Samurai

Where does the fetishism of samurai in film come from? is it the western obsession of romanticizing the exotic or is it because the age of swords was over by the time samurai had to deal with people who had good swords and thus can be considered undefeated by equals

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>I am self conscious enough that I feel threatened by other cultures from hundreds of years ago and post about it on a Vietnamese cunny board

>samurai
More like ninja. Shit was popular in the 80s. No one ever cared about samurai.

youtube.com/watch?v=RdxuA2cWwEs

The katana is the most powerful weapon in the known universe

But why? Did the west not have spies and saboteurs? jutsu are "techniques" if you use the word liberally and consider someone setting a shithouse on fire as a "fire technique" or someone holding their breath underwater while using a breath mask a water technique

Who knows? I think it was a mix of exoticism and the popularity of Bruce Lee. It seems like all those B flicks about martial arts came after Enter the Dragon.
Of course fascination with Japanese (or Chinese) culture is much older. It was especially popular during the early 20th century.

because everyone else just sees something cool dressed in an exotic wrapper instead of getting mad at a movie for daring to not be about Europe.

as a side note I've noticed it's only Americans who sperg out about my culture being better than everyone else's.

You don't get to be proud of something that isn't yours, burger

Samurai movies=Westerns

They share a lot of characteristics besides being culturally signifigant. How old are you, OP?

Im not mad, Im just curious as to where the meme of samurai invincibility came from. There are many warriors in the world (for example of Slavic background) who were no worse than samurai yet they are now just a footnote
>it's only Americans who sperg out about my culture being better than everyone else's
Then you must be blind and deaf. Euro shits never shut up about it, both as a group and as individual countries. japan has tons of anime about superiority of their food,behavior, culture,etc. basically every country has it
>You don't get to be proud of something that isn't yours, burger
>MFW not even burger

25

Where did the meme of viking invincibility come from?

I honestly can't think of any Hollywood samurai movies besides the Cruise one
Requesting a quick listdown

lack of information, since they did not have written word and did not do a good job of preserving their histories. + might warriors make better book fodder than just some fags who fucked up unarmed monks

Same reason why Japan fetishizes medieval Europe.

There aren't many. American pop-culture mixed up ninjas, samurai and Chinese martial arts into bizarre oriental cocktail.

> just some fags who fucked up unarmed monks

oh the ironing

I haven't heard anyone say samurai are invincible outside an anime forum in a decade.

And medieval nords weren't particularly impressive in combat when they had to fight an army instead of raping a coastal town

It does not have to be an exclusive movie. have you never seen a tv show character who has a hidden samurai uncle or one of those meme swords like hattori hanzo blade in kill bill?

>as a side note I've noticed it's only Americans who sperg out about my culture being better than everyone else's.
>my culture
I think you're living in a fantasy world m8. No one thinks asian anything is better than western culture.

Because the Japanese honor-bound culture is a completely alien concept to Americans, and hence romanticized

'cause they're aesthetic and exotic

blame higlander

>I haven't heard anyone say samurai are invincible outside an anime forum in a decade.
dailymotion.com/video/x4zq1rk
its older than goku vs superman

I think he was trying to say "muh culture" as in no one but Americans feel their culture is better than others(which is wrong but I think that is what was said)

its just a mixture of exotic but also allows film makers to still write western movies in a different locale because of how similar the themes and culture of feudal japan and the wild west were

???
It's just comparing them as fighters. They never say they're invincible.

Because it's like the romanticized Wild West mixed in with an exotic "Code of Chivalry." It's also easy to mesh or at least exude a familiar tone like how Hanzo the Razor is essentially a loose cannon cop movie but with blades instead of guns. That's just my narrow view on it, I'm not a film buff.

yet higlander and even braveheart did not lead to scottish fanboying.

well when people say invincible they don't literally mean invincible, they mean "superior warriors"

It's because NO GUNS. Guns are the great equalizer in the nation of equals.
So a time of the sword and a caste system(both alien to american culture{the old south did have a caste system of sorts, but they lost fuck them}) are cool and exotic.

Actually, not really. Their uncle is usually a kung fu master, not a samurai.

I'm well aware m8. Samurai were never considered superior to anything other than Jap peasants.

Samurai had shitloads of guns even during their perceived height, they caught on like wildfire as soon as they were introduced

Bushido and the aesthetic, etc..
The katana always being symbolic of the samurai is false, by the way. Samurai were trained to be horse-mounted archers and spearmen first and foremost for actual combat. The katana became popular in the Edo period as a symbol of their authority.

thats sort of like conflating cowboys with revolvers in general though

It's funny how no one here actually posts Western films about samurai. Maybe because they actually aren't that popular.

And they were the only nation in the world to successfully ban them for centuries because an army of conscripted peasants could dishonorably wipe out a force of noble mounted Samurai.
Not many films which we are discussing feature gun toting samurai unless it's important to the story.

That is the less favored truth.
They banned swords too. maybe that is why ninja got popular, they can fight even with an plow axe

Have you ever seen a samurai release his bankai?
Rad as fuck

Its just a cool aesthetic with which to frame an action flick.

It's from world war 2. There were a couple hundred accounts across the pacific theater of Japanese officers doings things like slicing through machine guns or artillery pieces with their katanas, and just generally being incredibly ferocious and brave in close in fighting. It's not an exaggeration to say that the katana and the samurai fighting spirit that survivied into the modern era was only actually defeated by the use of nuclear weapons. If there's a kind of mythic view of Japanese warrior culture, it's honestly justified.

The Last Samurai was pretty good, desu.

Watch all 27 Zatoichi films.

>I'll take Heaven and Earth for 200 Alex

The japanese monks were anything but unarmed

Star Wars, Kill Bill

youtube.com/watch?v=bIs3ibPgosE

>falling on that pickaxe
Holy shit I need to watch this movie. There was corny shit, but that fucking scene was just pure sex.

Good question. It tends to be Neo-pagans that idolize the Vikings, as the Anglo-Saxons were emphatically Christian by the time of the 8th-9th century. They weren't above inter-tribal warfare however.

Even Shakespeare's Hamlet tends to depict Christian Denmark as being a very different place from Norway. We can argue whether this was true in the 11th century, but it's apparent that Shakespeare, and much of his audience would have believed it.

Kurosawa mosty. I guess Zatoichi has also had some influence in the Western canon with stuff like Book of Eli and Rogue One (Whitta!!!!). But yeah, same sort of motif as a knight or cowboy. Lone figure trying to live by a code in a world that is somehow in flux.