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Thread: What do Japanese people think about this?

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    Default What do Japanese people think about this?

    There were two films made, one by Bruce Lee called Fist of Fury, and a remake made by Jet Li called Fist of Legend. The films portray the rivalry and tensions between the Chinese and the Japanese. I will provide links to a fight scene in both films, where one Chinese man takes out a whole Japanese dojo.

    Bruce Lee taking out a dojo

    Jet Li taking out a dojo

    Since this is a forum about Japanese culture, I would like to know what your thoughts are on this?

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    Since this is a forum about Japanese culture, I would like to know what your thoughts are on this?
    My thoughts? It's a movie, made by Chinese martial artists. Movies such as those are for entertainment purposes only. It is very much like asking on a military forum what they think of Mothra taking out the entire Japanese self-defense force.
    Paul Smith
    "Always keep the sharp side and the pointy end between you and your opponent"

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    Paul, I consider Gamera a much more effective Japanese Self Defense Force defeating monster than Mothra. But, I realize we belong to different monster movie traditions and just see thing differently. At least we agree on Scotch and beer.

    Paul is right, it's a movie so really has little meaning beyond entertainment. But movies draw inspiration from real life. A little background from what I've been told by friends and students of Bruce. He always had a hate for what Japan did to China in wartime. But he never let that get in the way of personal friendships with people of Japanese ancestry. He used those movie scenes as an expression of his feelings that Chinese were not the "Sick Man of Asia" and the Japanese were getting their due comeuppance. Guess why those movies did so well in Hong Kong? Bruce's feeling were shared by others in China. Still are.

    But this does make a good story to type on an internet forum on a slow day before a major eating holiday here in the USA.

    Oh, and as a person of Japanese ancestry, I could care less. It's a movie. It means no more to me than comic relief really about the stereotype. Along the lines of the Mr. Yunioshi played by Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's or David Carradine playing the lead in Kung Fu, or John Wayne playing Genghis Khan.

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    First post here so hello all
    I agree with the idea that its a movie and it should be seen as entertainement only.
    I can't speak for Chinese-Japanese conflict but here in Quebec, Ca we have a similar conflict between english-speaking and french, and there is movie on the subject. You can feel the hatred under it but i,for one won't refuse to see a good movie even if i don't go by what they say in it because it is what it is, a movie not a statement or some propaganda.

    along the same direction Ip Man crushing a dojo full of black belt...
    I'm starting to think they are a bit redundant those chinese movie maker. (j/k)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qhPDEOYbx4

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    Your replies are typical of a martial arts forum. However in my own personal experience, these sorts of movies have a different effect on me. I am of Turkish origin, and there are a few movies which portray the Turkish-British conflicts such as Lawrence of Arabia and Gallipoli.

    Although Lawrence of Arabia is a superior film to Gallipoli, I still enjoyed the latter more. Watching Lawrence of Arabia was quite difficult for me, particularly the scenes of the Turks being killed. Whereas in Gallipoli the Turks won.

    I thought that maybe some people of Japanese origin may have shared the same feelings as I do when it comes to movies. Afterall, these movies weren't made out of thin air. They have historical backgrounds and are based on real events and conflicts.

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    Hi all.

    In the first clip (the Bruce Lee one) is there an item of Japanese clothing that I am unfamiliar with, or are the first two guys who attack him wearing their hakama backwards?

    Kind regards
    Ben Macarthur

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    Quote Originally Posted by Endboss View Post
    In the first clip (the Bruce Lee one) is there an item of Japanese clothing that I am unfamiliar with, or are the first two guys who attack him wearing their hakama backwards?
    Yes, they were wearing their hakama backwards. So much for authenticity in Bruce Lee movies...

    Actually, E-Budo forum member Wayne Muromoto wrote about the backwards hakama in Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury in his magazine Furyu many years ago.

    Regards,

    Ron Beaubien

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    Default John Wayne as Temujin

    Quote Originally Posted by Neil Yamamoto View Post
    or John Wayne playing Genghis Khan.
    Now you have down it Neil - dredging up bad movie memories from my youth - John Wayne playing Genghis Khan in the movie The Conqueror (1956) - an award winning turkey of a film – gobble gobble - as in Hall of Shame type bad awards - Rotten Tomatoes etc.

    There's corollary evidence that this role may have killed him (literally) - or at least help contribute to his death by cancer along with several others cast members. But maybe Wayne smoking up to four packs of cigarettes a day didn't help either.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049092/trivia

    Getting back to the OP - how often are “The French” portrayed positively in American Pop culture films as another stereotyping example?
    John McPartland
    Well, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!  I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!

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    I think its about time the Japanese and Chinese make a joint movie about reconciling differences.
    Fredrik Hall
    "To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous." /Confucius

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    Well, I can only speak in generalities, but on the whole Japanese people love Bruce Lee, and he was a hero to young and old. I imagine they think the backwards-hakama thing quite silly, and it helps them relate the whole thing to a semi-fantastical kung-fu world.

    As for Jet Li, he's also quite popular, and Japanese people would have even less to beef about in his remake of Fist of Fury, since it features two well-known Japanese actors (Kurata Yasuaki and Nakamura Shinobu) playing sympathetic Japanese characters.
    Josh Reyer

    Swa sceal man don, ţonne he ćt guđe gengan ţenceđ longsumne lof, na ymb his lif cearađ. - The Beowulf Poet

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    Quote Originally Posted by Senjojutsu View Post
    Getting back to the OP - how often are “The French” portrayed positively in American Pop culture films as another stereotyping example?
    You mean those "cheese-eating surrender monkeys"[1]?

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    Also known as Francophobia
    Fredrik Hall
    "To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous." /Confucius

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    Quote Originally Posted by Fred27 View Post
    Also known as Francophobia
    I always thought that was a peculiarly Spanish affliction...[1] but I guess your one works too...:P

    Have a great weekend
    Ben

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    Default Love-hate relationships

    From my own experiences, there's this weird love-hate relationship going on that is only touched upon in a one-sided, simple manner in those chop sockey Chinese kung fu movies where the Japanese are the bad guys.

    For example, I once took a modern Chinese art history course. The instructor ended up in America because she was one of the Tiananmen student protestors and she had to hightail it out of China or face death or imprisonment. She was showing us films by Chen Kaige and other Chinese filmmakers, we had to read some Frankophile Constructivist film critics analyzing the films, and she asked us what we thought of one critic's comparing these long passages of silence in one movie to the influence of empty spaces in Chinese landscape painting scrolls. Everybody was trying their damn hardest to concur with the connection, and I was kind of twisting my face up so that the instructor knew I didn't agree. She asked me what I thought. Frankly, I said, the scenes reminded me of Akira Kurosawa or Ozu Mizoguchi.

    She laughed and basically said, yes, the critic was full of b.s. Chen Kaige was more influenced by modern Japanese directors than ancient Chinese scrolls. When she was in art school with Chen Kaige and the current crop of Chinese filmmakers, she (and the others taking film history courses) were often packed up in buses and sent to a secret location where they were all shown Japanese movies by Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and others. The Communist government couldn't openly condone their students watching movies by the imperialist capitalist Japanese, she said, but they were the best Asian filmmakers of the postwar era, so they were studied very carefully, from art films by Mizoguchi to chanbara Zatoichi movies. Now those students are the current crop of Chinese filmmakers.

    When I was doing karate, I remember, too, that a family fresh from Korea showed up one day to consider joining. The father, a physician, wanted his daughters to take up a martial art in Hawaii. I suggested (and my Japanese sensei also suggested), well, why not Tae Kwon Do? The father disagreed. In contrast to the popular cultural concept that Koreans and Japanese are at each other's throats, the Korean doctor replied, he wanted his daughters to learn not just martial arts, but proper respect, discipline and honor. Tae Kwon Do as it was taught (to him) in Korea was too focused on competition. He wanted his daughters to become more disciplined, and to him, Japanese martial arts was more about discipline, order and respect. Before I left karate, his two young girls were already winning trophies, playing concert-level pianos, and were on their private school honor rolls.

    I saw sort of the same ambivalency when I encountered a visiting artist from Korea who was in her 70s. She was giving a seminar in Korean paper arts. She was a child under Japanese occupation, and was forced to learn Japanese under the occupation. She told me stories of being beaten by Japanese teachers, hating the occupation, etc., but she really liked ME for some strange reason, maybe because she barely spoke English and she was very conversant in Japanese, and I was one of the few people who could talk to her in "pretty" Japanese, as she put it. I would bring her tea and sit with her as she took breaks in between her workshops, and she ended up liking me so much she wanted to fix me up with one of her young lady friends in Korea. Her official translator, a transplanted Korean woman, pouted and said, "Hey, what about helping to set ME up?"

    The artist yelled at her in Korean, and when I asked what that was about, she said, "I told her she was a lost cause. I couldn't fix her up because she has no sense of respect, like you. She is a poor example of a Korean lady. She has terrible gyogi (respect)." She used the Japanese term, "Gyogi warui."

    I've since run into this dualistic love-hate thing for Japan from many Chinese and Koreans, more so among the educated class. Knowing history, they hate what Imperial Japan did during and before World War II. Yet they have certain admiration for many aspects of Japanese art and culture.

    ...Recalling further, I remember brazenly asking a Chinese tai chi master what, if any, positives there were in Japanese martial arts. He surprised me by saying that there were a lot of things he wishes Chinese martial arts would learn from Japanese martial arts, including: uniformity of ranking and grading, a strong organizational structure, very strong attention to detail, and (it seems a universally admired aspect) a strong sense of honor and respect to teachers. He said as a young boy, his father had actually sent him to judo lesson because it would teach him (again) discipline and respect, and the rough-and-tumble free play would give him real understanding in a competitive framework of the nature of balance and disbalancement in tai chi.

    So...the pop cultural relationships between the different Asian countries are a lot more complex than we would assume from those movies.

    Wayne Muromoto

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    My computer doesn't show the video so sharply, and while it looked like the hakama were backwards, could it be that's a black or dark "obi" wrapped around its top or a kind o outer "hara maki" (supporter/warmer)?
    Though a movie, for Jet Li to step onto a dojo floor, wearing shoes, is poor etiquette but guess he was seeking revenge so ....
    While I know an 84-year-old Japanese (Kendo) Sensei who harbors no hatred for the Chinese, voluntarily spent a year in that country after the war, and still fondly remembers and speaks some Chinese words he learned there - a same-age Shaolin Kung Fu teacher had nothing but negative feelings for the Japanese, having seen Chinese in Hong Kong shot and killed by them.
    So many cultural things came from China to Japan, well-appreciated and adopted/adapted.

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