Westworld Season 2: Shogun Globe Reflects Ties Between Samurai Movies and Westerns

This week’s episode of “Westworld” finally took us to Shogun World, where Maeve found out Akane, her geisha counterpart.

“We may have cribbed a little bit from Westworld,” admitted buffoonish programmer Lee Sizemore. “You try writing 300 stories in three weeks!”
Don’t worry, Lee: Westerns and samurai films did plenty of cribbing from each other, too. With Shogun World, “Westworld” creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan winked at decades of cultural crossover between Western directors like John Sturges and samurai auteurs like Akira Kurosawa. And also you could buy the custom made cosplay costumes .

Some of the most famous Westerns ever made were adaptations of samurai movies: Sturges’ “The Magnificent Seven” was Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai” with gunslingers instead of ronin. Clint Eastwood’s popular “Man With No Name” in Sergio Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars” is based on the “Samurai WITHOUT Name” in Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo.”

Lee’s decision to turn Westworld’s bloodthirsty Hector and Armistice into the ronin team of Musashi and Hanaryo isn’t just a case of cutting corners. It’s also a spin on the previous trans-Pacific exchange.
And we do mean an exchange, because it’s not just Hollywood lifting ideas from Japan. While Kurosawa famously - and successfully - sued Leone for plagiarizing “Yojimbo” after seeing “A Fistful of Dollars,” he has also made it clear that some of the techniques in “Yojimbo” and several of his other works were influenced by Westerns.
Kurosawa discussed his Western influences in a 1989 New York Situations profile. “Westerns have been done over and over again and, in the process, a kind of grammar has evolved,” he mused. “I have learned from this grammar of the Western.”
In particular, Kurosawa took notes from “High Noon” director John Ford: the two often visited one another while filming.
“Westworld” is, in part, about individuality. It asks questions about what it means to forge one’s identity in a hostile world, and so do Westerns and samurai films.

For decades, the gunslinger represented an American ideal of durable individualism. Kurosawa’s films introduced American audiences to the cowboy’s cinematic counterpart in the Far East.
Also Read: Westworld Season 2 Download Full TV Show Episodes
After all, a gunslinger is his own man in the Wild West, relying on his six-shooter and his own moral code to uphold justice. A ronin is certainly, by definition, a samurai with no master. With only their katana, they defend themselves and those weaker than them.

Even in the 21st century, the cultural exchange continues: “Yurusarezaru Mono” is a 2013 samurai remake of Clint Eastwood’s acclaimed 1992 hit “Unforgiven,” in which he starred since William Munny, a retired outlaw pulled out of his peaceful farm existence to kill two males who disfigured a prostitute at a brothel.

The Japanese version transports that story to Meiji-era Japan in the 19th century, when the power of the samurai was at its end. Ken Watanabe plays Jubei Kamata, an outlaw samurai in hiding. Like Munny, he desires to live a calm life, even though he has a status for bloodthirst that forces him back into danger.

Both Munny and Jubei’s stories focus on the price of violence. And as “Westworld” regularly reminds us, quoting Shakespeare, “These violent delights have violent ends.”
One wonders if Lee offers thought things though as much as Eastwood and Kurosawa.
Check out more Westerns and Samurai movies that inspired each other in the gallery below.