The Hidden Blade

This evening is blessed by the pleasant surprise of "The Hidden Blade", a Japanese movie on samurai's culture. Here is the trailer from YouTube.

The Hidden Blade is the second movie in Yamada Yoji's samurai trilogy. It came out in 2004 after the highly successful "Samurai Twilight". The story depicted the confusion and struggle a samurai hero went through in choosing between friendship and fulfilling his duty to his senior squire. Women appear as domestic house-makers, geishas and sexualized object in HB, as in most samurai's movies (the adorable Takako Matsu was the leading actress in this movie !) But there is an extraordinary sense of femininity exhibited in these women's day-to-day activities. They were born worthless in Tokugawa feudalism, but they are hard-working, demure,virtuous, and above all, simply stunning in their Kimonos with zori. In retrospect, the beautiful skin textures shared by these women who belong to the lower castes ( for example, Takako was the daughter of a farmer and a bondservant to Katagiri's family) seem unrealistic and phony. But the tempting presentation of these female figures is very irresistible even to a woman like me.

The movie also explores the identity struggle during the transitional period among the Bakufu samurais. The introduction of western science and the technology left took place in the castles where established samurais were required to learn how to operate cannons and gunpowders. The cultural clash between Western military science and samurai tradition is amplified in the plot where Hazama–Katagiri's best friend–was killed not by a blade, but a rifle. Katagiri's condolence before Hazama's corpse sums up everything: "as a samurai, I know you would rather die under a blade than a gun."

Ritual suicides in the form of harakiri (disembowelment) are documented and mocked in Kobayashi's timeless work, but this movie adds another dimension into the overall framework of death honor. The highest form of death honor a samurai can receive is through harakiri, if not, at least he should die under a blade, the traditional form of weapon inherited in the Japanese samurai culture. To be killed by a foreign weapon destroys a samurai. The intrusion of Western science desecrates the system of death honor for samurai. My guess is that ritual suicides is rendered incomprehensible and irrational under a foreign eye, established through the use of weapons and tools. Interestingly, there is not a trace of "foreigners" throughout the movie and the foreign invasion of the Japanese samurai culture was embodied by technology. In a limited sense, Western technology obliterates ritual suicides through military conduit. This is a core theme circulated in the film.

Also read the first half of "River Town" by Peter Hessler. Review is forthcoming.