How Japan­ese pop cul­ture has shaped West­ern entertainment

When Spir­it­ed Away won the Acad­e­my Award for Best Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture in 2001, a Japan­ese ani­ma­tion stu­dio became world-famous almost overnight. Over­seen by Dis­ney, Stu­dio Ghibli’s bold, immer­sive worlds were repack­aged for new audi­ences, com­plete with dubs record­ed with Hol­ly­wood stars such as Kirsten Dun­st and Chris­t­ian Bale. While the argu­ment about Ghibli’s dubs ver­sus subs still rages on in cinephile cir­cles, Japan­ese films, man­ga and art have con­tin­ued to grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty over the past few decades, aid­ed by the age of the inter­net and increased avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign lan­guage cinema.

While fans of Yasu­jirō Ozu, Ken­ji Mizoguchi and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa once had to per­form impres­sive feats of detec­tive work to track down their films out­side of Asia, it’s become eas­i­er than ever to dis­cov­er Japan­ese cin­e­ma thanks to stream­ing ser­vices and new Blu-ray edi­tions of clas­sic titles, while man­ga series such as Drag­on Ball and Naru­to have become wild­ly pop­u­lar in the west thanks to ani­mé adap­ta­tions. Of course, Japan also leads the world in video gam­ing, with Poke­mon a main­stay of the nineties and noughties and Ani­mal Cross­ing: New Hori­zons becom­ing a mon­ster hit this year as the world looked to (vir­tu­al­ly) escape lockdown.

One of the most pop­u­lar exports from Japan has always been mar­tial arts – from Kurosawa’s leg­endary samu­rai films to Japan­ese-Amer­i­can car­toon­ist Stan Sakai’s Usa­gi Yojim­bo and Take­hiko Inoue’s Vagabond man­ga series. As well as cre­at­ing high demand for karate and jujit­su class­es, this has inspired plen­ty of west­ern enter­tain­ment, includ­ing Frank Miller’s 1983 com­ic series Rōnin, Edward Zwick’s 2003 dra­ma The Last Samu­rai, and the smash hit Mor­tal Kom­bat video game series. Now – exclu­sive­ly on PlaySta­tion 4 – comes Ghost of Tsushi­ma, which draws on the rich his­to­ry of Japan’s esteemed samu­rai war­riors as well as the leg­endary cin­e­mat­ic work of Kuro­sawa and Takashi Miike.

Set in the late 13^th cen­tu­ry, the game focus­es on samu­rai Jin Sakai, one of the few sur­vivors of his clan in the war against the invad­ing Mon­gol army. Deter­mined to pro­tect his home­land from the offen­sive forces led by ruth­less gen­er­al Kho­tun Khan, Jin realis­es he must forge his own path if he is to prove victorious.

In order to cre­ate an authen­tic video game vision of feu­dal Japan, the Suck­er Punch Pro­duc­tions team spoke to Japan­ese his­to­ri­ans and samu­rai experts, as well as send­ing a team out on loca­tion to record native bird­song. They found inspi­ra­tion in their favourite films, comics and games, from Kurosawa’s icon­ic epics Sev­en Samu­rai and Yojim­bo, to 1984 mar­tial arts beat ​‘em up Karete­ka. The game even gives play­ers the option to switch to Japan­ese dia­logue with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles rather than Eng­lish audio, and fea­tures a ​“Kuro­sawa mode” which plunges the game into black and white, and changes the audio to mim­ic the ​‘50s sound of the director’s most icon­ic films.

The release of Ghost of Tsushi­ma will help to intro­duce new audi­ences to Kurosawa’s work, from his Shake­speare-inspired Throne of Blood and Ran to The Hid­den Fortress and Sev­en Samu­rai. And if you’re inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of the samu­rai with­in Japan­ese cin­e­ma, there’s still plen­ty to dis­cov­er. Japan­ese film expert Jasper Sharp rec­om­mends Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samu­rai tril­o­gy, depict­ing the life of mas­ter swords­man Musashi Miyamo­to, and Masa­ki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan – an anthol­o­gy of four ghost sto­ries from Japan­ese folklore.

If man­ga is more your thing, com­ic artist Chie Kut­suwa­da has some point­ers: there’s Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike and Gose­ki Koji­ma about a venge­ful samu­rai set­ting out on a jour­ney with his infant son to seek revenge for his wife’s mur­der, and Phoenix by Osamu Tezu­ka – a saga built around the leg­endary fire­bird which explores Japan­ese his­to­ry and mythol­o­gy. Of course, plen­ty of man­ga has been adapt­ed into films too – Blade of the Immor­tal by Hiroa­ki Samu­ra was turned into a bloody epic by Takeshi Miike in 2017, telling the wild sto­ry of a cursed samu­rai who is hired as a body­guard by a teenage girl seek­ing jus­tice for her father’s death.

Released exclu­sive­ly on PlaySta­tion 4 on Fri­day 17 July, Ghost of Tsushi­ma promis­es to be one hell of a jour­ney. Whether you’re a total new­com­er to the world of the samu­rai or already own every Kuro­sawa epic on Blu-ray, it’s a prime oppor­tu­ni­ty to immerse your­self in the fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry of Japan’s elite war­rior class.

Ghost of Tsushi­ma launch­es Fri­day 17 exclu­sive­ly on PlaySta­tion 4.