The cinematic dialogue between the American Western and the Japanese Jidaigeki (period drama) forms one of the most fascinating instances of cross-cultural fertilization in film history. This epilogue returns to the genesis of that exchange, which served as a foundational premise for the past few months of articles on Clint Eastwood's evolution within the Western genre.
These notes from the sketchbook examines Lee Sang-il's 2013 Japanese Jidaigeki, Yurusarezaru Mono (literally A Thing That Can't Be Forgiven) not merely as a remake but as the closing of a cinematic circle, where a quintessential Western, itself born from Japanese inspiration, is reinterpreted and re-contextualized back into a Japanese period drama.
I started with Akira Kurosawa's 1961 masterpiece, Yojimbo. It's impossible to overstate its significance. That film, with its stark narrative purity and its iconic ronin protagonist, didn't just influence Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964); it was, in essence, its cinematic godfather, providing the skeletal structure upon which Leone built his own vision. And from that a star was forged: Clint Eastwood. He wasn't just cast; he was catapulted onto the international stage, his laconic gaze and effortless cool reshaping the very definition of the Western hero. His career, forever intertwined with the dusty plains and moral ambiguities of the West, would culminate in a final, devastating statement, the 1992 Academy Award-winning masterpiece, Unforgiven.
This is the very culmination of that cross-cultural exchange, the profound completion of a cinematic arc where a film that is quintessentially Western, born itself from the fertile ground of Japanese inspiration, is reinterpreted and re-contextualized, brought back home, if you will, into the very heart of the Japanese period drama. It’s a testament to the power of narrative, a living, breathing demonstration of how stories, when they tap into something elemental, can resonate across oceans and epochs.
Yurusarezaru Mono (2013), under Lee Sang-il's meticulous direction, takes the raw, visceral spirit of Eastwood's Unforgiven and seamlessly transplants it. The dusty, windswept plains of the American Old West in the 1880s are exchanged for the brooding, remote northern island of Hokkaido during Japan's tumultuous Meiji era, a period that, strikingly, mirrors the American frontier in its own profound ways.
At the heart of this transposed narrative is Jubei Kamata (Ken Watanabe), a man whose legend precedes him. He is a former samurai, once a fearsome, almost mythical figure known as "Jubei the Killer." But that life, that brutal, blood-soaked past, is now a distant echo. He lives a life of quiet, grinding destitution with his two children, a broken man who has long since renounced his sword, bound by a solemn promise to his deceased wife.
But poverty, that most relentless of adversaries, and the agonizing need to provide for his children, drag Jubei back into the very abyss he so desperately tried to escape. An old comrade, Kingo Baba, appears with news of a bounty, a desperate lure: two men have brutally disfigured a prostitute in a desolate mining town. Reluctantly, with a soul heavy with the weight of his past and the stark reality of his present, Jubei agrees. He joins Kingo and a brash, half-Ainu young man named Goro Sawada, embarking on a journey that will force him to confront not just the physical remnants of his violent history, but the very moral decay that clings to the edges of this new world. Their path inevitably leads them to Ichizo Oishi (Koichi Sato), a sadistic former samurai who has, with brutal efficiency, adapted to the new order, serving as the local police commander, his authority enforced with a chilling, unapologetic cruelty.
Eastwood's Unforgiven stands as nothing less than a monumental deconstruction of the very Western hero myth he had, for so long, embodied. It pulled back the curtain, exposed the brutal, messy truth beneath the romanticized veneer. And Kurosawa's Yojimbo, while the foundational influence on the Spaghetti Western, was itself a brilliant subversion of traditional samurai tropes. It presented its ronin not as a noble warrior but as a cynical manipulator, a man operating in a world of moral shades, and it depicted violence with a stark, unflinching realism that had been largely absent from the genre.
So, when Lee Sang-il makes the audacious decision to transpose Eastwood’s deconstruction back into a Jidaigeki setting, he isn't just closing a neat loop of influence; he's seizing a profound opportunity to deepen the critique, to twist the sword, so to speak. By applying this deconstructive lens to the samurai archetype within its very cultural homeland, now informed by decades of Western interpretations and their subsequent deconstructions, Yurusarezaru Mono isn't just engaging in a dialogue; it's creating a complex interplay where both cinematic traditions are, in effect, deconstructing each other's deconstructions.
The very existence of Lee Sang-il’s film, a work notably marked as the first time in Japanese cinema history that an American-made film was remade and released in Japan, speaks volumes. The themes at play are not parochial; they are elemental, deeply human anxieties that can be seamlessly re-localised and re-examined, resonating just as powerfully in the Meiji era as they do on the American frontier.
Lee Sang-il's Yurusarezaru Mono does more than simply relocate the narrative; it imbues it with an entirely new set of historical and cultural resonances. The quintessential American frontier of 1880s Wyoming gives way to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido during the early Meiji Restoration, a period remarkably contemporaneous with the original setting. This era in Japanese history was a maelstrom of profound transformation: the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogun, the subsequent and agonizing decline of the samurai class, and the new Meiji government's concerted, sometimes brutal, efforts to modernize, centralize power, and "develop" Hokkaido, then known as Ezo. This "development" was, in effect, a process of internal colonization, with devastating impacts on the indigenous Ainu people who had long inhabited the land.
This seismic shift in setting fundamentally alters the narrative's very undercurrents. While Eastwood's film grapples with timeless themes of frontier justice, the myth of the "Wild West," and the brutal realities lurking behind heroic legends, Lee's remake navigates a different, yet equally potent, landscape. It plunges into issues of national identity in flux, the profound societal displacement of a traditional warrior class, and the intricate complexities of Japanese modernization, including the often-overlooked, often painful, colonial aspects of its expansion into Hokkaido. The American West, in its myriad cinematic portrayals, often as a raw frontier teetering between perceived savagery and the encroaching tide of "civilization." Hokkaido in the Meiji era served a strikingly similar function within the Japanese narrative; it was a frontier for mainland Japan, actively being settled and "tamed" by the new order. And within this landscape, the Ainu people represent the pre-existing, indigenous culture facing a systematic and often brutal suppression by this relentless new tide.
At the very heart of the remake is Jubei Kamata, brought to life with a quiet intensity by Ken Watanabe. Jubei is a former samurai who fought for the defeated Tokugawa Shogunate during the Boshin War, earning his fearsome moniker, "Jubei the Killer." His past is not just one of individual transgressions; it is inextricably linked to a specific, defining historical conflict and a lost cause, lending his burden a potent political and societal dimension that extends beyond William Munny's more individualized history of criminality. Munny's sins were largely personal choices of theft and murder; Jubei’s criminality, his very designation as "unforgiven," stems from being on the "losing side" of a civil war and his unwavering, if ultimately futile, loyalty to a defunct system.
This interpretation is further amplified by the narrative's crucial inclusion of the Ainu, whose historical suffering provides a devastating backdrop of collective, systemic injustice, a resonance that deepens the film's thematic power exponentially.
A significant, indeed transformative, addition to Jubei's character is his deceased Ainu wife. Director Lee Sang-il's explanation for this choice illuminates its profound importance:
"I decided Jubee’s wife should be Ainu... An Ainu woman was completely outside of the samurai hierarchy that Jubee had lived in before; she had none of the values of his particular society. He needed a woman like that. She could cleanse him of his dark and tainted past life, because she came from another world."
This connection to an indigenous, marginalized culture provides Jubei with a vital layer of personal transformation and a powerful link to a fundamentally different set of values, an element entirely absent in Munny's narrative. The remake, in its commitment to exploring these layers, also provides more exposition for Jubei's past, with an opening scene visually alluding to his deadly capabilities as an assassin, a stark contrast to the deliberate mystique surrounding Munny's history.
The enforcer of "order" in the remake is Ichizo Oishi, brought to life by Kōichi Satō. Oishi, much like Jubei, is a former samurai, but one who has, with a cruel pragmatism, successfully transitioned into the new power structure, serving as a ruthless police commander for the Meiji government in the frontier town. He is the clear counterpart to Gene Hackman's pragmatic and brutal sheriff, Little Bill Daggett. Both characters employ violence, often gratuitous, to maintain their authority. However, it's worth noting that Oishi sometimes registers as a less nuanced antagonist than Little Bill. While Hackman's portrayal was lauded for its charming, terrifying depiction of a psychopath hiding in plain sight, Oishi, at times, is perceived as being almost reduced to a "mustache-twirling villain" lacking the emotional depth and nuance that made Hackman's character so compellingly repellent.
The brash young aspirant to violence, the Schofield Kid in Eastwood's film, finds his powerful parallel in Goro Sawada, portrayed by Yūya Yagira. Goro is a young, boastful, half-Ainu hunter who joins Jubei and his companion Kingo Baba (Akira Emoto, stepping into the formidable shoes of Morgan Freeman's role). Like the Schofield Kid, Goro affects a tough exterior, claiming to have killed five men, but is ultimately, and profoundly, traumatized by the brutal reality of taking a life. Goro's character, however, is significantly enriched by his Ainu heritage. This introduces a potent, essential layer of social commentary on marginalization, identity, and the desperate, universal human desire for recognition within a discriminatory society. His motivation to join the killers is, in part, a yearning to become "someone," to escape the dehumanising treatment faced by the Ainu people, to carve out a space for himself in a world that seeks to erase him.
This emphasis on the Ainu narrative offers a significant, indeed crucial, departure from Eastwood's film. While Unforgiven (1992) is undeniably a deconstructive Western, it operates primarily within a white American framework; Ned Logan's Black identity is present, but it is not acknowledged, nor is it given the thematic weight and resonance, that the Ainu identity is afforded in the remake. The Meiji era was a period of intense nation-building in Japan, often promoting a fervent ideology of a unified, homogenous Japanese identity, which, by necessity, involved the systematic attempted erasure of Ainu culture. By centering Ainu characters and their struggles—Jubei’s Ainu wife as a moral anchor, Goro’s quest for personhood and recognition, and Jubei’s ultimate, redemptive act of protecting Goro from the brutal machinery of state persecution—Lee Sang-il introduces a potent, necessary counter-narrative.
The film also stages a powerful, symbolic confrontation: Eastern against Western, sword against gun (much like Yojimbo). While Jubei is, unequivocally, a master swordsman, firearms are present and represent the inexorable, changing nature of warfare and power in the Meiji era, the unstoppable march of modernity. The violence itself, particularly when enacted with swords, is often more graphic and visceral than in Eastwood's film, where gunfights, though brutal, can be swift and less overtly bloody. This heightened depiction of bloodshed in the remake may reflect differing cinematic traditions regarding on-screen violence, or a deliberate, conscious choice to emphasize the up-close, personal horror and agonizing intimacy of bladed combat.
The visual palette of the film, dominated by the stark, beautiful, yet unforgiving snowy landscapes of Hokkaido, contributes significantly to its Jidaigeki atmosphere and its profound thematic concerns. The cinematography is brighter and more mobile than the original's muted, static style, carving out a distinct, powerful visual identity for this Japanese iteration of the Unforgiven tale. Lee himself acknowledged that remaking a masterpiece like Unforgiven was a "very risky business," and he credited his previous film, Akunin (Villain, 2010), with giving him the courage and confidence to undertake such a daunting, yet ultimately rewarding, project.
The ending of Lee's remake offers a poignant, deeply moving contrast to Eastwood's. While William Munny simply disappears, with a textual epilogue suggesting he "prospered in dry goods" in San Francisco, a somewhat individualistic, quintessentially American resolution of reinvention and escape, Jubei's fate is far more ambiguous, far less definitive. He walks off into a freezing blizzard, his iconic sword – described by another character as a samurai's very soul – broken and left inside Oishi's corpse. This act unequivocally symbolizes a break from his violent past, a shattering of the old self, but not necessarily a promise of a peaceful, unburdened future for him personally.
The hope in the Japanese version, however, is significantly more communal, more rooted in shared experience and burgeoning possibility: Goro, the Ainu youth, and Natsume, the scarred prostitute, find a potential new beginning on Jubei's farm, caring for his children, tending to the fragile seeds of a new life. Natsume herself speaks of the place being full of hope, a sanctuary where she could finally start anew, where the unforgiven might find, if not forgiveness, then at least a respite.
Lee Sang-il's Yurusarezaru Mono masterfully, beautifully, completes the thematic arc that began with Yojimbo's profound impact on Clint Eastwood's cinematic journey and, by extension, on the Western genre at large. The reinterpretation of Eastwood's ultimate Western statement through a Japanese lens brings forth fresh, compelling cultural, historical, and thematic dimensions to a narrative that, in its essence, is familiar. It demonstrates, with striking clarity, the remarkable adaptability and enduring power of archetypal stories—the lone warrior confronting a corrupt world, the inescapable, crushing burden of past violence, and the elusive, often agonising, quest for redemption—across profoundly diverse cultures and historical eras.
This cyclical exchange between the Western and the Jidaigeki does not merely represent a closed loop, a neat, finished circle. Rather, it is perhaps an enriching, expanding spiral, demonstrating the continued relevance and remarkable capacity for self-critique and evolution within both genres.
The often-heard notion that genres like the Western or Jidaigeki face periods of "death" or exhaustion is brilliantly challenged by such remakes. Eastwood's Unforgiven was, for many, widely seen as an elegy for the Western, perhaps its final, definitive statement, a mournful, powerful farewell. Yet, Yurusarezaru Mono's very existence suggests that even such conclusive statements can spark new beginnings, new life, when reinterpreted through another cultural prism. Genres, it seems, do not truly die; they transform, finding new vitality, new meaning, through adaptation, through profound cross-pollination, through the endless conversation that is cinema itself.
(Bristol board. Indian Ink. Soft Pastels. Yurusarezaru Mono by Basesketch)