I’m always writing samurai stories

An edition about the samurai warrior archetype and how influenced me, and more stuff with swords and blood

Mar 04, 2024

HELLO AND WELCOME TO A NEW EDITION OF MY NEWSLETTER!

March is here! These days I am really focused on different projects I’m working on, especially two as an artist, and they are taking the most of my time so I do not have much time for social media, or writing the newsletter… The other day I had an idea for a potential continuation of Ginger Revenges (even though my initial plan was beginning a different story) and had to reprimand myself: “If you want to do your little free comic-book you should finish your assignments first!” So I returned to my studio and did my homework.

ORIGINAL PAGES

I continue updating my bigcartel store with new drawings and signed (and some of them sketched) books and blank covers, but now I’m also going to sell original pages.
I have a limit of the items I can show and sell, but if things go well I could upgrade my plan with the store and pay more every month but at exchange, sell tons of pages. I need time but well, baby steps.
I’ll use this newsletter to talk about what I’m going to upload and sell, and this will be the first place where you’ll be able to get information about it.

I HAD A PLAN…

I had planned to write about recent news in my artistic environment, like you know, all this AI mess… But I felt so tired about it… So I decided to write about something that stimulates me more.

SAMURAI FICTION

I love Samurai stories. Specifically Samurai films. I love comics and mangas (and by extension anime) and sometimes novels about this subject, but the place I think the genre actually shines is in real-action movies. And maybe I should differentiate concepts, because I’m not talking about Jidaigeki (historical films, so this is any kind of story like a thriller or romance set in Feudal Japan). I’m talking about Chambara (Japanese contraction of “chanchan”, the sound of two swords clashing, and "barabara" the flesh being torn into pieces),

People with swords. Killing each other. The good stuff.

Meiko Kaji: Never a glance so full of hate was so beautiful

When you read about the history of Japan (I’m not a scholar but I have read enough books about it to have a general vision) you discover that a good part of what a samurai is is basically a myth that Japan told to itself. Concepts like Bushidō, the way of the warrior, is something beautiful but naive, a luxury you can’t afford in a real war. Basically, after a long years of civil war between clans, the dynasty of Tokugawa ended the conflict and a long peace period came, and later the Western winds blew (and sometimes the cannons too). Japan evolved. If they were lucky and did not become rōnin (samurai without a master), samurai were no longer warriors and became bureaucrats, but also artists, writers and poets. Then they looked to their past and made this story about what they were. Maybe they wanted to justify their own existence in those times that didn't need them?

So they built a myth, but so powerful that extended to fiction and defined Japanese nature until now.

Even though I love all the Akira Kurosawa filmography, I fell in love with his art with the Yojimbo/Sanjuro dupla and Seven Samurai. I love Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri, and films like Sword of Doom, The three outlaw Samurai or the trilogy about Miyamoto Musashi starring Toshiro Mifune. And let’s not forget Zatoichi with its 25 (!!!) movies I’m watching (with patience) in order right now.
But they were more “elevated” films, let’s call them this way, even if their vocation were being products for the people, to be “blockbusters”. I later discovered the exploitation/B-grade version -but wonderfully violent and sexy- of chambara films with sagas like Lone wolf & cub, Lady Snowblood or Female Yakuza Tale (AKA Sex & Fury).

I still enjoy modern films like Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins or Takeshi Kitano’s Zatoichi remake, but I think my favorite age of samurai films is the 60s-70s.

Why am I telling you this? Because at the end, I feel I’m always writing samurai stories.

Lately I can't stop thinking about this figure. I think I always had this idea of what character I was most interested in, and simply when I saw a samurai movie for the first time, the thought fitted in the correct space, like those games for toddlers where they have to put a geometric piece of wood in its corresponding space.

But I had been watching samurai stories all my life, simply I didn’t know they were. Clint Eastwood’s westerns and Dirty Harry stories. Steve McQueen riding in his car. Night vigilantes. Characters with a code to die for. Now, you have plenty of examples. John Wick is a samurai story, like Drive, The killer, The Equalizer, Atomic Blonde, or now Jason Statham and his The beekeeper… Every time you see a movie about a hitman/gangster/agent betrayed by his lord, it's a samurai story. Also every Star Wars universe Jedi plotline.

Samurai stories are about morals taken to the extreme, about how our duty to the common good can clash with the weight of our self-preservation. Loyalty against selfishness. Primal impulses against bonds of civilization (love, friendship, camaraderie)... The ultimate dilemma sublimated to the purest and more distilled figure, a person of pure virtue… or sometimes a broken myth, a character who treasoned his ideals and is looking for redemption, or a new -maybe last- chance to recover the honor, the dignity…

A “samurai type” is always interesting because (s)he’s walking through the line of the life-and-death election and often doesn't finish the story alive. Sometimes it’s a story about a last duel before darkness… And worth it.

If you have favorite movies to recommend, you have my comments section. I’m sure I forgot a lot of good movies.

BROKEN ENGLISH Victor Santos’ Newsletter

Discussion about this post