by Irineo B. R. Salazar
Rudyard Kipling once said that East and West would never meet. They do meet in Shogun(2024) and the real-life equivalent of John Blackthorne was William Adams (not AFAM) and though he probably wasn't as important to Ieyasu Tokugawa aka Toranaga as in the series, he had a significant role with the Shogun. Spoiler alert: Hosokawa Gracia wasn't involved with Adams like Miyako with Blackthorne, but she was Catholic and her death played a role in paving the way for Tokugawa's victory at Sekigahara.
(source: Wikimedia Commons)
East and West had also met decades before the events of Shogun in the Philippines, most notably when Magellan landed there by chance and Legazpi came again five decades after to conquer. The exile of Catholic daimyo Blessed Justo Takayama to Manila and the martyrdom of Saint Lorenzo Ruiz in Nagasaki would be much later. Centuries later, Commodore Perry would land in Japan, long before Dewey in Manila. The Sulu Sultanate would also have its own Adams, Captain Schück, in that period.
But are East and West really totally different in spite of meeting? Kurosawa made Ran which adapts King Lear to a Japanese setting, while The Magnificent Seven was the cowboy movie remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. There are human commonalities. What probably is distinctly Western is a certain maverick and upstart mindset compared to the until now quite conservative cultures of the East, though the East has now caught up with the West and at times exceeded it at least in economy and technology.
One can indeed ask why some countries managed to evade colonialism and some didn't. Given that Southeast Asian temperament is something for itself, should Filipinos rather watch The King and I than Shogun for ideas? In any case, Yul Brynner always looks cool.
Maybe unlike Java and Japan who had already been invaded by Mongols, the Philippines simply hadn't experienced major invasions before and therefore were relatively easy to take, not even able to form a tribal alliance like the Gauls against Caesar.
Just a few things that come to mind after a great series. East-West, colonialism, nations. Leadership and strategy. Toranaga says he studies the wind. What can we learn from that?
Irineo B. R. Salazar
Munich, 25 April 2024
links
No comments:
Post a Comment