The Meiji Restoration Nature and Impact

The Meiji Restoration Nature and Impact
Sam Wallis


The movie ‘The Last Samurai’, the newspaper article from The New York Times and the article posted on the George Mason University all give information about Japan’s changing legal structure, the history of the Samurai in Japan and some of the political and social changes as well as the throes of industrialization in Japan in the 1870’s. However, both articles written by Jonathan Dresner and Motoko Rich emphasize how source A (‘The Last Samurai’) is historically inaccurate through a number of different reasons. Kazuho Tsuchiya, a 33 year old Japanese graduate wrote, “It wasn’t realistic”. Many other Japanese people whom viewed the film where disappointed with it’s poor portrayals of Japanese culture.

Source A the film ‘The Last Samurai’ has a huge number of inaccurate accountings for Japanese events, as well as wrong interpretations of Japanese culture. Although the film does show some true themes of Japans changing social and economic structure in the second half of the nineteenth century. The article posted on the George Mason University hosted website on the 5th of January 2004 lists the reasons that the film ‘The Last Samurai’ is historically inaccurate. For example the majority of the samurai in Japan didn’t protest against the Emperor or the Shogun, they didn’t rebel, and were even thankful to be freed from the samurai way of life. The film portrays the majority of the samurai as rebels against the Emperor, which is wrong as only a small number of the samurai’s really did rebel. Another example of historical error in the film is that the Meiji Emperor didn’t speak English. In addition no one except for the most senior advisors even saw him without an invitation, he also didn’t make and important political decision as seen in the film ‘The Last Samurai’. One final point that Jonathan Dresner addresses in his article is the fact that samurai lived in large urban areas, while a small amount of lower...