Epilogue Pearl Harbor Eclipsed? The Last Samurai (2003)

Abstract

This book starts with the WWII combat movie Bataan, an incipient Orientalist buddy film that conveyed to American audiences in 1943 a new set of rules that corresponded to the new racial order brought on by the war. The film depicts Japan as an enemy that is even more racist to black Americans than white Americans, transferring the mark of racism from white to Asian. I want to conclude with a Hollywood film that debuted around the turn of the century, The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003). When considered in tandem with Crash (Paul Haggis, 2005), the film at the beginning of this study, the bookends suggest that the Orientalist buddy film continues to malign various Asian subgroups as the common enemy who bonds white and black, with one notable exception.