samurai v. jedi

[Pol Favre]

i was thinking...i used to be big into samurai stuff back a couple of years ago when i lived in japan.

 

purple was everywhere with those guys. they're clothes and such, that is. it was a noble/popular colour with them.

 

watch the trailers for EP2 and what do you see? Lots of purple sabres, not to mention mace windu (spelling?) uses one as well.

 

 

now, as for the titles. Jedi, Samurai. see what's common? both end in a long I and both carry their plural without an S.

 

not to mention both can use any weapon but usually go with a sword/blade weapon.

 

the teachings of musashi (miyamoto) coincide with a lot of the Jedi ideas. such as the 'mind of no mind' or the 'freeing' of one's conscious self (spelling on conscious?).

 

the clothing of the Jedi and other such characters have obvious japanese/oriental touches. (especially the tunics)

 

 

 

 

if any of you can find more connections do let me know, or if you find any flaws let me know as well. thanks :>

[BioHazzard]

This isnt a coincidence and has been discussed before, another example of star wars and eastern culture mix is the fact that yoda talks backwards...the Chinese right from right to left so if you read it like we read it like western righting you read it backwards...

 

*****NOTE: I read the Yoda thing in a previous post and it wanst my original thought...

[Valdarious]

Well as far as purple goes, Lucas never intended to have purple as a color. He basicaly wanted green and blue for jedi and red for sith/dark. It wasnt until Samuel L Jackson asked Lucas "Can I have a purple one?" and Lucas just agreed. I heard that discussed somewhere since some people were asking about it on the SW site forums.

[waxdart]

As far as the purple saber discussion goes, you can actually see the exchange between George and Sam on-line:

 

http://www.starwars.com/episode-ii/video/making/making10.html

 

It's a funny moment, and puts to rest a lot of the techno-babble people get into about why saber colors are what they are. They're red, green and blue (and now purple) because they say so.

 

I think probably the biggest connection is that the original Star Wars (being, of course, Episode IV), is based largely on Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. The jedi were modeled quite literally on the samurai (possibly ronin, I don't recall) in the film.

 

Enough so that, in early incarnations of Star Wars' development, Lucas was considering buying the rights to Kurosawa's film to avoid any legal entanglements.

[patchx]

i think i can remember hearing somehwhere that lucas openly admits to jedi being heavily influenced by a series of old samurai movies

i think the major one was the seven samurai or something

 

anyway someone else probably know more about this than i do

 

-patch

[Pol Favre]

hey thanks guys. i knew this had to be more than coincidental

 

 

i sure am glad samuel l jackson asked for that purple sabre, because purple sabres rock. it's just about all i'll use :>

[Digital_Ronin]

oh yes, I think he purple poses a neat "in-between" when looking at the dark side (red) and the original canonical color of light side (blue).

 

red + blue = indeed, purple

 

Oh and the GREEN saber luke got in the movie was only invented because the art directors complained that his blue one wouldn't show up enough in front of the sky during the fight scene in the desert. (really!) Note that in the movies, lightsabers had ONLY been used indoors before.

 

So blue is the most original 'light' flavor while 'red' belongs to the darkside.

 

As for japanese references... had noticed that - oh well, maybe look at my name?

 

Digital_Ronin

[JK_Morovski]

well star wars is based on Akira Kurosawa's film Hidden Fortress which is a samurai based movie

[TdM]

as we are in a Japanese mood people

 

konnichi wa ogenki desu ka

 

Formally biohazard wrote:

 

"another example of star wars and eastern culture mix is the fact that yoda talks backwards...the Chinese right from right to left so if you read it like we read it like western righting you read it backwards... "

 

 

 

Yes... no. I work in a translation company the Chinese write forwards the same as the Japanese as Japanese Kanjii were originally taken from Chinese writing - now if you want to be picky you can say that in proper chinese - i.e calligraphy and old scripts it would have been written from the top of the page to the bottom but it would still flow from the left side of the page to the right.

 

If you are interested the only language that writes backwards is Arabic (unless some wierd backwater languages do too).

 

And as for the Japanese Samurai influence - yes it is influenced by the Samurai - and ronin are just normal samurai without a master.

 

just thought I would clear things up....

 

 

ja ne...

[Kiell_Randor]

Ok, to clear up the 'japanese' thing. I don't know exactly how you're defining 'writing backwards' there TdM, but I think it is entirely subjective. To us, the traditional Japanese way of writing is backwards (top to bottom, right to left). To them it is normal. To the arabic their writing is normal and we are backwards.

 

However what I believe he was referring to was grammatical patterns. If you translate a Japanese sentence word for word, their grammar comes out pretty much back to front compared to us (not all the time, but as a general rule). For example, a simple English sentence such as "I am going to the movies". In Japanese:

Watashi ha eiga ni ikimasu.

Translated literally,

"I am movie to going."

 

Also regarding the name 'Jedi'. Lucas got it from a Japanese term, "Jidai Geki" which means "Period Drama" from a samurai series he was watching set in the Samurai era. Reason for choosing it? He just liked the word.

 

Lastly Ronin are not really just 'Normal samurai without a master'. The 'without a master' thing puts them in another class altogether. They were essentially dispossed. Although western society commonly views the lone, masterless samurai as a 'romantic' figure much like the lone cowboy of westerns, in ancient Japanese culture he was a man shamed, set apart. To be masterless was in many ways to be honorless. The nuances changed somewhat as time went on, and there are some examples of extremely exceptional ronin who have helped to warp the true meaning to many westerners (the 47 Ronin, and Musashi being two examples). However for the most part ronin were viewed as little more than bandits, and were figures of distrust and something to beware.

[Digital_Ronin]

True. ronin were something like the outcasts of society. (extra score for hidden allusion)

 

Frowned upon and watched suspiciously. Literally "ro-nin" translates as "wave-man", alluding to the lack of constraint and loyalty in their character, as if they were "flowing" or "swaying" in from master to master in their sometimes mercenary ways.

 

Yep, I did some research before I chose that name.

 

Digital_Ronin

[Pol Favre]

eek, too many long posts to reply to them all.

 

but i will say that japanese (now, i dunno bout the past) write from top to bottom, left to right. if we wanna get more modern, they write straight from left to right...

 

jidai geki, eh? cool n_n

 

 

LUCAS IS THE MAN! (cheers for lucas)

[Kiell_Randor]

As I said, the _traditional_ way is top to bottom, right to left. That is to say their sentences run up and down the page. Looks very odd at first These days they most often write left to write, top to bottom, although for formal occasions and people from the older generations will still often do it top to bottom, left to right.

[digl]

Swamped...

[Over_burn_jedi]

hmm

 

There is a connection (from what I see) from ronin to initiates.

 

Initiates are first-time users fo the force, and are at a perilous stange in their training. Ther can fall easily into the Dark Side, or the Light Side. Like the ro-nin = wave-man translation. Its more of fluid change (see the resemblance?).

[CatholLynAyt]

Regarding the origins of Jedi and Samurai:

 

If you ever get to see the Star Wars: Magic of Myth traveling exhibit (currently at the Brooklyn Museum of Art through July 7) there's a video part of the show that explains how Lucas was partly inspired by Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai." They even show a little footage from the film, but nothing with the samural wielding their swords that I can remember. There were many other influences, mythological and otherwise, that the exhibit points out with displays of plenty of SW models, props and costumes.

[Pol Favre]

i was reading about the other connections. before making the movie, either lucas or one of the other guys read lots of faerie tales and such.

 

i hardly consider star wars sci-fi. it's more of fantasy than anything. it's not set in our science, it's set in another world. a galaxy far far away :>

[Kordeth]

One small thing to add: Mace's sabre is the only purple one, the others are actually blue, but in a few shots they do look a little purplish, probably due to the background.

[Pol Favre]

ah, you're right. after slowing it down and watching closely, the guys in the clone wars trailer do have blue, but they boarder on purple. but if you slow it down you can see it's only blue.

 

oh well.

 

 

(sobs)