--- Elizabeth Chase <
lizzirrd@...> wrote:
Elizabeth--
Please understand that some people (this means YOU,
Tony) would find fault with just about any movie. I
know he finds fault with Taiga Drama at times. But
excellent point about not "educating". We'll try to
get some comments on that.
> For example: the seppuku of General Hasagawa was
> not accurate from a 'formal seppuku' reference
> point, but what was the historical
> ritual during/after battle?
If this were a Sengoku battle, I could simply say
"there were no *set* rituals yet", but being as it's
post Tokugawa and all those fun Bushido rules had been
codified, there in fact *were* rules about how to do
these sorts of things. I'm not the slightest bit of an
Edo period expert, so I couldn't help you with the
details, alas. But I would think that most of the
*rules* didn't apply in battlefield situations--there
had been perilously few battles in the previous 250
years for the situation to come up.
Your description of flaws you observed sounds fine to
me, given that even though this was on a battlefield,
the customs of the time would dictate certain
etiquette, possibly.
> Armor: I don't know from squat, and would love to
> learn. Yes, I've read Tony's pages. My questions
> are these, so far: how
> impoverished was the samurai class by the Meiji
> period; hadn't the shogunate been defunct by around
> twenty years by the time frame
> of the movie; and how many generations might a suit
> of armor last?
Taken care of, it could last quite a long time. As for
how impoverished were they? Well, there were rich
samurai, and poor ones. The Shogunate doesn't enter
into this, since as you point out it was defunct for 2
decades, so I'm not sure where you are going with that
question. But while there are many tales of samurai
selling their swords to eat, or daimyo letting their
retainers go at the end of the Edo period, there were
also Daimyo who remained wealthy. The Daimyo of the
Choshu han let many of his retainers go under the
pretext of poverty, but with the added intention of
providing a marauding disturbance for the Shogunate to
deal with.
I want to
> know the specific differences between history,
> tradition, and 'dramatic
> license.
>
> Lastly, a challenge: I know it is easy to be an
> armchair jockey or quarterback..... and it is
> possible to gain a position on a
> film production crew as a technical advisor.....
> instead of complaining, how about being pro-active
> and get involved in the
> process?
I think Tony's done that.
Bear with me, it's been a while since I've seen it. As
Kitsuno has said, it's watchable to me, if I suspend
historical knowledge and watch it as a story taking
place somewhere that sort of looks like Japan.
Main issues I had:
1. Samurai didn't despise guns. They used them very
effectively 300 years before the events in the movie
supposedly take place. Suggesting otherwise makes the
movie romantic, but kills any semblence of reality.
2. Katsumoto, being a Daimyo, should have lived a
little better than in some remote mountain village. It
played more into the "Dances with Samurai" theme for
him to do so.
3. The ninja attack was pure Hollywood. It was only
there because any Hollywood samurai movie has got to
have a ninja attack, right?
4. Gaijin = no meet Emperor. That was pure silliness.
5. Katsumoto is LOOSELY based on Saigo Takamori. As
in, he was the leader of a group of disgruntled, armed
Samurai who took umbrage with being deprived of their
status. That's about the extent.
6. MOST IMPORTANT POINT: Ahlgren's
drunkenness--deplorable. No self-respecting member of
the 7th Cavalry would fail to hold their liquor like
that. I should know--I've been in the 7th twice! We
were a hard-drinking group, for sure--Ahlgren would
have wilted like a pansy.
I'll probably end up watching it again, and I'll be
able to talk about some more. I actually liked the
movie, but then again, I had convinced myself it took
place on another planet.
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