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Today's
Stories
April 10 / 12, 2004
Tariq Ali
Iraqi
Resistance: a New Phase
April 9, 2004
Robert Fisk
This
War's Simple Truth: Iraqis Do Not Want Us
John L. Hess
The Non-Confessions
of a Warrior Princess: Condi on the Stand
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Condoleezza's Condescensions
Christopher Brauchli
Holes in the Sky: Bush's Crazed Missile Defense Plan
Don Santina
Forget the Alamo!: Glorifying the Fight for Slavery in Texas
William S. Lind
The 4G Warfare Seminar, Cont.
Bill Christison
9/11
Commission is Bush's New Lapdog
Website of the Day
What We've Done to Fallujah
April 8, 2004
Wayne Madsen
Rice
(and the Record) Proves It: Bush Knew, But Failed to Act
Kurt Nimmo
Will
Bush Flatten Fallajuh?
Patrick Cockburn
Guided
Missile; Misguided War
Laura Flanders
Steamed
Rice
Larry Everest
What Condi Rice is Hiding
Adam Federman
Sacred Capitalism Hits Russia
M. Junaid Alam
The Iraqi Intifada Begins
Norman Solomon
The Quest for a Monopoly on Violence
Douglas Valentine
Echoes
of Vietnam: Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq
Website of the Day
Xispas: Chicano Art, Culture and Politics
April 7, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Those
Pulitzers!
Sen. Robert Byrd
Deeper
into the Mouth of Hell: We Must Find the Exit from Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Tet
in Iraq: Closer to the Cosmic Disaster?
Patrick Cockburn
Battles
Across Iraq: US Death Toll Mounts
Kathy Kelly
Pacification: Worth the Price?
Sonali Kolhatkar
What Are You Doing About Afghanistan?
Rahul Mahajan
Report from Baghdad: Opening the Gates of Hell
Robert Fisk
US Airlifts Saddam to Qatar
Mike Whitney
America Out of Iraq, Now!
Sam Hamod
Bush, Pandora's Box and the Tiger
April 6, 2004
C.G. Estabrook
Mercenaries
and Occupiers
William Blum
The Anti-Empire
Report: the Israel Lobby
Col. Dan Smith
The
Language of Disbelief: 1.3 Billion Still Live in War Zones
Dr. Bulent Gokay
The Coming Islamic Republic of Iraq?
Lynn Landes
Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote; Machines Do
Sheila Samples
What Would Royko Write?
Jason Leopold
Condi's Blind Spot: Rice Never Mentioned al-Qaeda
Mickey Z.
A Reality Show with No End in Sight
Robert Fisk
Iraq on the Brink of Anarchy
April 5, 2004
John Farrell
Lessons
from El Salvador and Iraq
Robert Fisk
Bloodbath
a Bad Omen for Bush
Gary Leupp
Shiites Say No: Another "Nightmare
Scenario"
April 3 / 4, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God
Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine
Frederick B. Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer
Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney
Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard
Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld
Quiz
Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry Quandary
Stephen Gowans
Communists
for Capitalism?
Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
Turn ON
Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?
Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp
Website of the Weekend
Missing
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez del Solar
A Year
Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The Illegal
Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated US and
International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
March 30, 2004
William S. Lind
An Occurrence
in Pakistan: the Battle That Wasn't
Ron Jacobs
Assassinations, Hate Mail &
Justice
Mickey Z.
Tommy Boy Friedman Does "Imagine"
Neve Gordon
Strategic Motives of the Yassin Assassination
Mark Scaramella
The Founding Scam: Insider Trading is the American Way
John Chuckman
The Countessa of Empire: Condi
Rice's Idea of Democracy
Greg Moses
Live from Pasadena: Silhouettes of New Order
Rai O'Brien
What Kind of Democracy to Expect if the Opposition Takes Power
in Venezuela
Bill Christison
The
9/11 Commission: Dangerous Harbinger for the Future
Website of the Day
Ghost Town: Riding Through Chernobyl
March 29, 2004
John Maxwell
Crisis
in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold
J. Michael Springmann
Email
Spying & Attorney Client Privilege
Robert Fisk / Severin
Carrell
Coalition
of the Mercenaries
The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror
Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made
David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Bargain
Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism
Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American
Family
Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again
Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests
Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11
Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing
Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?
March 27 / 28, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
Weekend
Edition
April 9 / 11, 2004
A Review of "The
Last Samurai"
Indian
Wars, Vietnam and Orientalist Fantasy
By GARY LEUPP
The "Shogun"
Precedent
I was studying Japanese history in grad school
in 1980, when the 10-hour miniseries Shogun, starring
Richard Chamberlain and based on the best-selling novel by James
Clavell, was first shown on television. Set in the year 1600,
it was a blockbuster, attracting more viewers than any such series
since Roots, and a huge boon to the obscure field of Japanese
studies. Enrollments in Japanese language courses shot up immediately.
Scholars in the Japan field winced at some of the film's historical
inaccuracies (for example, women in Japan in 1600 just didn't
do tea ceremony), but were delighted at the interest it sparked.
Some in Japan were also bothered by the errors, but were happy
that Shogun produced positive interest in their country,
which had met with what they called "Japan-bashing"
throughout the 1970s due to bôeki masatsu or "trade
friction."
In the series, a Dutch ship piloted by
the Englishman John Blackthorne arrives unexpectedly in Japan
soon before a fateful battle brings Lord Toranaga to power as
the shogun (military dictator) of the country. There are Portuguese
and Spaniards in Japan already, Catholic missionaries and merchants
who have concealed from the Japanese the existence of Protestant
Europe and who are determined to maintain an Iberian monopoly
on the Japan trade while spreading Catholicism. Their interests
are threatened by the Protestant newcomers' arrival, and they
urge Toranaga to execute Blackhorne and his mates as pirates.
Instead, Toranaga warms to Blackthorne, frees him from jail and
awards him the two swords connoting samurai status as well as
a fief. The Englishman rapidly learns Japanese and Japanese ways,
and of course, since this is a movie, falls in love with an elite,
beautiful Japanese woman. She dies at the end, having collaborated
with Toronaga to incinerate Blackthorne's ship, to insure that
he will never leave Japan but remain to serve the shogun.
The Real "Shogun" Story
Shogun was
based on a true story more interesting than Clavell's creation.
There was in fact an English pilot, William Adams (1564-1620),
who fought against the Spanish Armada, entered the service of
the Dutch East India Company, arrived in Japan in 1600, was imprisoned
and, after Jesuits accused him of piracy, was interrogated by
the warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu. He won the lord's trust, became
one of his advisors as Ieyasu grasped power as shogun, thereafter
received a village fief and samurai status, had a mansion in
Edo (Tokyo), facilitated the operations of both the Dutch East
India Company and the English East India Company in Japan, married
a Japanese woman (a Catholic convert, although Adams was Anglican),
had two children by her, and died in Japan in 1620. (He also
had a wife back in England, to whom he wrote bemoaning the fact
that Ieyasu wouldn't allow him to leave the country. In fact,
he could and did leave Japan for the Ryukyus and Siam on commercial
voyages; he probably could have gone back to England and lived
very well, but preferred his lot in his adopted country. His
letters to his English wife don't mention the Japanese spouse.)
When the first British merchants made
their way to Japan in 1611, and met the legendary figure now
known as Miura Anjin (Miura was his wife's surname; "Anjin"
means pilot), they were shocked by his samurai haircut, dress,
swords, retinue, apparent preference for Japanese company, and
fierce loyalty to his Japanese in-laws. They detected his distaste
for their own ways, which now apparently struck him as uncouth,
and called him a "naturalized Japaner." He had earlier
sent a letter to England declaring that the Japanese were "governed
in great civility---I mean, not a land better governed in the
world by civil policy." He'd noted that while the Japanese
were superstitious, they held "diverse views" about
religion, and their justice was administered impartially.
The real story here is that a man from
Shakespeare's England, a country that had seen much injustice
and religious intolerance, could happily naturalize in a pagan
island country, separated from his first one by the vast Eurasian
continent. Here (according to one Jesuit writing in the late
sixteenth century), the people were "superior to other Eastern
peoples but also to Europeans as well." A people who, according
to another Jesuit writing in 1577, were "in no sense barbarous
Excluding the advantage of religion," he declared, "we
are ourselves in comparison with them are most barbarous."
(This respect for the Japanese obliged the Europeans to fit them
into their worldview as necessarily white. Almost all
the sixteenth-century descriptions state: "These are a white
people") The film Shogun made the Englishman's settlement
in Japan the result of the machinations of a wily warlord. The
real record suggests Adams made up his own mind, deciding that,
for him, Tokugawa Japan was preferable to England. Imagine a
film organized around that theme: at the dawn of western capitalism,
there could be cultures more attractive to Europeans than their
own.
An American Samurai
Twenty-four years after Shogun,
I eagerly stood in line for the film Last Samurai, starring
Tom Cruise, with my wife (a Cruise-fan who, by coincidence, is
descended from samurai on both paternal and maternal sides),
and our adolescent son. Our teenage daughter had already heard
that the film was "really bad," and I'd heard that
it had received some criticism pertaining to the white guy's
implausibly central role in the action. But I figured that any
movie about Japan in the 1870s, starring Cruise, would have to
center around the white guy, and I wasn't going to boycott the
film just because it did so. Having seen the film, my verdict
is: it's not "really bad." In most respects
it's quite good. The basic story line is that a Captain Woodrow
Algren, a brilliant soldier and veteran of the Civil War and
the "Indian Wars," is recruited by his former commanding
officer to sail with him to Japan as a mercenary military advisor
to the newly established Japanese government. The regime, headed
by a youthful emperor manipulated by westernizing advisors, confronts
a rebellion organized by former samurai. "The emperor wants
the modern," Algren is told. "The samurai want the
old."
Algren is clearly supposed to remind
us of the disillusioned, traumatized, frag-prone Vietnam War
vet. (Those who've seen Tom Cruise in Oliver Stone's brilliant
antiwar film Born on the 4th of July will most easily
make the association.) He has followed orders and slaughtered
Native Americans, and blames his smugly amoral former commander
for ordering him to do so. He frankly tells the officer as he
agrees to mercenary service in Japan: "I'd happily kill
you for free." But plagued by guilt (knowing he is
ultimately responsible for his own actions), Algren has become
a prisoner of the bottle. Arriving in Japan, he competently
trains government troops (who appear quite incompetent) in the
latest U.S. infantry tactics. In an engagement with the rebels,
led by one "Katsumoto" (Ken Watanabe), he is taken
prisoner following various heroics that much impress the insurgent
leader---who conveniently speaks fluent English. Algren, mastering
in a few months one of the world's more difficult languages,
is well-treated by Katsumoto and gradually won over to the cause
of the rebels, who view themselves as loyal to the emperor but
opposed to his corrupt advisors.
In glorious battle pitting sword-wielding
samurai against breech-loading and repeating rifles, with cherry-blossoms
(in their beautiful transience, the traditional symbol of the
samurai born to die young) in the background, Katsumoto is mortally
injured. Rather than be taken by the enemy alive, he has Algren
stab him to death. (This is an interesting variation of seppuku,
vulgarly known as hara-kiri.) Then Algren gets to kill
his former American CO, who's been fighting on the other side.
In this inter-American squabble, Americanized bushidô
(the Way of the Warrior) overtakes the Way of Gen. Custer.
Rather than facing charges as a result
of his actions, Algren is able to barge into a meeting between
the Emperor and his advisors, who are just about to sign a treaty
with the U.S. granting trade concessions in return for arms imports.
Algren, invoking Katsumoto's name, moves the vacillating emperor
into rejecting the unequal treaty.
The story line more or less works, dramatically.
But what's the real history here? The Last Samurai is
set in 1876-7, a time when, in fact, the new Meiji regime (established
in 1868) confronted the largest in a series of rebellions mounted
by members of the formally abolished samurai class, who comprised
about 7% of the Japanese population. (It occurred in the southwestern
island of Kyushu, not the mountains of Yoshino in central Japan
as depicted in the film.) The movie doesn't make the cause of
these rebellions very clear, and implies that they occurred in
protest of governmental corruption. In fact they resulted more
from the abolition of samurai status, the commutation of samurai
stipends into low-yield bonds, establishment of a conscript national
army drawn mostly from the peasantry, and the failure of the
new regime to launch foreign wars to provide opportunities for
battlefield heroism. Saigô Takamori, the inspiration for
Katsumoto, left the government in 1873 after powerful colleagues
rejected his plans for an invasion of Korea. Devoting himself
to the cause of assisting destitute former samurai in his home
province, Saigô was called upon by former retainers to
head up an insurrection already in progress, doing so with some
reluctance out of a sense of feudal loyalty.
The revolt had little progressive content,
required some 60,000 government troops to suppress about 40,000
insurgents, almost bankrupted the regime and caused it to squeeze
the peasantry harshly to finance the new conscript army. But
the figure of Saigô, who committed seppuku as his
cause failed, was revered by many people. So there he stands
in the form of a huge statue (one of Japan's best-known monuments),
in Tokyo's Ueno
Park to this day. There's a real man for you, some Japanese
will say. (See Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic
Heroes in the History of Japan to get some insight into the
Saigô cult.)
Some Necessary Background:
Isolation and Capitalism
In the 1630s, within two decades following William Adams' death,
the grandson of Ieyasu ordered the expulsion of almost all foreigners
and their Japanese wives and descendents from the country. (Adam's
son Joseph and daughter Suzannah may have been exempted from
the order.) The shogun extirpated Christianity, forbade Japanese
from leaving the country on pain of death should they ever return,
and allowed only a trickle of trade with Europe through a handful
of Dutch merchants confined to quarters on a tiny artificial
island constructed off Nagasaki. For the next two and a half
centuries, Japan was about as aloof from the international trading
system as a major nation could ever be. You might say it resisted
globalization, and contemporary globalization proponents might
suppose it suffered enormously as a result. But on the contrary---since
the Tokugawa shogunate forced the samurai to leave agricultural
villages and reside in castle-towns, there was a massive wave,
unprecedented in world history, in urban construction. By 1700
a larger proportion of Japanese lived in cities than did people
anywhere else except maybe Holland. The emerging cities stimulated
all kinds of commercial production in the countryside; traditional
labor arrangements based on corvée or lifetime service
gave way to contracted wage-labor, and the sprouts of capitalism
materialized in Japan as they did nowhere else outside of
the west.
"Capitalism succeeded in Europe,"
wrote the historian Ferdinand Braudel, "made a beginning
in Japan, and failedalmost everywhere else." There were
large-scale manufacturing workshops in Tokugawa Japan; legions
of wealthy merchants employing such devices as double-entry bookkeeping,
letters of credit, and non-negotiable prices; big dry-goods shops
named Mitsui, Daimaru, Mitsukoshi (the direct ancestors of the
present conglomerates); theoretical works on market economics;
employment agencies, etc. Isolated Tokugawa Japan was not backward
but relatively advanced as of the mid-nineteenth century.
But just at that point, the U.S. Congress,
which saw Japan's isolationism as not just stupid---and a challenge
to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the classical statement
of capitalist economics published in 1776---but immoral,
authorized a military expedition to Japan to demand that
Japan open its doors to the world market. Persuaded that the
U.S. would use military force if spurned, the Tokugawa shogunate
capitulated, signing a treaty that went into effect in 1859.
It opened ports to U.S. visitation and residence, accepted a
tariff schedule injurious to Japan, accorded U.S. citizens exemption
from Japanese legal jurisdiction, and specified that any privilege
given any other foreign power (Russia, Britain, France and other
nations were negotiating treaties with Japan) also automatically
apply to the U.S. For the first half-century after its forced
"opening" (the British allowed the "unequal treaties"
they'd contracted to elapse soon after 1900) Japan was forced
to participate in global commerce on inherently disadvantageous
terms. (This is worth recalling when issues of "unfair trading
practices" come up in the contemporary U.S.-Japan relationship.)
There was an immediate currency crisis
as the country joined the world system; gold flowed out of the
country, the value of laborers' wages plummeted, silk thread
was diverted from domestic consumers to foreign ones. The legitimacy
of the regime was undermined, peasant rebellions proliferated,
and xenophobic feelings prompted young samurai to attack foreigners
and government officials. But gradually the headstrong youth
opposing the country's opening concluded that Japan indeed had
to join the international system, and shifted their slogans from
"Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarian" to "Civilization
and Enlightenment" (meaning: learn from western civilization,
and seek western enlightenment while discarding the useless heritage
of China) and "Rich Country, Strong Army" (meaning:
learn the west's industrial secrets, invest in steel and shipbuilding,
and colonize neighboring territory). Dissident leaders promoting
such values and in command of some military might succeeded in
toppling the last shogun in the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The
above-mentioned Saigô was generally with the program, and
most samurai embraced it.
But then the new group in power arranged
the dissolution of the feudal domains, replaced by prefectures
administered from the center. Samurai retainers of the over 250
Japanese barons were suddenly (in theory) servants of a centralized
state that had to pay out the stipends to which they were hereditarily
entitled. It was too much of a budget burden for the newborn
Meiji state. Gradually samurai status was eliminated, such perks
as the exclusive right to bear arms taken away from the ancient
warrior class, and the samurai stipends commuted to low-interest
bonds. Ironically, it was the ruling samurai clique who undertook
these radical reforms, effectively abolishing their own class
status. The leaders launched a conscript army, drawing mainly
on the peasants, although it was to see little action for a generation.
The samurai having lost their raison d'être, were
encouraged to turn their energies to trade and industry, fields
they had hitherto been schooled to treat with contempt. Some
finessed the transition; the Mitsubishi conglomerate was founded
by an ex-samurai. But many others responded with indignation.
These are the reasons for the rash of samurai rebellions in western
Japan between 1874 and 1877.
Foreign Employees
in "Open" Japan
During that period thousands of foreigners,
mostly Englishmen, were employed by the Japanese government as
teachers, technology specialists, and advisers. Algren is supposed
to be one of these oyatoi gaikokujin (honored foreign
employees). But in fact, the Japanese had their military act
together pretty well by the 1870s and did not require foreign
assistance in suppressing the samurai uprisings, even though
the rebellions were raised by troops using whatever latest military
technology they could procure. Thus the depiction of Katsumoto's
samurai as champions of "pure" sword-fighting versus
modern rifles is historically not just amusing, but rude to the
memory of the samurai who were actually very practical in the
adoption of new technology. (The musket was introduced into Japan
by Portuguese in 1543, and almost immediately replicated and
manufactured in massive quantities. There were far more rifles
in Japan by 1600 than in Elizabeth I's England; the Japanese
even made design improvements, and exported their own guns to
Siam and elsewhere. Guns were not much needed during Japan's
long period of peace---although they were used to suppress peasant
uprisings---but sensing the threat of foreign encroachment in
the early nineteenth century the Japanese painstakingly translated
and carefully studied Dutch texts on military technology.) In
1877, samurai rebels used firearms (Enfield muzzle loading rifles),
mountain guns, field guns, and mortars against government forces
quite well, actually.
To return to the closing scene of The
Last Samurai: The Meiji emperor is just about to sign a treaty
with the U.S. exchanging trade privileges for arms. Into this
scene barges Tom Cruise/Captain Algren, who for some reason is
still at large having aided a rebel and killed a prominent American.
The emperor listens respectfully as Algren upholds Katsumoto's
cause and denounces the treaty. Well, part of me thinks: This
is excellent. Here's an alienated ex-pat, who understands the
brutality of his homeland's government very well. He's seduced
by the charm of Japan, and wants passionately to protect Japan
from western encroachment.
But the scene, alas, is highly unrealistic.
Nothing like this agreement was ever in fact actually contemplated.
The key trade agreement had already been forced upon the Japanese
through the implied threat of military force two decades earlier.
And no foreigner, even as good-looking as Tom Cruise (who would
anyway have bristled with unsightly facial hair in this period)
could have just popped in on the Meiji emperor anytime in 1877,
counseled him about treaties, and moved him to take a stand one
way or the other about a treaty, countermanding the Meiji oligarchs
who collectively made policy. The movie gets the geopolitics
all wrong, granting the U.S. both more and less power than it
wielded in Japan in the period. (Soon after the opening of Japan's
ports produced by U.S. pressure, the U.S. became preoccupied
by its Civil War and the British became the main foreign influence
and trading partner.) But the idea that the imperial regime could
have stood up to U.S. pressure in 1877, encouraged by---of all
people---an American resident soldier as depicted in the closing
scene, is a huge stretch.
Japan as Alternative
Like Shogun, Last Samurai
depicts a preindustrial Japan able to engage the west on its
own selective terms---a Japan commanding the westerner's respect,
even humbling him and causing him to rethink his relationship
to his own culture. (I say "him" because there were
very, very few western women up to the 1880s.) It exalts Tom
Cruise with an implausible role in events, but the film hints
that the American does, at the end, settle down in Japan (with
a woman whose husband he has killed), having become thoroughly
alienated from his own due to his experiences in its ugly wars.
Japan, that is, conquers him spiritually. Quite a number of Victorians,
actually (most notably, the journalist Lafcadio
Hearn), did settle down in the country in the late
nineteenth century. There were many reasons. Some were captivated
by the culture generally, admiring its aesthetics or its openness
to ideas. (Darwin's theory of evolution, taught at Tokyo Imperial
University from early on, met with an enthusiastic reception---to
the delight of foreign scholars whose advocacy of the theory
met with religious opposition at home. All three volumes of Marx's
Capital were translated into Japanese before they were
available in most European languages.)
Some enjoyed the matter-of-fact, largely
taboo-free attitudes towards the body and sex. Many western men
found Japanese women fascinating, not because of their putative
docility rumored in ports around Asia; the stereotype of the
doll-like playmate entertained by the curious foreign man arriving
in Japan typically collapsed soon after he disembarked, as in
the case of French naval officer Pierre Loti recounted in his
Madame Chrysanthème (1888). What struck the western
male about the Japanese female was less her femininity contrasted
to the supposedly masculizing western female model, than her
expression of aspects of Japanese culture (including some moral
and martial qualities) that happened to invite his admiration.
We get some sense of this in Last Samurai.
During the twilight of the samurai, an
extraordinary range of prominent foreign men, from Hearn to Sir
Edwin Arnold to the Portuguese diplomat-writer Wenceslau de Moraes,
the Anglo-Irish journalist Frank Brinkley, the Scottish linguist
and historian James Murdoch, pioneer seismologist John Milne,
architect Josiah Conder and J. P. Morgan's millionaire nephew
George Dennison Morgan, all married Japanese women. "Interracial
marriage" was highly controversial at this time, in the
west and in Japan, although in Japan there were some who (influenced
by a misreading of Darwin) positively advocated Caucasian-Japanese
intermarriage in order to "enrich" the Japanese gene
pool. Morgan's family ostracized him. Arnold's wife, on the other
hand, was recognized as a member of the British nobility. The
perception of the Japanese as a "white" people worth
mixing with at many levels persisted into the twentieth century.
When the Japanese triumphed over czarist Russia in 1905, the
victory had to be explained in racial terms. An American scholar
declared that the Japanese were the most "un-Mongoloid"
people in East Asia, and must have "Aryan blood in
their veins." Well, of course. How else could they have
defeated Europeans?
Last Samurai
depicts a disillusioned American war veteran embracing the code
of bushidô, moved by the example of Katsumoto, in
order to regain his self-respect. It is an orientalist fantasy.
The real story is that of westerners encountering a culture
not only as sophisticated as their own, but capable of defending
itself, while what the somewhat over-rated historian Walter Lefeber
calls "the clash" between the U.S. and Japan began
in the nineteenth century. Samurai rebels didn't need foreign
mercenaries to organize them, assist in their belly-slitting,
or represent their cause to the Emperor during the early Meiji
period. Some westerners, on the other hand, needed Japan to lend
them an escape from themselves. In this Japan provided, maybe
continues to provide, a vital service. There should be a movie
about this.
Gary Leupp
is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor
of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan;
Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan;
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for April 3 / 4, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
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Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
Gary Leupp
On Jefferson, Diderot and the Political Uses of God
Lawrence Davidson
Orwell and Kafka in Israel / Palestine
Frederick B. Hudson
Condi Rice: the Family Retainer
Phillip Cryan
The Magic of Coca-Cola: Colombian Workers, Civil Rights and Advertising
Dave Zirin
Lester Speaks: an Interview with Lester "Red" Rodney
Ben Tripp
Talking Dirty: Obscene But Not Heard
Bruce Anderson
Phony Liberals and Fake Concern for the Homeless
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Justice and Legitimacy in Haiti
Mark Scaramella
Do You Have What It Takes to Be Sec. of Defense? Take the Rumsfeld
Quiz
Sharon Smith
Do Most Iraqis Really Want the US to Stay?
Rick Giombetti
Melissa Ann Rowland: a Witch for Our Time
Nader/Kerry Quandary
Stephen Gowans
Communists
for Capitalism?
Frank Bardacke / Doug Lummis
Support Nader; Dump Bush: an Election Manifesto
Mickey Z
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Saul Landau
Kerry: a Less Dangerous Imperialist?
Richard Oxman
Nader and/or Death?
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Davies, Albert and Tripp
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