Japan’s Samurai Actors: A Dying Breed?
Al Jazeera English reports on “Japan’s dying samurai heritage“:
Samurai movies once made Japanese cinema famous worldwide.
In the 1950s, films such as the Seven Samurai by Akiro Kurosawa were extremely popular both in Japan and abroad.
But waning interest is now leaving many of Japan’s silver screen swordsmen out of work.
They probably have a point about the decline of samurai action movies, but it is a pretty huge stretch to claim that Japan’s samurai heritage is “dying out” because choreographed sword-fighting scenes aren’t as popular as they used to be.
Al Jazeera fails to inform viewers about the huge “history boom” taking place in Japan right now, which can be observed in high ratings for N-H-K’s historical TV dramas, sales of samurai-related video games, and increased tourism to castles and other samurai-related attractions.
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