In 2019, to celebrate the ushering in of the Reiwa Era, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party commissioned Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano to depict Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as a samurai. While these extremes (loyalty and honor until death, or capture) aren’t as present in the myth of the samurai that has ingrained itself into modern ultranationalist circles, they manifest in different yet still insidious ways. An easy example of how the code influenced Imperial Japan’s military would be the kamikaze pilots, officially known as the Tokubetsu Kōgekitai. The “modern” Bushido code - or rather, the interpretation of the Bushido code coined in the 1900s by Inazō Nitobe - was utilized in, and thus deeply ingrained into, Japanese military culture. Shots from Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai And honor, tradition, and courage, above all else, are what make the samurai.Įxcept that wasn’t always the belief, it wasn’t what Kurosawa bought whole cloth, and none of the message can be untangled from how center- and alt-right politicians in modern Japan talk about “the code” today. These are what make us.” He rallies his men with this reminder of what comprises the belief of the samurai: They will die for their country, they will die for their people, but doing so will bring them honor. “We will face death and defend our home,” Shimura, the Lord of Tsushima, says within the first few minutes of the game. Ghost of Tsushima is part of that lineage, packing in action and drama to echo Kurosawa’s legacy. George Lucas turned to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress in preparation for Star Wars he’d eventually repay Kurosawa by helping to produce his surreal drama Dreams. Or even A Fistful of Dollars, a Western epic that cleaved so closely to Kurosawa’s Yojimbo that director Sergio Leone ended up in a lawsuit with Toho Productions over rights issues. You can see this keenly in Western cinema through films like The Magnificent Seven, whose narrative was largely inspired by Seven Samurai. His films endure today, and not just through critical preservation since breaking through to the West, his visual ideas and themes have become fodder for reinterpretation. In works like Drunken Angel, The Quiet Duel, or his 1944 propaganda film The Most Beautiful, Kurosawa tackles the interpersonal struggles of characters dealing with sickness, alcoholism, and other challenges. But he wasn’t just a samurai stylist: Many of the director’s films frame themselves around a central conflict of personal ideology in the face of violence that often goes without answer - and not always through the lives of samurai. Whether intentional or not, Kurosawa became the face of Japanese film in the critical circles of the 1950s. Opinions of the director in Japan are largely mixed criticism ranges from the discussion of his family background coming from generations of samurai to accusations of pandering to Western audiences. Kurosawa earned a reputation for samurai films as he worked steadily from 1943 to 1993. The conversation surrounding samurai did not begin or end with Kurosawa’s films, as Japan’s current political forces continue to reinterpret history for their own benefit. More specifically, he noted that Seven Samurai, one of Kurosawa’s most well-known works, defined Fox’s “concept of what a samurai is.” All of this work went toward the hope that players would “experience the game in a way as close to the source material as possible.”īut in embracing “Kurosawa” as an eponymous style for samurai adventures, the creatives behind Ghost of Tsushima enter into an arena of identity and cultural understanding that they never grapple with. At Entertainment Weekly, Fox explained how his team at Sucker Punch Productions suggested that the influence ran broadly, including the playable black-and-white “Kurosawa Mode” and even in picking a title. “We really wanted to pay respect to the fact that this game is so totally inspired by the work of this master,” director Nate Fox said in a recent interview with IndieWire. The artists behind the game have an equally impeccable reference point for the visuals: the works of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Standoffs take advantage of perspective and a wide field of view to frame both the samurai and his opponent in something that, more often than not, feels truly cinematic. As he traverses Tsushima, our hero fights back the invading Mongolian army to protect his people, and wrestles with the tenets of the Bushido code. There we find Jin, the protagonist, ruminating on how he will die for his country. Ghost of Tsushima opens with a grand wide shot of samurai, adorned with impressively detailed suits of armor, sitting atop their horses.
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