There is an unspoken rule in Japanese society:
Whenever there is a national crisis or social unrest, Japanese literati will re-pick up the "Bushido" trend of thought, and filmmakers will take out the story of "Zhongchenzang" and remake it.
Tadanozo is derived from the true story of the Tokugawa shogunate, the story of the Forty-Seven Righteous Men of Ako who endured humiliation and took revenge on the Lord.
The story is not complicated, and with modern aesthetics, its lofty collectivist collision of militaristic ideas will even be strongly criticized by cultural scholars.
However, from the perspective of Japanese culture alone, the story of "Zhongchenzang" has a phenomenal influence.
According to incomplete statistics, from 1928's "Loyal Soul And Righteous Martyrs: Record of Zhongchenzang" to 2010's "The Last Zhongchenzang", Japan has nearly 80 movies about the theme of "Zhongchenzang".
The key reason why the story of "Tadatoshi Zang" can be recognized by Japanese audiences is that it adheres to the promotion and adherence to the spirit of traditional Bushido.
Although the samurai class in Japan officially announced its demise after the Meiji Restoration, due to the strong samurai consciousness and feudal remnants of the reform itself, the samurai class disappeared, but the spirit of Bushido that it believed in never left.
In the course of Japan's thousand-year history and culture, the spirit of "Bushido" has gradually transformed into the background of the Japanese national spirit, and has penetrated into the hearts of every Japanese people.
To some extent, Japanese audiences watch the "Zhongchenzang" film, similar to the church worship of Western believers, and the historical process has given it a distinctive cultural meaning.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" > the origin of "Bushido"</h1>
Although the spiritual core of "Bushido" originates from the way of Confucius and Mencius, according to historical books, the term "samurai" first appeared in Japan at the beginning of the Nara period (710-784 AD).
But strictly speaking, the "samurai" at this time did not have the spirit of "Bushido" and did not have any status, and its responsibility was to guard the feudal lord's manor, or follow the lord's instructions to invade other manors.
At first glance, it seems to have similarities with the fu soldiers and family soldiers in the magnates of our Chinese feudal dynasty, but in essence, the fu soldiers of the Chinese feudal dynasty were based on the "recruitment system" and the "fencing system", while most of the Samurai identities in Japan were passed down from the "inheritance system".
The "succession system" of early samurai class status was actually a forced action, a measure taken by the emperor to consolidate his rule and weaken the influence of the feudal lords.
However, in order to increase the production enthusiasm of the feudal lords, the emperor also affirmed the ownership of the feudal system on the land: the people in the enclosure were only responsible to the feudal lords, and could not escape the feudal lords' areas.
This meant that under the strict hierarchical order, peasants could only be peasants, carpenters could only be carpenters, blacksmiths could only be blacksmiths, and samurai could only be samurai.
Under the original intention of maintaining the rule and development of feudal lord families, the samurai gradually became a relatively closed collective, becoming a tool and weapon in the struggle for power between horizontal and vertical powerful families.
It seems that there is a connection between the "loyalty and filial piety" between the "lords" in our Confucian culture, but in fact it is really only a literal connection, but the practice of "loyalty and filial piety" is different.
Chinese Confucianism requires "loyalty and filial piety" to be undifferentiated loyalty to the monarch, unconditional, and absolutely subordinate.
The Japanese samurai's idea of "loyalty and filial piety" was conditional, a kind of exchange relationship based on profit.
When japanese samurai went out on expeditions or defended their homeland, the monarchs were able to give their families a certain amount of personal safety protection or land resource benefits.
This can be found in the Hojo Five Dynasties Chronicle: "Without a territory, there is no need to be loyal to the king, and there is no need to lay down one's life on the battlefield."
Some samurai also believe that if they fight on the battlefield but cannot prove their "contribution", then their "death" is meaningless. Therefore, the early samurai advocated the moral spirit, which was actually a kind of interest relationship that was not solid.
What's more, under the real dilemma of the territory changing hands frequently at that time, the samurai were often left with the choice problem of "taking sides", and if they did not stand correctly or speculated enough, it was difficult for the samurai to ensure the safety of their families and property.
However, because the master-subordinate relationship of the samurai is often hereditary, coupled with the fact that the monarch has built a "non-blood" bond with the samurai to stabilize the hearts of the samurai class, it has also made many samurai from "profit" and "reality" gradually transformed into "initiative" and "norms", of course, this is just an idealistic utopia, in the face of real human nature, people often can not resist temptation and test.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" > the "evolution" of Bushido</h1>
The original intention of the Samurai Order was to maintain the rule of the family, which means that the emergence of the "samurai" itself was a joint product of the collapse of centralized power headed by the emperor and the development of feudal manors.
In the past centuries of war, the samurai have exchanged their own political position with repeated sacrifices and dedications, and the "vassal system" established during the Kamakura shogunate period, the samurai have been able to obtain the gifts of the monarch through their achievements and loyalty, and this gift is different from the verbal agreement of the past subordination relationship, and the loyalty of the samurai is guaranteed by "system" and "authority".
After entering the Tokugawa shogunate era, Japan entered a relatively long period of peace, and the original samurai class also entered the "bureaucracy and industry and commerce" class during the Taiping period, and the monarch also had higher requirements for the cultural literacy of the samurai.
As a result, the social nature of the samurai was also strengthened here, and under the influence of multiple factors such as "Confucianism" and "Buddhism" and "Shintoism" in Japan, the "Bushido" spirit of the Japanese samurai strengthened more knowledge and content.
However, the samurai class itself has a special identity and status in society, which also makes some "learned" samurai move towards the "elite" class and deviate from the masses, but whether it is the traditional samurai spirit or the modern samurai spirit, their emphasis on "selflessness", "etiquette", "responsibility", and "collective" consciousness has a positive significance.
Samurai, in the history of Japanese shogunate rule for a hundred years, their ideological will has also been inherited to this day. Although it is often said that the hierarchical order of Japanese society is forested and the enterprise is rigid, on the other side of the coin, under japanese society, under the hierarchical order of collectivism, diligence, humility, etiquette, martial arts, and material decline, itself is a positive affirmation of the Japanese samurai spirit.
And the seeds of these cultures eventually took root in later Japanese films.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="03" > Bushido's "movie"</h1>
The reason why the "Zhongchen Zang" film can be affirmed and sought after by Japanese audiences is that behind every Japanese person, there is a hidden shadow of a samurai. It can have a great attraction for Japanese audiences and a kind of spiritual purification effect.
Under the direction of Akira Kurosawa, the representative figure of Japanese films, Japanese "samurai films" depart from the traditional spirit of Bushido, no longer just the advocating spirit of "samurai", in Kurosawa's films, it gives those "samurai" more distinctive characteristics of the times and cultural symbols, we can use Kurosawa's films to glimpse the changes in Japanese social life, economy, culture and other eras in the same period.
In 1945, Japan was defeated, the emperor fell, traditional beliefs collapsed, and Japan's national pride and pride fell to the extreme.
Akira Kurosawa brought his first samurai film, The Man Who Stepped on the Tiger's Tail, which revived national self-confidence.
In 1950, after the war reconstruction, Japan's national identity was lost, cultural identity was confused, and the whole of Japan was covered with dark clouds.
Akira Kurosawa brought his Rashomon, a film that has left a strong mark on the history of world cinema, through which a murder case that occurred in Heian Kyo reveals the complex human nature and human darkness.
In Rashomon's story, Akira Kurosawa "degrades" samurai to ordinary people.
It also seems to be a metaphor for the contradiction between the Japanese "chrysanthemum and the sword", on the one hand, allowing them to establish a connection with tradition, while on the other hand, they constantly escape the shackles of tradition and eventually get lost in the confusion of the past and the future. Are we tough or weak?
In 1954, the samurai returned, Japan entered the fast lane of development, and a good economic environment brought about a cycle of "consumption" in the inner volume.
Akira Kurosawa affirmed the return of the Japanese samurai and the rise in national self-confidence with "Seven Samurai", which represents "tenacity, friendship, martial arts, wisdom, optimism, future, and hope".
In 1965, there was an ideological crisis, the loss of culture, and the gap between rich and poor.
In his "Red Beard", Kurosawa uses the ancient irony to target the contradiction of thought at the Japanese society that was highly coincident with the shogunate period at that time, revealing the life difficulties and group uneasiness of those who deviated from the "train" and derailed the bottom in the development of modernization.
In 1980, capital was hot, but the economy was also beginning to see the beginning of a crisis.
Akira Kurosawa also rarely proposed the launch of his "Shadow Samurai", which is based on the tragedy of Takeda Shingen, the daimyō of Japan during the Sengoku period, pointing directly to the risks and possibilities of the current Japanese society's potential "prosperity and decline".
Unfortunately, the lighthouse Shadow Samurai was not accepted in that frenetic era, with a $6 million investment but only 4 million at the box office. After "all the way to the top", it completely burst this huge bubble.
Japan also entered the "lost decade."
When we look back at the history of Japan, the history of cinema, and Akira Kurosawa's samurai films, we are able to find:
Historically, the Japanese have retained the bloodline of "samurai", and the shadow of "samurai" has left his mark in different eras.
In terms of movies, the improvement and development of the genre of samurai films has once again strengthened the cultural identity of the Japanese people for "samurai", and the story of "Zhongchenzang" has also evolved in the process of restoring "Bushido" and eventually transformed into a rich national cultural heritage.
This makes them thrifty, hardworking, tenacious, but also contradictory, inferior, self-denying...
Samurai movies are like mirrors, where the Japanese see themselves, and the onlookers see them.