Ronin

There will always be those of us that admire those fearless outlaws who play by their own rules. Growing up, I was not the only kid whose favorite superhero was the cocky, ornery and ruthless Wolverine. Much as I was introduced to the Japanese ninja through G.I. Joe, it was through Marvel’s Wolverine comic books that I was introduced to the Japanese ronin, upon whom I’m sure Wolverine’s character was based. (While presumably Canadian himself, he falls in love with a Japanese woman and becomes immersed in the culture.)

A ronin is a former Samurai who no longer has a master, although sometimes ronin refers to an aspiring Samurai or someone trained in the ways of the Samurai but without a master. In feudal Japan, a Samurai was hired to protect a landowner’s territory. If a Samurai’s master died, the Samurai was expected to commit Seppuku, or ritual suicide, but often, if a clan’s Samurai army had gotten too large, the central government would force them to downsize by letting some Samurai go. A Samurai could also be ostracized in disgrace for disobedience or dishonor or defiantly leave the clan if he could get away alive.

In literature and cinema, the greatest ronin is he who always does what he believes to be just despite the fact that, since he answers to no one and is an indomitable warrior, he could be unscrupulous. Instead, he realizes virtue and integrity transcend humanity, so he is unconcerned whether his honorable actions fly in the face of conventional morality and social acceptance. Bound by no master, he goes where he pleases, but while he realizes he is worthy to sleep in the Buddha’s temple, something forbidden according to the law, he never fails to share a portion of his hard-earned rice with the Buddha while there.

The theme in many Japanese movies, for instance Kihachi Okamoto’s Kill! (1968), is that it is better to be a ronin than a Samurai, because whereas a ronin makes his own decisions, a Samurai must obey orders. (This is a movie you have to watch twice, because so many characters with long and unfamiliar Japanese names are introduced at the beginning it makes it very difficult to keep track of while simultaneously reading subtitles.) The hero in many other Samurai movies, such as Masaki Kobayashi’s excellent Samurai Rebellion (1967), is the Samurai who defiantly and valiantly disobeys his master in order to do the right thing, encouraging his children to do the same while leaving their decisions up to them, despite the extreme costs. Bowing to the influence or coercion of another, in other words loyalty, is not something that should be blindly done.

My favorite ronin movie, and perhaps the greatest movie ever made, is Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961). I’m just going to pretend that I don’t need to discuss the genius of Kurosawa. I also shouldn’t need to discuss Toshiro Mifune, who plays the ronin Sanjuro. He is my all-time favorite actor (and a very prolific one, appearing in hundreds of films, many of them extraordinary), able to show an array of emotions in one glance and always make it believable. I’m sure I’m not the only one who cheers aloud when he finally appears in the brilliant but tedious Seven Samurai (1954). The cinematographer, Kazuo Miyagawa, is also unparalleled (if you want to be astounded by cinematography in a way you never thought possible, see his work in Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950)). In Yojimbo, Sanjuro wryly pits two crooked clans against each other while helping their innocent victims escape at his own peril. Despite his best efforts, his plan doesn’t work perfectly; he is only human after all.