American friends often ask two questions about the epic movie, The Last Samurai: was the portrait of Japan in the 19th century historically accurate, and did Japanese think the portrayal of the code of the samurai to be authentic?
I was born and raised in Japan, and have samurai lineage on my paternal and maternal sides dating back centuries, and I kept these questions in mind as I watched the movie.
On the first: the story is fiction and we should take it as an exciting tale, not a historical document. In that era, the new Japanese government invited many Europeans to train its military forces, but no Americans, like Captain Nathan Algren, played by Tom Cruise.
Katsumoto, the rebel leader, is loosely based on an historical figure, Takamori Saigo. He helped overthrow the last shogun and founded the Meiji government, but quarrelled with other leaders over the way the country was heading. He returned to Kagoshima prefecture in Kyushu and launched a civil war. In the movie, Captain Algren was captured and eventually joined Katsumoto's army.
The Last Samurai may be fiction, but the theme that Japanese did not easily walk the path of modernisation, industrialisation or westernisation appealed to Japanese audiences. Not only did westerners push Japan to open up for trade and as a supply base for American whaling in the Pacific, but the Japanese leaders themselves chose that path.
The men of Meiji were keenly aware that Japan would be colonised and subjugated by Europe and the United States, like the rest of Asia, if they did not compete with western military and industrial might. In modern Asian history, only Japan, Thailand and Nepal succeeded in maintaining their sovereignty before the second world war.