Essay On American Samurai - 1528 Words

Cameron, C. M. (2002). American samurai: myth, and imagination in the conduct of battle in the First Marine Division, 1941-1951. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The samurai were a warrior class in feudal Japan who served the lords of clans in Japanese feudal society. They were highly respected elite warriors in both grand military strategy and individual martial arts. The warrior code that they embodied and the myth of the samurai warrior are still alive in modern Japan today. In his book American Samurai: Myth and Imagination in the Conduct of Battle in the First Marine Division 1941-1951, Craig Cameron draws parallels between the United States Marine Corps and the feudal Japanese samurai. Writing from a post-Vietnam view, Cameron†¦show more content†¦This disassociation allows for the whole sale slaughter of people with moral justification. The unforeseen byproduct of this disassociation, as Cameron points out, can be seen in the 1950’s and 1960’s, when many veterans consigned their wives to the kitchen. The intended product of this disassociation, however, was to kill Japanese soldiers. The Marines would reap the be nefits of this first in the Guadalcanal campaign of 1942. With the U.S. Marines of First Division engaged in a life or death struggle against their Japanese opponents, the cartoonish portraits of four-eyed, slow Japanese soldiers burned into the American Marine’s mind kept them from thinking about the enemy as men who are carrying pictures of their families eerily similar to the pictures that were carried by Americans. Using the invasion of Peleliu as a backdrop for his analysis, Cameron expands upon his analysis of the individual Marine to the collective thought of the organization. The U.S. Marine self-image caused Marine units on Peleliu to charge head-first into the waiting Japanese defense with foolhardy, head on assaults which they stubbornly pressed. The Marine Corps, even through their hyper-masculine indoctrination, had not prepared their Marines any better than their U.S. Army counterparts on the island. Before Peleliu, the perception of combat had been that of a cl ean affair due to the romanticized images of World War I. After, due to Tom Lea’s reporting of events, theShow MoreRelatedThe Tea Of Tea Masters3029 Words   |  13 Pageselaborate ceremony that has been performed since the Edo Period in the seventeenth century. It is related to both the Samurai culture and Zen Buddhism. Tea schools exist to teach the ways of the tea ceremony and there are tea masters who perform this ritual. The Japanese Tea Ceremony demonstrates culture through the themes of ritual and tradition through its history and relation to Samurai tradition and Zen Buddhism. The tea ceremony has many specific elements that would take a large amount of time toRead MoreComparison Of Kurosawa s Yojimbo And Leone s Fistful Of Dollars1849 Words   |  8 PagesSerge Leone (dir.) 1964, Italy. (Viewed Oct 1, 2014) This essay is based on films of the same story, told in different ways, with emphasis, themes, meaning and interpretation shaped or shaded by the situation of the storyteller; the cinematic mise-en-scene. Based on the same story, the films reveal and reflect the film-maker’s social norms and views, emerging from their different national contexts. While exploring the two films, this essay will examine elements of film language or semiotics: colorRead MoreMythology : Mythology Of The Fierce Amazons2071 Words   |  9 Pagesgoddesses, heroes, and mythological figures flourish on university databases. However, even though these resources exist in mass quantity does not mean that they contain quality. In more precise terms, they seem to lack substance. 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