The Samurai

A film by Bernard Guerrini

In Japan, there is still a great deal of admiration for the Samurai and their rigid code of honor. Much more than their role as warriors, they represent the very roots of Japanese civilization. The Samurai offers an enthralling and colorful odyssey into Japan's history in which Samurai culture became the core of Japanese values. The film colorfully illustrates the Samurai's martial traditions and the manifestations of its ties to the Zen principles of Respect, Purity and Composure.

Professor Kohei Irie of Tsukuba University says: "The Samurai warrior class realized that to keep power during the seven hundred years in which they prevailed, they had to add intellectual and spiritual elements to the act of war....and acquire a culture based on literature, art and religion." The film contains mesmerizing images of horseback riders in spectacular recreations of battles and in Kendo, a sport using sticks as swords. The discipline and audacious spirit of the Samurai also emerges in the art of swordmaking or "Katana," in the tea ceremony, in calligraphy and in the art of flower arrangement. The Samurai also contains clips from features such as Akiro Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai which idealizes the art of conflict and pays homage to the Samurai's self-control, their sense of strategy and their control over their opponents' minds.

From the Edo period to the present, the martial arts have been used to shape and train model citizens. Despite the broad cultural changes in this ultra-modern and urbanized country, many people are nostalgic for the ancestral values of Honor, Truth and Virtue and try to rekindle the spirit of the ancient Samurai warrior.

52 min. Video or DVD. Sale $350. Video rental $75.

"Recommended… goes far to explain the samurai code of honor and lifestyles as well as some of the arts and crafts on which they depended…beautiful camerawork and seamless editing…" Sheila S. Intner, Simmons GSLIS at Mount Holyoke College, EMRO