Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | samurai
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November 30, 2009

Sho Kosugi, who plays the masochistic master in Ninja Assassin, played ninjas in movies through the Ninja Assassin is an entertaining film full of bloody action.The new movie "Ninja Assassin" just might spark a new wave of fascination with Asian martial arts, but instead of kung fu, the fad will be for ninjutsu, the art of the ninja warrior. The film updates the image of the silent, stealthy assassins from Japanese history, and suggests that ninja clans still exist, sending out mercenaries all over the world to kill off targets for gold. It's an enticing concept, and one that's in line with the tradition of the ninja in both Japanese history and Japanese pop-culture mythology. During my childhood, I didn't really fantasize about being a cowboy. Oh sure, I had the requisite cowboy outfit -- western hat perched cockily to one side like a young John Wayne, a real leather holster belt with a pair of shiny Mattel cap pistols hanging down my side (I tied them to my thighs with strips of leather) and a silver sheriff's star on my chest. I played cowboys and Indians like American boys did back then. But not all the time. In Japan, there was another, more romantic character that boys could play -- the ninja. They were lots cooler than cowboys. They were able to leap incredible heights over palace walls, walk silently through a sleeping castle, and noiselessly kill their prey with their samurai swords (which they wore across their backs instead of hanging on their sides) or shuriken, razor-sharp steel stars like many-sided daggers that ninja could throw with deadly accuracy. Ninjas even looked cool -- instead of fancy, bulky, multi-layered samurai outfits (or battered and sweaty cowboy hats), ninjas were clad in a simple outfit of midnight-black fabric (better to skulk around in the dark) just loose enough to allow freedom of movement in martial arts hand-to-hand combat. They covered their heads with a black hood, and only their eyes were visible through the veil. Although the ninjas were, like the cowboys of America, a romanticized icon of an earlier, "frontier-era" spirit, they also made sense for the early 1960s. They were precursors of spies in a modern world deeply divided by the Cold War. With James Bond and the Man from U.N.C.L.E. looming just around the pop-culture corner, I was ready-made for sneaking around my small yard in Tokyo, fantasizing about being a ninja.
March 17, 2009

Woodblock illustration of hara kiri, or the ritual suicide practiced in feudal Japan.The furor over bonuses given by AIG to employees after taking more than $170 billion in bailout money from the U.S. government is made all the more furious because of the sheer breathtaking scale of the cash flow. AIG paid 73 staffers more than $1 million, with one getting $6.4 and seven more getting $4. Those amounts seem so out of kilter with the state of the economy, and the fact that just months ago, the giant company was about to crash without a hand up from the government -- from us -- that it's not surprising that citizens as well as lawmakers are screaming bloody murder. But one lawmaker is screaming bloody suicide. The Washington Post (among other media) reported that Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) wanted AIG execs to commit hara kiri, or seppuku -- the traditional Japanese ritual suicide often depicted as an honorable course of action from samurai times.
Sen. Charles Grassley suggested in an Iowa City radio interview on Monday that AIG executives should take a Japanese approach toward accepting responsibility by resigning or killing themselves. "Obviously, maybe they ought to be removed," the Iowa Republican said. "But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide." Grassley spokesman Casey Mills said the senator wasn't calling for AIG executives to kill themselves, but said those who accept tax dollars and spend them on travel and bonuses do so irresponsibly.
When I first heard about this, my jaw clenched but I let it pass. Seppuku was a historical reality for centuries, after all, and it's depicted in lots of Japanese pop culture, including movies and books. It's been documented as a reflection of one of Japan's driving cultural values, shame.
December 9, 2008

Actor Keanu Reeves, who is half-Asian, will play a samurai in an upcoming move, 47 Ronin.The Hollywood news source Variety reported yesterday that Keanu Reeves, everyone's favorite hapa actor (his father is Hawai'ian-Chinese) is going to play the lead role in a samurai epic, "47 Ronin." The 47 Ronin is the celebrated 18th century story from Japanese history, of a group of masterless samurai who avenged the death of their feudal lord, or daimyo, after a year of planning and then committed seppuku, or ritual suicide, to maintain their warrior code of honor, or bushido. The story's been told a lot in Japanese movies, in variations of the title "Chushingura." The most recent remake in Japan was "47 Ronin" ("Shijushichinin no shikaku") in 1994, written and directed by Kon Ichikawa. It's cool to think that Hollywood is going to tell this story, with the the spectacle of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the star power of Reeves. Keanu Reeves played Siddhartha in the 1993 film Little Buddha.But it makes me wonder about the choice of Reeves. Yeah, he knows martial arts (and proved it in the Matrix movies), and he's part Asian. But he's not Japanese. And, hellooo, he doesn't look very Asian. When "Memoirs of a Geisha" was produced with Chinese women in the lead roles, it bothered some in the Japanese American community, including me. (It also caused a stir in China, where the women were criticized for playing Japanese roles.) Could it really have been so hard to find qualified Japanese actresses (which was the filmmakers' excuse)? I definitely get that Reeves brings a big name-brand to the samurai film so he's important. But his one previous role playing an Asian was downright surreal, and it makes me apprehensive about how this one will go.
August 23, 2004

Samurai are big in Western pop culture these days, what with Tom Cruise's hit "The Last Samurai" and of course, Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" movies.