Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View

I often marvel at how much Japanese culture is absorbed into American pop culture. The prevailing myth is that Japanese are crazy about western culture - and they are - but the myth seems to ignore the two-way nature of this cultural exchange.

Everything in "Blade II" hits you full in the face as the movie gleefully busts across genres.

The latest example that comes to mind is "Blade II," the very violent sequel to the 1998 film "Blade" (which was based on a comic book) starring Wesley Snipes as a half-human, half-vampire who keeps the human world safe from the blood-sucking creatures of the night. Snipes, the African-American action movie star, cultivates an aura of ultra-cool as he battles vampires, and in the new sequel, a mutant form of vampires called "reapers" that happen to feed on vampires

Vampires? Blood-sucking creatures that feed on vampires? African American action movie star? What does all this have to do with Japanese culture?

It's not much of a stretch to say that Blade, the character played by Snipes, is a modern-day ronin, or samurai warrior without a lord. But instead of roaming the Japanese countryside as a fighter-for-hire or a bandit, Blade travels the netherworld in search of his prey. He's called a "Daywalker" because he's half-human and has the ability to withstand sunlight, which would kill a pure vampire. In "Blade II," he's asked by the vampires to chase down and destroy the reapers.

The reapers have jaws that unhinge and open to reveal a horrible apparatus that's much yuckier than old-fashioned fangs to suck the blood of its victims. Like humans who turn into vampires when they're bitten, vampires turn into wall-crawling reapers. The Vampire nation convinces Blade that when the reapers run out of vampires to turn, they'll start killing humans.

OK, enough of the gory details. What makes Blade an interesting character for me is his martial arts skill, use of a long sword slung across his back as his primary weapon, and the various armor he wears, just like a samurai warrior of ancient Japan. His look is entirely familiar to me from my childhood fantasies, playing samurai in the woods behind my house. He's obviously modeled on a samurai master, or perhaps a ninja assassin with his all-black outfits.

I was crazy about samurai when I was I growing up in Tokyo. I watched samurai movies on TV and played samurai and ninja the way a kid in Kansas City in the 1960s probably played cowboys or soldiers. In fact, I don't remember watching westerns on Japanese TV at all - the Japanese may have been crazy about American culture back then, but cowboys and Indians weren't one of the popular images that made it onto the small screen, at least not in my memory. I don't think watched my first "Lone Ranger" and "Cisco Kid" - not to mention "Bonanza" and "Big Valley" - episodes until my family moved to the States in 1966.

Instead, I remember many black-and-white fragments of samurai and ninja; outlaws in kimono instead of wearing cowboy hats; sword-fights instead of showdowns with six-shooters. Many of my memories are of very bloody confrontations - the kind of violence that "Blade" fans might appreciate. Swords slashed across faces; shiny steel-impaled kimonoed corpses with blood spurting everywhere. But then again, maybe that's just my imagination running a bit wild. Those were lowbrow movies I watched on television. I can't tell you the titles, but the samurai and ninja films I watched with awe were the equivalent of Saturday matinee cliffhanger serials here in the US. They were meant to be pure entertainment, even though they might have been based on historical events. In that sense, they were similar to movies today such as "Blade II."

Samurai movies can achieve artistic status, though. I recently watched "Seven Samurai" ("Shichinin no Samurai"), the classic 1953 film by director Akira Kurosawa, again and half-expected the kind of gore that's common in contemporary Asian action movies from Jet Li kung fu fighting to Chow Yun Fat gangster gunfights. There's a lot of samurai sword fighting all right, but very little actual blood.

"Seven Samurai" is a great film artistically, of course, and for its time, it must have seemed incredibly violent. But the sword fighting scenes are almost elegant in their choreography, and the camera work always impeccable. Kurosawa was a director who left nothing to chance - even weather in his films was totally controlled. If there was wind in a shot, he made it blow, and controlled how hard and how much dust blew across the scene. The DVD for the film includes a fascinating running commentary by a film expert that explains every nuance of "Seven Samurai."

No doubt about it, Kurosawa was one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, and "Seven Samurai" is a benchmark of not only moviemaking, but also of the samurai genre.

But, I must admit, "Blade II" is more fun. Because it doesn't have any heavy artistic intentions or moral messages to convey, the movie is allowed to just be entertaining. It's also not about nuances - everything in "Blade II" hits you full in the face as the movie gleefully busts across genres, combining elements of samurai with sci-fi, and bits of kung fu flicks with horror thrillers.

It also features much more overt Asian references than the sequel. During "Blade," the viewer gets to see not just the character Blade's samurai influences as a fighter, but also the Buddhist altar in his room, and the Japanese floral display on his door. There are a couple of scenes where Japanese is spoken, including one where Japanese businessmen - vampires, I guess - are hanging out in an exclusive vampire nightclub where two Japanese singers warble like a ghoulish version of the '70s duo Pink Lady.

Interestingly, Wesley Snipe was the martial arts fight choreographer for the first movie, but up-and-coming star Donnie Yen (already a superstar in Asia), who has a small part in the film, choreographed the fight scenes in "Blade II." The new movie is less overtly an homage to Japanese culture, but Wesley Snipe's character is still a kick-ass modern-day samurai.

It ain't "Seven Samurai," but I'm still pretty excited about the DVD release of "Blade II" - I hope it's out in time for Christmas!

ARCHIVES

Copyright 1998-2002 by Gil Asakawa -- not for use without permission.
Contact me if you'd like to run "Nikkei View" in your publication.
Thanks for reading!

ARCHIVES

Copyright 1998-2002 by Gil Asakawa -- not for use without permission. Contact me if you'd like to run "Nikkei View" in your publication. Thanks for reading!

Copyright 1998-2002 by Gil Asakawa -- not for use without permission.
Contact me if you'd like to run "Nikkei View" in your publication.
Thanks for reading!