re:mote voices

Title: Twilight Samurai [Tasogare Seibei]
Cast: Hiroyuki Sanada, Rie Miyazawa, Nenji Kobayashi, Ren Osugi, Mitsuru Fukikoshi
Director: Yoji Yamada

The Twilight Samurai is set in a turbulent period of Japanese history, the days of the samurai are numbered, though the may not have quite acknowledged this to be the case quite yet. Though the Meiji reform, which saw the unification of Japan under a new emperor, who fought a civil war against defiant shogun, is only a few years away from the films core, and is referred to at the end.

The film is narrated by Ito, who was five at the time her mother died, though is clearly from her voice now older as she reflects on those times. Her father was a samurai, a kind of elite class, who work for the local lords shoguns, and are served by the local peasants. However samurai were not necessarily violent warriors as they are often depicted, rather in the context of this film, they are kind of civil servants, who may also be soldiers. For the most part the samurai we see here work in the castles’ stores, maintaining food stocks in case of siege, and keeping the books up to date. Ito’s father Iguchi is one of these men, and as the film unfolds it becomes clear that there is a real hierarchy amongst the samurai – a respected gent could earn as much as 1200 koku a month, while Iguchi earns a mere 50. With a wife who had been sick for years before her death, a senile mother, and two daughters Iguchi struggles to survive. And it is from this he has earned the nickname twilight amongst his peers. Each night the head of the department stops work with the onset of twilight, as he cannot read when the light reaches that stage. The rest of the samurai then take the opportunity to head down the pub and hang out with bar girls, but each night at twilight Iguchi bows out and heads home.

The film shows that Iguchi is an anomaly amongst the samurai, possessed of little ambition, he is content to work hard to survive, and delighted to watch his beautiful daughters grow. There is a certain turning point with the return of Tomoe, a child hood friend, she had been married off to 1200koku gent, but it turned out he was a drunk, and was prone to beating her. So with a divorce she is returned to her family home, and starts hanging around Iguchi’s house, helping with the chores, and looking after his daughters. Along the way the 1200 koku samurai is less than pleased about the divorce, and turns up to harass Tomoe. This leads to one of the few scenes of violence in the film, Iguchi stepping in to defend Tomoe’s honour has to fight – however duelling is banned, and if he were to actually kill this senior samurai he would be in real trouble. This leads to one of the most memorable scenes in the film – Iguchi fighting the other samurai to a stand still with a wooden sword. From this it becomes clear that many of the samurai might swan around with their swords, maintaining that they are something special, they aren’t all actually fighters – while Iguchi is in fact trained, and particularly good, despite his lowly level. Some amusement comes from the spreading rumours of his prowess, particularly amongst those who think that perhaps they shouldn’t be calling him names behind his back after all.

The Twilight Samurai is a quiet film, which had only two real fights in it, which punctuate and define events, concentrating instead on the philosophical stance and poetic outlook of the main character. A man who feels he would be content to surrender his samurai status when the time came and live out the rest of his life as a farmer. The fact that his poverty is made clear throughout is also important, an illustration that the samurai were not all the same – not all lords. However this, coupled with the idea of the twilight samurai, describes a bigger picture, one with historical and cultural ramifications – these were the twilight years of the samurai, consumption was killing families across Japan, upheaval and the strict systems were leading to the increasing number of ronin (samurai without masters) in the streets of cities like Kyoto.