Ambivalence (2)
Samurai. As everyone knew, it was the word for Japan’s traditional warriors.
Originally, it referred to armed men who served their lord, but over time it came to suggest less a retainer than a privileged class of sword-bearing men. That image existed because samurai had, in practice, done the real fighting for the various lords of old Japan during their struggles for power.
In that era, the samurai built prestige and authority for themselves, and by the time the shogunate arrived, they had been elevated into Japan’s ruling class.
But with the passage of time, they fell again into the status of masterless men.
Perhaps that was simply the shadow cast by Japan’s history, where regimes changed with dizzying speed. Still, the image modern people held of the samurai differed somewhat from the reality.
To begin with, Japanese men were small of build and not especially suited to life as warriors.
And as for what was called bushido, or the “samurai spirit,” it apparently was not all that well observed at the time, much like calling England “the land of gentlemen.”
As the shogunate drew toward its end, samurai were said to have grown increasingly like organized thugs, bullying commoners whenever they pleased. So, in truth, I had not been expecting much from this film.
A samurai film made in Japan.
Most likely, they would put a convincing actor in front of the camera and polish up the samurai image all over again. Just as the title was about to fade from the screen, Yang Yeon-gyu leaned over and said quietly to me, “Oh, didn’t I mention it? This is a documentary.”
“A documentary?”
“Yes. That’s what makes it interesting.” He was right.
My interest sharpened at once. A documentary deals with fact, with truth.
It does not tell a manufactured story the way a conventional film does.
If it was a well-made documentary, then it might show something about the samurai that the usual media image had never quite managed to capture. And then the film began.
Text appeared at the center of the screen. [It was an absurd age.][Why did we ever call it romance?] Romance.
That, too, was the image people brought to mind when they thought of samurai.
A man wearing a sword, wandering in a daze beneath cherry blossoms. But the images that followed had little to do with that so-called romance.
Men of extremely short stature standing in samurai dress. Contrary to their grave expressions, their bodies were simply too small to carry the clothes well.
It was hard to say how they were supposed to swing swords nearly as tall as themselves. The theater stirred.
That was probably because what was on screen differed so sharply from the samurai image the audience already knew. And the film only grew more interesting from there.
Next came an elderly woman.
The director interviewed her while she wore a kimono. [Is it true that your grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother - your great-great-grandmother - was a samurai woman?] She smiled faintly. [Yes. That’s right.]
[How can you verify that?]
[There’s a diary that has been handed down through the women of our family for generations. My grandmother’s grandmother was a woman who worked in the pleasure quarter. Yes, it was not a respectable profession. But at the time, it wasn’t considered so shameful either. Still, she wrote the diary as a warning, to make sure her children would never walk that path. It meant: if you are not prepared for that kind of life, then do not set foot in the pleasure quarter in the first place.] The scene changed, and an old red notebook appeared.
White-coated researchers analyzed whether it was genuine.
Perhaps in contrast to the grandmother, a female researcher with her hair neatly tied back was interviewed as well. [Yes. The paper and ink both appear to be from that period.]
[Did you read the contents?]
[Ah... yes. I did read it, but...]
[And what did you think?] The woman only laughed helplessly, as though she had no idea what to do with herself.
Then, a little shyly, she said, [I don’t think I’m the one who should be saying anything about that.] The film returned to the grandmother.
She opened the red notebook and laughed softly. [My great-great-grandmother was a woman from the pleasure quarter who, luckily, met a decent man, retired, and lived an ordinary life. But until she retired, she never loved a single man. Especially not samurai. ...It wasn’t that she disliked them. She hated them.] Then the grandmother began reading the diary, line by line.
[Another samurai came today. Ridiculous men who trust nothing but their swords. They have not bathed in days; if one goes near them, all one smells is filth, so no one wants to attend them.
Someone came to arrest the samurai, and they ran away without fighting.
A brawl broke out among a group of samurai. The defeated group decided to commit seppuku as a sign of surrender. The process of choosing who would perform it was absurd. In the end, after drawing lots several times and changing their minds again and again, they dumped the task on a boy samurai who had only recently joined the group. Poor boy. Last night, I heard the sound of someone crying quietly from the room where the boy samurai was staying. All samurai are bad men. They deserve to die.]
The grandmother, who had been reading so gently, took out another photograph. [This one is extremely rare. It seems that in those days, a foreign journalist came to Japan and visited the pleasure quarter, and the courtesans, in a moment of amusement, ended up giving him this precious photo.] The photograph in her hand was, unexpectedly, quite cheerful.
A samurai walking away with a sword larger than his own body slung over his shoulder.
The courtesans were covering their mouths and laughing at his back. The film, which kept showing one ridiculous samurai scene after another, then displayed another line of text. [As though possessed, they wore swords that long,][and for the sake of bushido, they committed seppuku.][Why on earth?]
The next scene was a samurai research institute somewhere in Japan.
The institute director, wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses, was leafing through the grandmother’s red notebook. He sat in silence for a while, thinking.
Then he said carefully, [It is difficult to determine whether this diary is authentic. Samurai were men of rank, and in those days women in Japan, especially courtesans, were placed very low in status. Naturally, they would have been treated badly. It is likely that, out of resentment for that alone, she would not have written of them kindly.]
[Then, in your view, what were samurai like at the time?]
[Hmm... they were not the glamorous warriors depicted in manga. There were many who fled the battlefield in cowardice. However,] he said, his eyes brightening as he emphasized the point, [there were also those who staked their lives on that so-called bushido, even while trembling in fear. Look at this.] He brought out an old booklet. [It’s an official government document. There are scattered records here of samurai causing trouble in villages.]
[Could you read it for us?]
[Yes. The part I’ll read is right here. It concerns a samurai who was made to commit seppuku for defying the head of his group, and the passage where he sat facing the sword.] The director cleared his throat once and began to read. [He loudly proclaimed that he would repay the offense he had caused within his group with seppuku. But though his voice was loud, it shook all the while. And he could hardly bring himself to take up the sword. “Come on now, pay your debt,” the samurai urged him. His face looked as though he wanted to abandon bushido and drop to the ground to beg. Or perhaps he looked as though he wanted to run away. But he suppressed all those temptations and took up the sword. And at that moment.
Enough. Stop there. The leader spoke. The samurai who had taken up the sword looked as though he might burst into tears at any moment. Seppuku is a nuisance to clean up afterward. From now on, you’ll stand at the very back of our group. It was a way of saying that, instead of forgiving him, they would demote him. The samurai who had nearly died only then lowered his head and begged for forgiveness.
The scene seemed to rise vividly before me.
Samurai gathered in a tight circle.
A samurai terrified of the sword laid out before him.
And a clerk from the magistrate’s office watching the entire thing. The director said, [That leader did not want seppuku. He wanted to have bushido confirmed. In truth, the samurai class was closer to masterless men with little education and no real foundation. All they had to claim was this intangible samurai spirit and bushido. So the ones who clung to these formalities and manners... clung to them with their lives. As if to a lifeline.]
The documentary went on to present many such testimonies about the samurai.
People remembered samurai either as ridiculous figures,
or as men who desperately tried to preserve the thinnest thread of bushido.
The photographs that appeared from time to time were the same.
The samurai in those black-and-white images.
Their short stature and the way they dragged their armor along behind them was absurd, but
the grave expressions on their faces, that sort of thing, still looked strangely serious. And then the film ended.
Watching the credits roll, I let out a small snort of laughter. This country called Japan was surprisingly entertaining.
Soon after, a short interview and Q&A session began.
When the director stepped forward to greet the audience, applause broke out.
Both Yang Yeon-gyu and I applauded as well.
For all sorts of reasons, it had been a well-made film. Then the MC came out to moderate.
Before interviewing the director, he said he would like to hear everyone’s impressions first.
The microphone was passed to several audience members, and they offered their thoughts shyly.
Most of them were along the lines of: fresh, fun, interesting. “All right, then let’s hear questions from the reporters this time.” As soon as the MC said that, the journalists raised their hands.
But the first reporter to receive the microphone abruptly turned his body toward our invited seating area.
According to the interpreter who had come to assist Yang Yeon-gyu and me, the reporter began, “This film deals with Japan’s traditional warriors, the samurai. I’m curious about how foreign guests view them.”
I said to Yang Yeon-gyu, “You should probably get ready.”
“I suppose I should.” But oddly enough, the arrow came flying toward me instead. “We’d like to hear the analysis of Korea’s famous literary critic, Mok Hyunsun.”
...Me?
Why me, when there was a film critic right here? I found it a little strange, but once I’d been singled out, there was nothing for it but to stand. The gazes of countless people poured over me.
What I saw in their eyes was curiosity, and surprise.
I knew it already, but Pyeong had clearly earned some favorable attention here for its discussion of Theater Class. The reporters’ eyes, however, were a little different.
As in Korea, anything connected to Korea in Japan tended to attract attention, the so-called “hype” factor.
Whatever I said here would go straight into the articles.
That was probably why they had chosen me instead of Yang Yeon-gyu.
A literary critic’s take would be less polished than that of a film critic. “So, how did you see this samurai culture? Isn’t it far removed from the romance you might have imagined?” The reporter asked his question with the answer already decided.
He wanted me to criticize the samurai, as quickly as possible.
The emptiness of his intent was so obvious that I almost laughed to myself. For a moment, another thought crossed my mind.
If whatever I said would end up in print anyway,
then wasn’t I free to say exactly what I thought?
...That wasn’t bad.
So I answered honestly.
The interpreter beside me immediately relayed my words in Japanese. “Hmm. I do agree that it was different from what I had imagined.” The reporters began taking notes in earnest. “But—” The adversative conjunction slipped from my mouth.
People lifted their heads and looked at me.
I went on. “In my view, it was profoundly romantic.”