had hired every Asian stuntman in Hollywood to be in the samurai army. A trained eye will pick out that dude from Lethal Weapon, or Wizard from WMAC, etc. but only in the background.

Overall, I found the movie entertaining, and even though the main characters were fictional, they seemed to depict the historical setting and the politics of the day in a reasonably truthful way. Those of you with little knowledge of Japanese history may be wondering why the movie is about the Japanese government fighting Japanese samurai. Or you may not care, and maybe you'll pick up all you need to know from the movie itself. But if you're interested, here's a little background to flesh out the setting of the movie.

We think of Japan as being ruled by an Emperor. But this isn't really true in the way that we think. The first semblance of a centralized, Imperial government was established 1500 years ago, when one clan, the Yamato (They named themselves after the spaceship from Starblazers. Their English name would be Argo.), imposed control over a bunch of other clans. They didn't exactly take over the entire nation, only a collection of other clans in the central region of Japan, but it was the first centralized government in Japan, which had previously been a bunch of rival clans. The Yamato and their Emperor ruled for like 400 years, growing their rule and establishing some of the benefits of a centralized government, such as art, culture, and science. The first Emperor of Japan was both the clan leader and a religious leader. Thus, the Emperors have always had something of a divine mandate to rule, which was passed down the bloodline. Eventually, the Yamato ruled over the majority of Japan.

However, their rule was not the sort of strong, central government we usually think of when we imagine an Imperial nation. There was no national militia, for example. In many ways the Imperial central government functioned more like a United Nations than a ruling force, relying upon a consensus among loyal clans who would contribute their own armed forces when the Emperor needed them, say, to quell dissenting clans, or to conquer unconquered territories.

Meanwhile, the influence and power of the aristocracy, families descended from the clan leaders, was growing. That's politics. And as the government bureaucracy grew and the aristocrats became more consumed with titles and privilege, the government began to dissolve under its own weight. Matters of local government and protection were increasingly taken care of by wealthy regional families, landowners. Nowadays, being a landowner just means that you're rich, and can exploit poorer people who work or use your land. Back then, it meant that you were also a strong warrior family, because a paper deed don't mean shit when your neighbors ride up on you with swords and arrows. Regional clans were still powerful and war between the clans was common, especially as the central bureaucracy became bogged down by politics and gradually became ineffectual. Eventually, the Yamato Emperor ruled in name only.

Some 800 or 900 years ago, a few centuries after Japan became a decentralized mass of warring clans, one clan became more powerful than the others, and their leader was given the title of Shogun, military leader of the nation. This was when the feudal system became established. The various regional warlords ruled their territories while paying tribute to the Shogun, the most powerful clan, who ruled the nation as a whole.

Socially, Japan was a very stratified society. There were aristocrats, the clan leaders and their elite samurai landowning families, and there were peasants. The samurai were like knights in Europe, wealthy, powerful landowners of noble lineage. As nobles, they had special privileges, and they passed their titles down from one generation to the next. One could only be a samurai if one were born to the right family. They had the best weapons and armor, and commanded armies of common soldiers, the Bushi.

Over the centuries, much fighting occurred and the Shogunate changed hands a few times as, through the fighting, different clans claimed power over the other clans and thus the office of Shogun. The Yamato family even tried to take back the reins of power, but failed. As the fighting continued, Japan became more and more fragmented as local warlords grabbed their piece of the pie and the central government was ignored. In the mid-1500s, Europeans established contact with Japan and began trading. This is when guns were introduced to Japan.

By the late 1500s, Nobunaga, a warlord, began building up military power with a plan to take over the Shogunate and truly unify Japan under one powerful ruler. This was Nobunaga's Ambition. (Hence the title of the video game, the goal of which is to conquer the many warring clans of Japan and unify the country.) Although Nobunaga died before his dream could be realized, and ally of his, Ieyasu Tokugawa, continued where he left off and eventually succeeded in unifying the nation. We're talking the year 1600 here. You may recognize Tokugawa's name if you've read Lone Wolf and Cub. Tokugawa's clan held the Shogunate for the next two and a half centuries, and it was during this time that Lone Wolf and Cub took place.

So to recap, we've got the Yamato emperors from about 500 AD to 900 AD, then things break down for a couple of centuries. Then the Shogunate is established in about 1200 AD, as Japan is carved up by feudal lords. Then in 1600, Tokugawa takes the reins, and that's when everything changed.

The Tokugawa Shogunate was powerful, and set up a system where those loyal to him would get more land and influence. And he could redistribute land and power at will. But in return for their enforced loyalty, the warlords had direct control over their own lands. They restricted trade with Europe, adopting a seclusionist policy. They established a more rigid class system, with the samurai families at the top. They kept peace for centuries. And all this time, there was still an Emperor, a figurehead with no real power. Extended peace meant economic development, the growth of the middle class, and the change of the warrior class into a class of artisans and cultured bureaucrats. Then came the warships.

In the mid 1800s, Commodore Matthew Perry* sailed his warships to Japan to force them to trade with the West. Previous attempts had been rebuffed, but Perry's show of military might forced the Tokugawa Shogunate to give in. The US didn't actually take over the country as such, but let's just say that the conditions of trade were very, very favorable to the West. The figurehead Emperor had come out against the trade agreement. Many clans were also against it, and the truth is the Tokugawa were against it too, but had no choice. Being forced to accept this Western incursion made the Tokugawa look weak.

Rival clans took advantage of the increased trade with the West to build and modernize their own military forces. Unified behind the name of the Emperor, the rivals mounted a coup and ousted the Tokugawa. They had the help of Westerners who regarded the Tokugawa with mistrust. The Westerners knew that, though they were forced to comply, the Tokugawa would have resisted the efforts of the Europeans and Americans to exploit Japan, given the chance. And so they helped the rebels who wanted to overthrow the Tokugawa. These rebels claimed that they were overthrowing the Shogun in order to restore the emperor to the throne. This movement was known as the Meiji Restoration (Meiji was the name of the figurehead Emperor, who was only a boy at the time.) There were also businessmen whose economic interests would be served by getting rid of the Shogunate and opening Japan to increased trade with the West. The Imperial Meiji government became the new central government of Japan. The Shogunate was abolished and a new, more westernized bureaucracy was put in place.

Part of the reason for the conflict between the Meiji government and the old-line samurai clans was the need for a national military force. It was recognized that Western military power was the factor that forced the Tokugawa to accept a bad trade treaty, and the Japanese realized that a strong military would be necessary in order for Japan to hold its own on an international level. But in the feudal Tokugawa system, the clans each had their own military forces. And even then, after the fall of the Tokugawa, there were powerful clans with strong rivalries against each other.

The Meiji government dismantled the feudal Tokugawa system, which for centuries had been paying a stipend to the noble samurai families. The Meiji put a stop to that, and outlawed their wearing their swords (except for those actually serving in the new, westernized, Meiji national military, of course). This was the last straw, and the samurai who were loyal to the old way of life mounted an uprising against the new, modern army.

"The Last Samurai" of the movie's title were these samurai, who resisted the new, Westernized government. Tom Cruise plays Captain Algren, a military advisor hired by one of the bureaucrats pulling the strings of the puppet Emperor. Algren is paid to help train the new Meiji army and build them into a modern military force, battling the last samurai rebellion. Then he gets captured by some samurai and learns the depth of their honor and the beauty of their vanishing way of life.

One of the interesting things about Japan's history is that we (or at least I) think of Japan as being a historically imperial nation, ruled by an emperor of a centralized government for much of its history, much as China was. This is enforced by the reverence of the emperor which America learned of during WWII. But as you can see in my little rundown of Japan's history, they weren't really ruled by an emperor for most of their recorded history. Maybe half a millennium way back when, and even then it wasn't over the whole nation, just over the clans of the central region. And the emperor at that time didn't have a strong central government the way China, or even Palpatine, had.

The first Emperor was both a clan leader and a religious leader, so ever since the beginning there has been a mythology of divine mandate with the Emperor. For this reason, I believe, there was always an Emperor even though for most of Japan's history he has been mostly a figurehead. But it really wasn't until late in the Tokugawa era, I think it was the 1800s, that the historic religious reverence of the Emperor was unearthed, and after the Meiji Restoration it was promoted heavily through concerted propaganda efforts. So even though it has historic roots, the whole worship of the Emperor is actually a somewhat more recent movement.

Even today, Japan still has an Emperor, who is still a figurehead. Japan has a democratic government with an elected Prime Minister and parliament, though their government is dominated strongly by one party.

© 2004 Jeffrey P. Hui

*Insert obvious Friends reference here.