The film is Samurai Trilogy 1: Musachi Miyamato, which takes place in medieval Japan, in the 1600’s.
At the very beginning we see two young men (close friends from childhood, on) earnestly discussing joining the military. The movie’s super hero hero is all for it. His buddy has a love interest, and is less inclined.
Both men are completelyand unmistakably bald on top. It seems certain that this is the result of shaving. Ma ybe it’s cultural or fashion driven. They have ample hair on both sides of their heads, and in the back they each have a shortish pony tail.
But from then on, they each have a full head of hair.
How can this be? Why would the director allow it?
(BTW, the young men are having their tete a tete in a big tree, facing each other straddling a thick branch, about 25-30 feet in the air. I found this humorously charming.)
Another thing:
In this movie, when a man travels incognito, and seeks sensitive information, he sometimes wear a hat that covers his head and face. The hat is bell-shaped and seems to have been woven from rattan (or whatever).
This get up sems to engender fear on the part of the locals, and the questions the scary guy asks must shoot through the community causing rumors galore…
Modern productions seem to be fairly willing to dump the bald-do for the sake of beefcake, but I can honestly say that I have no idea how much historic plausibility this has. Certainly I can imagine that a samurai on the road would be less able to stay perfectly kept, but at the same time it takes months to undo bald-shaving so it’s a bit silly to jump from one to the other.
Are you talking about a tengai hat? They look like baskets, and they completely cover the face. Monks of the Fukeshu sect of Buddhism wore them when they went out in public. Here’s a picture:
Actually, come to think of it, samurai also tended to wear large bell-shaped rattan hats. So it’s possible that people are just nervous around him because he’s a samurai, and for obvious reasons, ordinary people are going to be nervous around samurai.
Yep. That’s why people tended to be nervous around samurai. Well, that and because the social conditions at the time made samurai perfectly willing to arbitrarily use that chunk of steel on their social inferiors.
Samurai of the period did shave the tops of their heads. The helmets (kabuto) they wore had a leather pad on the inside top. Resting on their more-or-less bare scalp, it wouldn’t slip around. Later on it became a fashion statement and guys who didn’t know which end of a katana to hold onto shaved, too. Kind of like a kid today wearing one of those faux military jackets.
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
Actually, come to think of it, samurai also tended to wear large bell-shaped rattan hats. So it’s possible that people are just nervous around him because he’s a samurai, and for obviou
Sounds right. Thank you, Captain.
Now, if we could get a name for that hat. we could Image-Google it.
I haven’t seen the movie, but from what I remember of Eiji Yoshikawa’s book (which is probably the basis of the movie) Musashi was not a normal samurai. He came from a samurai family, but after the battle of Sekigahara he became a bandit, almost a wild man, before he was “tamed” by a Buddhist monk. He then wandered as a masterless swordsman, fighting duels and looking for someone to serve who was worthy of his talents.
His friend, whose name escapes me, is set up as a counterpoint to Musashi. He also leaves the normal disciplined path of the samurai, slipping into sloth and decadence.
The change in hair styles may be intended to show that both men are no longer operating within the normal bounds of samurai behavior.
I wonder if your explanation of the hairstyles would be recognized or understood by the movie-going Japanese people? Possibly. Maybe the hair thing is/was a convention.
Musashi Miyamoto was an actual person, although his exploits have been somewhat romanticized over the ages. He wrote a famous book on martial arts called The Book of Five Rings.
This painting is the earliest known portrait of Musashi. However, it was almost certainly painted some time after his death. It introduces two elements that have since been closely associated with portraits of Musashi: a sword in each hand, which is a reference to the fencing style he advocated, and an un-shaved head. (Although he is balding in this painting.)
Anyway, yes, Japanese viewers would understand that unkept hair as a sign that a person is leading a free life. Since the shaved sakayaki samurai look has been out of fashion for quite some time now, what you see in movies is almost always a wig. In some cases, the line on the forehead is quite noticeable, which I find distracting to no end.
