Leiden University Student Repository

Bos, Daphne (2022)

Swords Make the Samurai: The Role of Japanese Filmmaker Kurosawa Akira (1910-1998) in Establishing the Western Notion of a Samurai Film Genre

Master thesis | Asian Studies (60 EC) (MA)

This thesis argues that the notion of a samurai film genre is actually an Anglophone construct that is used to classify Japanese films from the 'jidaigeki' (period film) and 'chambara' (swordplay) genres. Because of the political situation during the Cold War and the orientalist perspective of Western audiences, Western cultural conventions that would eventually create the samurai film genre were thought of as Japanese cultural conventions based on Japanese cultural tradition. Kurosawa Akira's 'samurai films', which were the first to be shown in the West and also the most widely exported outside Japan, have become representative of this genre, despite the fact that Kurosawa’s jidaigeki films often do not follow the cultural conventions that is believed to be the samurai film genre.

Japanese cinema

Akira Kurosawa

genre

samurai film

Author

Bos, Daphne

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

East Asian Studies

Supervisors

Crandol, M.E.

ECTS Credits

15

Language

en