The Twilight Samurai
January 16, 2005
Study traditional Japanese film history and you commonly come across two categories, the period drama (Jidai-Geki), and the more modern family situated drama (Shomin-Geki), both of which usually feature a strong male figure in some sort of dilemma, personal or physical. Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi liked to stage elaborately detailed Jidai-Geki, but their quieter, and some would argue, better work was in the immediate post-war Japan of the Shomin-Geki, where downtrodden father figures would come to symbolize the continuing struggle of a country devastated by war, trying mightily to rebuild from the ground up. The master, however, of the Shomin-Geki was Yasujiro Ozu, a director whose nearly every film, dating back to his little seen silent comedies, revolves around the traditional Japanese family structure adapting to modernity, and it can be said that any modern day Japanese film that chooses to situate itself within the realm of the family drama, especially a slow-moving study in formalism and professionalism, owes a bit of debt to the masterpieces of Ozu. None more so than Yoji Yamada’s gloriously old fashioned “The Twilight Samurai”, a 2002 period drama now released on DVD, that is deceptively aligned with the recreation of the Kurosawa school of Shomin-Geki, but is in fact slightly in favor of an Ozuian retrospective in fatherly responsibility and devotion. In a national cinema that loves it’s legendary fathers, this masterwork of uncommon power and beauty, a film that won 12 Japanese Academy Awards, and the prestigious Kinema Junpo Best Film prize, pays tribute to the best of both worlds, and it does so with precision and heart.
The balancing of modernism and traditionalism in “The Twilight Samurai”, a loving drama about a poor, pacifist Samurai struggling to raise his young daughters after the death of his wife, is so seamless because the films director, 74-year-old Yoji Yamada, is a veteran of the Japanese studio system, and worked in the glory days of Kurosawa and Ozu, starting at Ozu’s legendary Shochiku studio in 1954. Undoubtedly influenced by the great masters, Yamada, in his 77th film, has fashioned an introspective Samurai tale with little violence, yet is intent on suggesting- in the dangerous days before, and in the beginning of the Meiji Restoration- how dangerous and unglamorous the life of the usually revered Samurai could be. Hiroyuki Sanada stars as Seibei Iguchi, a poor, midlevel swordsman who is reeling from the sudden death of his wife, and is left in ruins at the expenses of her elaborate funeral. Raising his adorable and beloved daughters, 5 and 10 years old, Seibei exhausts himself as sole provider, which leaves him in a neglectful state in his personal hygiene, something that bothers his superior clan masters. When a friend suggests he marry an old childhood friend, Tomoe (Rie Miyazawa), Seibei blushes and shrugs it off; life for him now has little room for a new marriage, even if it seems like the perfect situation to cure his troubles.
The plot to “The Twilight Samurai” sets up the duel troubles in Seibei’s life perfectly, and forms a character that is proud in his Samurai status, but wants nothing more than to raise his daughters in peace, and maybe tend to a piece of land. This is where the blend between tradition and modernism (much like the introduction of guns to the Japanese society during the Meiji period) is at its most observant. Tradition would have it that the proud Samurai would gladly accept a new wife so he could better focus on his duties as a village leader, but modernism could have it that Seibei’s pacifist leanings (he fights an enemy with a wooden sword, as to not kill him) and love for his family is all part of a growth in Japanese society away from the days of feudalism and Samurai power towards a regimented family structure. The film is gorgeous in its period details, and the two sword fights are choreographed with much attention and movement within the frame, but I think the heart of the story, what ultimately has you in tears, especially in the lovely and sad epilogue, is Seibei’s reluctance to risk his life for his traditions (the Bushido code that a Samurai will willingly die for his masters) and his reversal in ideology when responsibility and the well being of his daughters is challenged. His fellow Samurai think he’s strange, and his friend thinks he’s stubborn, but we know, deep down, that Seibei is simply a good father, who would have fit in well next to Takashi Shimura in a Kurosawa Samurai epic, or Chishu Ryu in an Ozu family drama. In the glorious annals of Japanese film history, “The Twilight Samurai” fits in perfectly well too, and in due time, will be a classic in its own right.
“The Twilight Samurai” has been released on DVD by Empire Pictures with interviews with director Yoji Yamada and lead actor Hiroyuki Sanada.
by Adam Suraf