Samurai in American Camp Cinema

The Samurai film has existed as a successful and marketable genre for the last fifty years. While typically associated with Japan, Samurai films are also made as in American productions, which take place in American settings. Like most genres, Samurai films are often dependent upon similar formulas, actions and stereotypes in order to be consistently marketable. There is a problem however, in the use of predictable formulas in genres. In his article “Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema”, Mitsuiro Yoshimoto states the following about genre:

By carefully combining generic subcomponents to produce infinitesimal differences, the studios try to develop a field of intertexts that restrict the meanings and effects of films and create specific audience expectations. However, the total predictability stymies the self-perpetuation of genres. The audience expects certain kinds of products guaranteed by generic conventions but simultaneously demands constant variations within the parameters of those conventions. (207)

Samurai films have been successful but the demand for variations within the formula by audiences have warranted several different films that have attempted to rework the genre for success. One particular method that has been used in regards to the Samurai is the transformation of Japanese samurai films and their styles into campy cult films. Two films in particular that have used the samurai genre in camp fashion are Quentin Tarrantino’s Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Michael Herz’s Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD. Both of these films, the former a big-budget Hollywood film and the latter an independent film made by a B movie studio turned the Samurai genre into films of campy excess to varying degrees of success.

In her article “Notes on Camp,” Susan Sontag defines camp as “a vision of the world in terms of style-but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the “off,” of things-being-what-they-are-not”. (279) Films such as Kill Bill and Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD use elements of Samurai films and Japanese cinema in general to develop their own exaggerated styles. They simultaneously embrace the stereotypes of the genre while using them in highly stylized fashion to create a new “camp” vision.

The use of stereotypes and clichÃ?©s that are common to the Samurai are overemphasized in each film. In the article “Samurai and self-colonization in Japan”, Hiroshi Yoshioka discusses the stereotype of the Samurai. He states: “I choose the term Samurai to give some form to a complex representational mechanism that is at work in the relation of Japan to the West. It bears only a limited relationship to the historical fact of what a Samurai really was”. (102) He later states, “the Samurai functions almost as a pure signifier which, by its very senselessness, provokes people’s imagination strongly”. (102)

Yoshioka makes these statements in order to embrace the value of the Samurai as a stereotype. The Samurai have, in the eyes of society, evolved into mythical warriors whose discipline, physical skills and mastery of their arts put them on a higher plateau than the average human being. Most of the Samurai that are seen in modern film are a far cry from the ancient warriors who used to protect Japan but they are still representative of the old Samurai culture. Yoshimoto writes that “The Samurai film as a generic category tells us less about Japanese cinema and more about a colonialist representation of Japan, which is shared by many Westerners and Japanese.”(213) The Samurai is a proud tradition in Japan and it represents such a unique culture that American culture has often sought to embrace it in many ways.

Kill Bill: Volume 1 is a film that embraces the Samurai culture and uses Caucasian American characters as representations of Samurai warriors. The film is a typical Samurai film in which a character uses their skills as a martial artist to seek revenge on the people that did them wrong. Samurai are more than often males, but Kill Bill offers a different take on the genre by having its main character be a female.

The idea of an attractive Caucasian female character as a bloodthirsty, skilled martial artist is a way for the image of the Samurai to be represented as a character that is attractive to American audiences. The concept of the Samurai as a revenge seeking being dates back to ancient traditions of the Samurai. The Hagakure is an old book that contains writings and passages about the Samurai and their nature. The author Yamamoto Tsunemoto writes:

A certain person was brought to shame because he did not take revenge. The way of revenge lies in simply forcing one’s way into a place and being cut down. There is no shame in this. By thinking that you must complete the job you will run out of time. By considering things like how many men the enemy has, time piles up; in the end you will give up. (29)

The main character in Kill Bill: Volume 1 (who is called “The Bride”) heads forth with this relentless desire to seek revenge against all odds. She seems uninterested in how many men she has to kill or the risks involve in killing them to get the revenge she desires. There is a sequence towards the end of the film that takes place in a Japanese nightclub where the Bride is confronted by a large group of sword-wielding Samurai who outnumber her vastly. She seems neither scared nor even emotional about the presence of these men. This scene is a prime example of using traditional Samurai stereotypes in a heightened, camp style.

The scene is a mixture of fancy swordplay, people moving through the air with ease, dramatic camera movements and noticeably loud music. What makes this sequence different from traditional Samurai films is that it is bathed in blood and gore. The character of the bride is so bloodthirsty and hungry for revenge that she is willing to hack of limbs, pull out eyeballs and slash open necks in full view of the camera. The heightened amount of gore in the scene fits in with Sontag’s notion of camp as “introducing an attitude which is neutral in respect to its content”. (277) The scene is so extreme, so graphic and so far away from the traditionalistic values of the Samurai that it elevates itself to being camp.

Sgt Kabukiman NYPD takes the idea of camp being “neutral in respect to its content” to a new level all together. Kill Bill is a film that uses different stereotypes and clichÃ?©s of Samurai and Samurai movies to become uses a camp style to not only give a new take on the genre but to pay homage to and respect it as well. Kill Bill is a Samurai film, which is stylistically campy. Sgt Kabukiman is primarily a camp film that happens to have elements of the Samurai in it. The film goes beyond being neutral in respect to its content and is instead flat out disrespectful to it.

Rather than having a Caucasian character that embraces the culture and values of the Samurai, Sgt Kabukiman has a main character that has the Samurai values accidentally thrust upon him. The film involves a character named Harry Griswold, a New York City police officer who witnesses a murder at a Kabuki show and through very contrived circumstances ends up inheriting the spirit of a dead Samurai warrior. Through this, Griswold becomes the superhero Sgt Kabukiman, and takes on the appearance of a Kabuki warrior who uses martial arts, Samurai skills and other more extreme skills in order to fight crime in a different fashion. The film combines genres, putting a Samurai character in a very clich�©d American cop movie using a very excessive campy style.

Sgt Kabukiman isn’t ignorant of the Samurai at all. One particular passage in the Hagakure seems to embrace one of the main concepts of the film:

If one does not get it into his head from the very beginning that the world is full of unseemly situations, for the most part his demeanor will be poor and others will not believe him. And if others do not believe one no matter how good a person he may be, he will not have the essence of a good person. This can also be considered a blemish.

The character of Harry Griswold starts out in the film as being confused, baffled and not in control of his new Samurai powers. He struggles throughout the first half the movie in trying to embrace his new skills while simultaneously trying to get people to believe that he is in fact this Kabukiman. Nobody believes him throughout the movie but as he learns to control and embrace the Samurai ideals that have been thrust upon him he becomes more of a successful hero.

While Sgt Kabukiman does contain some of the ideals of the Samurai it uses them in a context of trash, excess and camp. The film is essentially a comedy that is self aware of its camp nature. It is so extreme in its methods and so cheap in its execution that it completely embraces camp values and seeks to actively make fun of and disrespect the genres it represents. The Samurai elements in the film are absurd and laughable.

The Sgt Kabukiman character looks like a caricature that would be hanging on the wall in an American Chinese restaurant. He uses weapons such as flying chopsticks and sushi rolls to dismember his enemies. The fight scenes are graphic and gory but without the malice of the scenes in Kill Bill. Sgt Kabukiman is not a bloodthirsty, or hungry for revenge and doesn’t seek to viciously injure his enemies, he just exists in a world where everything is extreme and humorous. Killing people with flying chopsticks is just another way for him to get by in his universe.

Sgt Kabukiman NYPD is more concerned with being campy and excessive than having an artistic take on the world of the Samurai. The movie is filled with stereotypes about both Japanese and American cultures. The Japanese elements of the film are idealized as mystical foreigners that engage in odd traditions and such as eating raw fish with chopsticks. The main Asian female character in the film is highly sexualized, has dominatrix tendencies and is constantly talking about very mystical eastern concepts that none of the Caucasians in the film seen to understand.

American characters in the film are also very bold stereotypical statements. New York City in the world of Sgt Kabukiman is crawling with camp representations of transvestites, homosexuals, rapists and drug dealers. They exist in the film essentially for the reason of having someone for the New York Police Department to kill. The stereotypes are so rampant in the film that they become a parody of themselves, which deliberately turns it into a satirical take on clich�©s.

There are other differences between the ways in which Kill Bill and Sgt Kabukiman represent the Samurai through the use of camp. Yoshioka writes, “If the modern Western subject can be characterized by rationality of action, samurai belong to a value system utterly different from that of goal-seeking rational ethics”. (102) The main characters in each of these films operate under this train of thought. The Bride in Kill Bill not only lusts for revenge against the people who wronged her, but has the complete capacity to extract revenge in the most brutal ways she possibly can. The only justice in her mind is if people die at her own hands. She operates outside of boundaries of law, morals and ethics. The Samurai world she inhabits allows her to freely adapt in any time, space and situation in order to meet her needs for revenge. Her choice of action is not entirely ethical but it’s the only way she knows how to get what she wants.

Harry Griswold, on the other hand starts off operating within the boundaries of law. He is by nature a New York police officer and fully wants to uphold the law. The predicament of having the soul of a Kabuki warrior trapped inside of him is what makes him function outside of rationality and ethics. When he becomes Kabukiman his methods begin to drastically differ from that of a normal police officer but he still seeks to fight evil in the world, to enforce the law in whatever way he still can and at the end of the film he fulfills the ultimate Western accomplishment by saving the world. At the end of Sgt Kabukiman NYPD Harry (as Sgt Kabukiman) has to confront a mythical creature that is reminiscent of Godzilla.

The Kabuki powers that he has inherited make him the only person in the world that is capable of stopping this monster. When he succeeds in the end he is embraced as a hero, which is seemingly all he wanted from the beginning. He starts off the film as a bumbling cop but his inheritance of Samurai abilities turns him into a misunderstood warrior, and that ultimately makes him a hero who saves the world and gets the girl in the end. There is no romantic ending for The Bride other than the death of her enemies. She doesn’t seek heroism or any other Western ideals.

Yoshimoto writes, “the great paradox of the Samurai Film is that it has nothing to do with history and everything to do with myth”. (213) Most Samurai films offer a view on the Samurai that has more to do with popular cultural views of them rather than historically accurate ones. Films about Samurai represent them as mythological beings: People who operate outside the boundaries of society, whose lives are surrounded by mysticism and whose physical capabilities far surpass any normal human beings. The notion of the Samurai as enigmatic beings who travel the world seeking revenge and adventure while operating under a pseudo-religious, spiritual, disciplined train of thought has evolved more from films about Samurai rather than the actual warriors that existed many years ago.

American films that use Samurai characters and elements are more interested in showing Samurai as myth. Kill Bill deals with a character that is a fully functional Samurai but only wishes to use her abilities to kill. She is either an assassin or a revenge-driven sadist. There is nothing religious or spiritual about her conquest. Sgt Kabukiman presents a character that uses the skills of a Samurai to become a heroic Western hero. Like the Bride from Kill Bill he embraces the physical skills of a Samurai in order to accomplish what he needs to do but lacks the capacity for the insightful aspect of the Samurai. His counterpart in the film, the Asian female serves as his spiritual crutch. She understands the psychological aspects of the Samurai but lacks the physical ability to act on them.

Both of these films use camp methods in order to represent Samurai. They both fit Sontag’s idea of “a vision of the world in terms of style.” The way that the style of each film is handled through visuals, sounds, music and acting allow them to reinterpret the genres they represent. The films differ in their uses of camp. Kill Bill: Volume 1l uses style to pay homage to the Samurai genre while Sgt Kabukiman: NYPD uses style to parody it. Each film offers a unique representation of American views of the Samurai by using various camp techniques.

Works Cited:

Sontag, Susan. “Notes on Camp”
Retro-Modernism: Taste Cartographies in the Nineties, Pgs 276-279

Tsunemoto, Yamamoto. “Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai”
1979, Tokyo: Oodansha, Pgs. 29-33

Yoshioka, Hiroshi. “Samurai and self-colonization in Japan”
The Decolonization of Imagination, London: Zed Books, 1995, Pgs 99-112

Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro. “The Seven Samurai”
Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Culture, 2000, Duke U Press, Pgs. 207, 212 & 213