[lit-ideas] The Twilight Samurai
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:54:16 -0800
Last night I watched The Twilight Samurai. It is a 2002 movie directed by
Joji Yamada. It was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film
and several in the cast were nominated for awards in Japan. It won the
award for best film by the Japanese Academy. Knowing all this one might
suspect it was probably a good film and it was.
It is not the typical Samurai film. Sebei Iguchi was highly trained in an
excellent dojo but he doesn't want to fight any more and so denies the
training saying he merely watched a few classes. He wants the quiet life of
a farmer and is content with being in one of the lowest classes of Samurai,
a 50 koro Samurai. He must do piece work to make ends meet. His wife died
and he is caring for his two small daughters and his senile mother, but he
is happy doing that. He loves working his little farm and watching his
daughters grow.
Iguchi wasn't able to marry the woman he really loved, Tomoe, because his
class wasn't high enough; so she was married off to a 400 Koro Samurai (I
might be remembering these numbers and Koro a bit wrong; so I'm fair game
for quibblers here). This 400 Koro beat Tomoe and her brother sought and
obtained a divorce for her. The brutish 400 Koro Samurai challenges the
brother to a duel, but Iguchi steps in to fight in his place. He has been
warned by a superior that dueling is prohibited; so he fights the 400 Koro
Samurai with a practice stick and beats him soundly. He urges everyone to
keep quiet and not tell anyone what happened but word gets around.
There is more footage of farm life and Iguchi's simple job but there is a
war and one side is defeated. The loser and all his Samurai are sentenced
to commit hari kari, but one of them is a rebel, Zenemon Yogo, a top sword,
and a top-paid Samurai, I forget how many Koro, maybe 1400. He said that if
anyone wants him dead they had better send someone in to kill him. So the
village sends in their top sword and Yogo easily kills him; so what can they
do. Then someone remembers Sebei Iguchi and they check his history and find
that he was actually an instructor at the famous dojo where he claimed only
to have watched a few classes.
Iguchi tries to refuse the order to go kill Yogo. He says he is out of
practice which is true, but he can't get out of it; so he is half convinced
he will be killed and orders his affairs much as Marshal Will Kane did in
High Noon. The scene where Iguchi enters the darkened house of Zenemon Yogo
to fight him is interesting. Yogo is drunk and wants to talk; so Iguchi
sits down and they talk. Yogo has a background similar to Iguchis but Yogo
is a hot-head and a heavy drinker so he got in a lot of fights and a lot of
trouble. Iguchi then opens up about himself and confides that the funeral
of his wife broke him financially. He even had to sell his sword. At which
Yogo looks down at his sword and says, "you came to kill me with a bamboo
sword? You think so little of my skill? You came to insult me? Let's
fight!"
"No, no," Iguchi says, hoping to get out of this mess without having to
fight Yogo. "He tells Yogo he brought his short sword and that one is
real."
"Ah, you hoped to kill me with a trick? I'm even more insulted."
And so they fight. Had Yogo been sober and out in the open he would have
killed Iguchi, but after cutting him up a bit, his long sword gets hung up
on a ceiling beam and Iguchi stabs him with his short sword and so he wins
and becomes a local hero.
But the last part, what happens after this victory is narrated by his
daughter who we see as Middle Aged. She tells us her father lived for only
three more years and was killed by a bullet in a war. Tomoe who had become
their mother raised them and saw them well married and she eventually died
as well. She says that everyone who knew Iguchi said he was unlucky, but
she didn't think so. He loved his farm and his daughters and he eventually
got the beautiful Tomoe for his wife. Even though he didn't have a long
life, it was a very good one and Iguchi considered himself a lucky man, the
daughter tells us from the carriage she leaves the cemetery in. She is
obviously a wealthyupper-class lady.
A commentator on IMDb said this was a Samurai film Jane Austen would enjoy.
I discovered no lessons in this film about Peace but I appreciated Iguchi's
love of the simple life. However, I was probably more like the Samurai
Iguchi killed than Iguchi himself. Someone accuses me of being confused,
sloppy, etc., and I draw my sword and am ready to fight. However, I have no
killer-instinct and when an opponent weak and bleeding from several wounds
says " but Dispensationalism, Modern or otherwise, is not about Darby's
Theology, your original claim," I am almost ready to let him escape with
that. However he goes on more provocatively about World War One; so I must
stick him one more time - some place where he won't die - some new place for
him to bleed just a little.
Actually what I wrote wasn't what was claimed. I wrote as an illustration
(why do people have so much trouble with my illustrations and leave my main
arguments alone?) "Why, some of us might ask, don't the Peace Mystics
examine the history of Britain (and the U.S. for that matter) after the
Great War to see how their Peace Mysticism worked out? But they don't.
They reminded me of Dispensationalists. Dispensationalists are Christians
who believe in the theology promulgated by Darby whom they have never heard
of because they don't read history. Why read history when the Lord is going
to return any day now. I have a book describing all the major times these
Darbyites went up to the mountain (so to speak) to wait. And they're still
doing it as the Left Behind series testifies. A lot of history has been
written describing this phenomenon, but they don't read it. Neither it
seems do the Peace Mystics read about the great Peace-Mystic enterprise in
Britain after World War One. " What I write here is true. Darbyites are
today call Premillennial Dispensationalists. They call themselves that -
Dispensationalists for short. And any number of Premillennial
Dispensationalists have gone up to the mountain to await the rapture. I've
known many of them.
This note has gotten somewhat long so I'm going to address Phil Enns
criticism of one of my Peace-Mystic World War One notes in another note.
Lawrence Helm
San Jacinto
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