Film Review: Twilight Samurai

Released in 2002, Twilight Samurai is a narrative from the point of view of the samurai's now adult daughter. It is a no frills, no bells and horns, etc. movie, with sequences worthy of the reality that samurais lived, especially as the shogunate ended. There is a healthy old school courting sub-plot that adds more reality to the movie instead of being a romantic distraction some movies provide for pure entertainment.

Thought there is a romantic sequence between the widowed samurai and a prospective mate, the movie deals with the everyday toil of daily life in a feudal society where the once powerful samurai are becoming a shadow of their own selves. The samurai, Seibei Iguchi, besides working for the shogunate/clan has to take odd jobs in order to make ends meet. The glory of the fight is no longer in him as he is called upon to kill a renegade samurai from the same clan that has brought dishonor to them. He is given a "choice" (read do it or be yourself disgraced) to kill the samurai who others that have been sent he has killed. Seibei's specialty is the use of the short sword (the one samurais are to use for seppuku/hari-kari). This choice is interesting since the renegade samurai is holed up in his house (kind of hard to wield a long sword in close quarter combat). The combat scene itself is nothing like one envisions in the legends one reads of this period. He does survive the fight and lives shortly ever after with his new love.

In short, this movie is the antithesis of The Last Samurai. Short of showing movie clips of both movies, I would choose to show clips of Twilight Samurai to students and compare and contrast what the students are being taught and what they are seeing. Needless to say, I would do this with the understanding that these are the end of days of the samurai and the beginning of modernization in Japan.