by Landen Kennedy
In conversation with friends early this semester, I discussed reasons why I would choose Japan as a dream vacation. My decision was guided by my fascination with Japan’s historical landmarks and traditional cultural architecture as well as their increasingly futuristic modern society. These two seemingly incompatible aesthetics, the ancient and the futuristic, reside side-by-side. Take for example Zōjō-ji, a Buddhist temple in Tokyo. It was built in 1393 and if you were to visit today, you would see skyscrapers in the distance behind it. The ancient temple surrounded by modern day Tokyo serves as a setting for a sequence in the X-Men spin-off film, The Wolverine (James Mangold, 2013).
The film follows popular X-Men character, Logan, AKA “The Wolverine,” as he is invited to Japan to meet Yashida, a soldier he saved from the atomic bomb at Nagasaki. Yashida seeks to help Logan by offering him a way to die. Logan is gifted (cursed?) with the ability to regenerate at a rapid rate, allowing him to not only heal from fatal wounds in seconds, but to also live for hundreds of years without ageing. While Logan is young and healthy, Yashida is old and dying of cancer. He seeks to perform a sort of trade with Logan. If Logan is willing to give up his immortality to Yashida, Logan will finally be able to die and Yashida will be able to live.
While watching the film, I found myself immediately considering the state of Asian representation in film. Though the film contains many Asian characters and actors, we are still watching a white character fight his way through Japan. I’m not trying to say that The Wolverine is a problematic film, as I truly enjoy watching it and don’t feel like I am taking advantage of another culture by doing so, but it does tend to fit within the parameters of Orientalist cinema.
The film follows popular X-Men character, Logan, AKA “The Wolverine,” as he is invited to Japan to meet Yashida, a soldier he saved from the atomic bomb at Nagasaki. Yashida seeks to help Logan by offering him a way to die. Logan is gifted (cursed?) with the ability to regenerate at a rapid rate, allowing him to not only heal from fatal wounds in seconds, but to also live for hundreds of years without ageing. While Logan is young and healthy, Yashida is old and dying of cancer. He seeks to perform a sort of trade with Logan. If Logan is willing to give up his immortality to Yashida, Logan will finally be able to die and Yashida will be able to live.
While watching the film, I found myself immediately considering the state of Asian representation in film. Though the film contains many Asian characters and actors, we are still watching a white character fight his way through Japan. I’m not trying to say that The Wolverine is a problematic film, as I truly enjoy watching it and don’t feel like I am taking advantage of another culture by doing so, but it does tend to fit within the parameters of Orientalist cinema.
Logan (Hugh Jackman) inside of the Buddhist temple Zōjō-ji
Orientalism is a term coined by Edward Said. His idea was that the Western world viewed the Eastern world through a lens of mysticism and magic. Originally his writings were focused on the Middle East rather than East Asia, however, his idea still applies. Many Western made movies about the East fall into this mystical trap. Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter, 1986) is set in Chinatown, San Francisco and still manages to create a world where sorcerers and demons run amok. Take other films, such as The Great Wall (Yimou Zhang, 2016) in which a white main character leads a Chinese army in battle against an army of monsters, as an example of this trend. Today, while that fantasy-like orientalist view still exists, there seems to be another kind of orientalist view, one in which the East is a hyper-futuristic society.
The Wolverine constantly interweaves the ancient and the futuristic. Logan visits Zōjō-ji for a funeral, where the yakuza show up to cause trouble. Logan fights them off, but what is interesting about the scene is the usage of modern firearms within an old religious site. It’s a jarring and strange sight to see, made stranger by the fact that an archer picks off gang members from the rooftop. As the battle progresses and Logan escapes with Yashida’s granddaughter, the target of the yakuza, he finds himself on a bullet train. The train serves as a symbol of the future, and Logan even comments on the fame of the train saying, “This is one of those bullet trains, right? So what do they do, like, 300 miles an hour?” When the yakuza board the train, Logan fights them again, but this time they are armed with knives or short swords rather than guns. It’s a reversal of the modern within the ancient, so now the ancient is within the modern.
There are many other instances of this intermingling. In Yashida’s traditional style home, high-tech medical technology stands out like a sore thumb, yet because of the film’s aesthetic, we are not as jarred as Logan is. Towards the end of the film, Logan fights his way through an old village against ninja-like archers as he makes his way to a futuristic factory. In the factory he faces Yashida in a mech-suit designed to look like samurai armor. This is a sequence that truly captures the themes of old and young, as Yashida sits in a high-tech weapon made to look like ancient armor, and as he absorbs Logan’s regeneration power, Yashida’s old, withered face regenerates into the young face we know from the beginning of the film. The old becomes the new, and the new comes from the old. This is what the film is all about, as the characters, aesthetic, and even a subplot about Yashida’s inheritance all touch on this concept of continuity and growth.
The Wolverine constantly interweaves the ancient and the futuristic. Logan visits Zōjō-ji for a funeral, where the yakuza show up to cause trouble. Logan fights them off, but what is interesting about the scene is the usage of modern firearms within an old religious site. It’s a jarring and strange sight to see, made stranger by the fact that an archer picks off gang members from the rooftop. As the battle progresses and Logan escapes with Yashida’s granddaughter, the target of the yakuza, he finds himself on a bullet train. The train serves as a symbol of the future, and Logan even comments on the fame of the train saying, “This is one of those bullet trains, right? So what do they do, like, 300 miles an hour?” When the yakuza board the train, Logan fights them again, but this time they are armed with knives or short swords rather than guns. It’s a reversal of the modern within the ancient, so now the ancient is within the modern.
There are many other instances of this intermingling. In Yashida’s traditional style home, high-tech medical technology stands out like a sore thumb, yet because of the film’s aesthetic, we are not as jarred as Logan is. Towards the end of the film, Logan fights his way through an old village against ninja-like archers as he makes his way to a futuristic factory. In the factory he faces Yashida in a mech-suit designed to look like samurai armor. This is a sequence that truly captures the themes of old and young, as Yashida sits in a high-tech weapon made to look like ancient armor, and as he absorbs Logan’s regeneration power, Yashida’s old, withered face regenerates into the young face we know from the beginning of the film. The old becomes the new, and the new comes from the old. This is what the film is all about, as the characters, aesthetic, and even a subplot about Yashida’s inheritance all touch on this concept of continuity and growth.
Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi) inside the futuristic Silver Samurai armor
The film not only deals with orientalism in terms of the aesthetic of the setting and the characters, but it also uses the device of putting a Western character in the East as a way of making them feel uncertain. I do not call The Wolverine orientalist to insinuate that the film is negative or in any way harmful. I simply refer to it as orientalist to draw attention to the way Japan is shown to us in the film. As with other orientalist films, the setting is used to serve the character. Logan is thrust into an unfamiliar environment and his powers are taken away from him for a brief amount of time. This film is trying to tell a character driven story about Logan dealing with mortality and the will to continue to live. Using a setting that Logan is unfamiliar with, modern day Japan, the character can be even more uncertain about things.
This device is used in films such as The Outsider (Martin Zandvliet, 2018), about an American G.I. who joins the yakuza after release from a Japanese prison, or Lost in Translation (Sophia Coppola, 2003), about two Americans who meet in a Japanese hotel and fall in love due to their shared feelings of estrangement and loneliness. The Wolverine falls somewhere between these two films. The Outsider was met with much controversy, similarly to The Great Wall, and Lost in Translation achieved critical acclaim including an Academy Award for Best Writing, as well as a Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture nomination. While The Wolverine isn’t a masterpiece, it isn’t a disaster either, and it actually shows us some deep themes through the use of the ancient and the futuristic.
This device is used in films such as The Outsider (Martin Zandvliet, 2018), about an American G.I. who joins the yakuza after release from a Japanese prison, or Lost in Translation (Sophia Coppola, 2003), about two Americans who meet in a Japanese hotel and fall in love due to their shared feelings of estrangement and loneliness. The Wolverine falls somewhere between these two films. The Outsider was met with much controversy, similarly to The Great Wall, and Lost in Translation achieved critical acclaim including an Academy Award for Best Writing, as well as a Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture nomination. While The Wolverine isn’t a masterpiece, it isn’t a disaster either, and it actually shows us some deep themes through the use of the ancient and the futuristic.
