Orientalism Meets Tom Cruise: An Ideological Analysis of The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003) William J Rees College

The Last Samurai was released in cinemas in the USA on 7 December 2003, and was directed by Edward Zwick, who cast Tom Cruise to play the protagonist. Cruise’s character – Nathan Algren - is an American Civil War veteran, who is sent to Japan in the 1870s to train the conscripts of the Imperial army. Their job is to destroy the Samurai hereditary warriors, but they set out too early and he is captured by the Samurai. Whilst in captivity, he learns to respect the traditional Japanese ways. Zwick’s representation fetishizes this traditional wing of Japanese culture as opposed to the modernity of the ways of the West, favouring the Samurai’s sword over the firearm in his representation. Using the work of Edward Said, The Last Samurai as a piece of work is heavily orientalist, posing drastic contrasts between the East and the West, which shall be considered in detail over the course of this analysis of Zwick’s film.

One way in which The Last Samurai is a piece of orientalist cinema, is in how it represents Japan as the ‘Orient’, as opposed to the West. “The Orient was almost a European invention… a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, re-markable experiences.” (Said 1978, p.1) Said’s words are...