Cross-cultural communication （118）　

118) Cross-cultural considerations of “Moeyo Ken; Swords of Fury”
In November 2021, I went to see the film adaptation of “Swords of Fury”. It was a weekday afternoon, two weeks after the film's release. Even though the new coronavirus had calmed down considerably by then, I was still a little surprised to see that the theater was 80% full. I was also a little curious to see how they had adapted the original novel by Ryotaro Shiba, which had moved me so much 20 years ago, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the film was both faithful to the original and also had its own visual style. The performances by Junichi Okada, who played the lead role of Toshizo Hijikata, and Kou Shibasaki, who played his lover O-Yuki, were also worth seeing.

When I read the original story 20 years ago, I thought that the theme of “Swords of Fury” was the aesthetic of the downfall of the Shinsengumi; Organization as an institution and army on the side of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the world view of honor and humanity, and the life of Hijikata Toshizo, who embodied this himself. This was also well captured in the film. However, the reason I chose to write about this work on the Cross-Cultural Blog is because, although it is not part of the main story, it involves France.

As I wrote in Cross-cultural communication (77) France was the only country among the foreign powers that was consistently supporting the Tokugawa shogunate, while the other powers were all opportunistically eyeing Japan's interests. After the Boshin War, the shogunate army, which had been on the losing side, fled north, and finally reached Goryokaku in Hakodaido. Even in Hakodaido Goryokaku, where the government forces eventually triumphed, there were several French military advisors providing military guidance to the shogunate army. As you might expect, the French military advisors did not share the fate of the shogunate army, and returned to France before the final battle, but in both the original story and the film, the leader of the advisors, Jules Brunet, meets with Hijikata and shakes his hand, saying, “I am honored to have been able to help you, the shogunate army”. What I remember here is the scene from a yakuza movie in which the hero, played by the late actor Takakura Ken, goes off on his own to confront his enemies with a single blow from his sword.

From my own experience of living in Paris for two and a half years, I know that the French are a nation of individualists who like their freedom, but in the fictional world of movies and novels, they also have a surprising fondness for chivalry and human kindness. So I think that if I were to take this movie to France, it would be well received.

Appendix:
In January 2022, two months after watching the movie “The Sword of Fire”, I read the novel “La Mission; Military Advisor Brunet, Bunshun Bunko”. This work, written by Ken-ichi Sato, who is good at historical novels, is a novel that is almost non-fiction, and it depicts the activities of Jules Brunet in Japan. There is one clear piece of fiction. That is, the epilogue in which Hijikata does not die in battle in Hakodate, but disguises himself as a Frenchman and travels to France with French military advisors. It is a “near-non-fiction” story that can also be enjoyed as a story.

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