Tales of Starlight and Rey: Asian sto­ry­telling in Star Wars

The influ­ence of Asian cin­e­ma on Star Wars is well doc­u­ment­ed. Famous­ly the Jidaige­ki genre of films, pre­dom­i­nant­ly the work of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, had a major impact on George Lucas at a time when he was start­ing to dis­cov­er world cin­e­ma. Set on mak­ing a Flash Gor­don-esque space opera on a Roger Cor­man-esque bud­get, he intend­ed for Star Wars to be a B‑Movie hero’s jour­ney (lit­er­al­ly) by the book.

Inspi­ra­tion for the periph­er­al droid char­ac­ter nar­ra­tive came direct­ly from Kurosawa’s The Hid­den Fortress, and Lucas want­ed to make his film half in Japan­ese, with Toshi­ro Mifu­ne play­ing Obi-Wan. While the final prod­uct appro­pri­at­ed a range of Japan­ese sto­ry­telling devices rather than direct­ly incor­po­rat­ing the cul­ture, it’s a respect­ful homage as opposed to a shame­less take. Jedi was mined from Jidaige­ki, the peas­ants became R2D2 and C3PO, and the escort­ing of Princess Yuki became the sav­ing of Princess Leia.

Much like an artery pump­ing myth and mag­ic through the Star Wars saga, Asian cin­e­ma has influ­enced the sto­ry­telling of A New Hope to Phan­tom Men­ace and beyond. As the series expand­ed and explod­ed into the pop cul­ture zeit­geist Lucas used his author­i­ty to increase the east­ern influ­ence on the sto­ry. Anthro­po­mor­phism took a more cen­tral role in The Empire Strikes Back par­tic­u­lar­ly in the shape of Yoda, who him­self was inspired by Kam­bei from Sev­en Samu­rai.

Also intro­duced in Empire is the con­nec­tion between the Jedi and the spir­it world, less in the goth­ic West­ern sense but instead clos­er to the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of clas­sic Japan­ese text ​‘Uget­su Mono­gatari’. In the book author Ueda Aki­nari focus­es less on the phys­i­cal and moral effect of the super­nat­ur­al and rather explores the emo­tive aspects of the liv­ing and the spir­i­tu­al. In many ways Luke’s train­ing embod­ies this; he seeks not to know all nor weaponise his strength but rather to enhance it by con­nect­ing to the organ­ic world.

This all stems from a fun­da­men­tal tenet of Asian sto­ry­telling; the bal­ance of light and dark. The Chi­nese phi­los­o­phy of yin yang is about the inter­re­la­tion of light and dark – one depends on the oth­er. And the same is true in the Star Wars uni­verse. Explored in the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy, decon­struct­ed in the pre­quels and recon­sid­ered in the new films, the medi­a­tion on good­ness is best explored in Darth Vad­er and now Kylo Ren; each wrong most in their inter­pre­ta­tion of right­eous­ness. It is no coin­ci­dence that the heroes in Star Wars are the rebels and out­laws, nor that the cur­ren­cy of good­ness is hon­our and the ful­fil­ment of destiny.

In 1980, Lucas earned a cred­it on both The Empire Strikes Back and Kage­musha. Again exert­ing his new found pow­er to send the ele­va­tor back down to the Asian cin­e­ma which so influ­enced him, Lucas and men­tor Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la con­vinced 20^th Cen­tu­ry Fox to sup­ply fund­ing that enabled Kuro­sawa to fin­ish his film, it hav­ing sat for years on the shelf await­ing com­ple­tion. The dream sequence of Kage­musha had a clear influ­ence on the Cloud City scene in Empire, and Asian cin­e­ma would have direct visu­al homages through­out the future of Star Wars.

The for­est scenes of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awak­ens nod to Kuro­sawa also, who was one of the first main­stream cin­e­mas post war to take the large and heavy equip­ment into for­est loca­tions. The beach and desert scenes of Rogue One use a colour pal­let sim­i­lar to Wong Kar-wai and Zhang Yimou’s wux­i­as Ash­es of Time and Hero. Colour, cos­tume, mythol­o­gy, weapon­ry and loca­tion on both a large and sub­tle scale are root­ed in Asian cul­ture. One of the most mem­o­rable scenes in The Last Jedi, with the slicks of red salt beneath the sur­face of Crait are a nod to the blood slicks in the pow­der dur­ing Lady Snow­blood.

The clear­est influ­ence that Asian sto­ry­telling has had on Star Wars is the­mat­ic, par­tic­u­lar­ly through the char­ac­ters at the heart of the sto­ry. Vil­lainy is explored less through a west­ern fairy tale under­stand­ing but rather through the west­ern con­struct of mis­un­der­stand­ing and tragedy. Hayao Miyaza­ki best artic­u­lat­ed this with his Flawed Con­cept of Good ver­sus Evil; con­trolled evil being the gate­way to good­ness – that hero­ism is about see­ing with eyes uncloud­ed by hate.

If we con­sid­er this hypoth­e­sis then Vader’s trag­ic arc, mir­rored by Luke in Last Jedi, is less of men who seek to be bad but rather those who ques­tion the order of good­ness. They believe the Jedi pre­vent order in the galaxy, and either oppose or abstain from the Jedi cause. They’re wrong – but in a flawed way, rather than a vil­lain­ous way. Kylo per­haps is the ulti­mate embod­i­ment of the com­plex rela­tion­ship of good and evil.

As the saga con­tin­ues, Asian cul­ture con­tin­ues to inform the look and feel of the Star Wars uni­verse. Be it cast­ing, props such as Rose’s sister’s yin and yang neck­lace, or Luke’s Ahch-To clifftop med­i­ta­tion, the appro­pri­a­tion of Asian cul­ture becomes more appar­ent across the galaxy. But it’s always been there, and it’s always been hon­ourable. If any­thing, Star Wars has always been an amal­ga­ma­tion of East­ern and West­ern influ­ences (Kuro­sawa him­self was heav­i­ly inspired by the work of John Ford).

But while he looked West to rein­vent cin­e­ma in the East, Star Wars now seems firm­ly set on look­ing across the pacif­ic for inspi­ra­tion; Han Solo’s mas­ter­less rogue ser­vic­ing the needs of crime lords is to Kurosawa’s Yojim­bo what New Hope was to Hid­den Fortress.