Juri wrote:
"I don't know about hardboiled, but what about "Kill
Bill"?"
That certainly has samurai (and yakuza) film influences, as
does the other film you point out, Pollack's Yakuza, written
by Paul Schrader, who also wrote Taxi Driver, among many
others.
"In music, try John Zorn's "Spillane" that has a cover from a
picture from a film by Seijun Suzuki. I believe that Zorn, a
long time fan of Japanese pop culture, knows his samurai and
yakuza films."
Indeed. One of the extras on the Criterion DVD of Suzuki's
Branded to Kill is John Zorn's collection of vintage Yakuza
film posters.
However, I wasn't so much looking for the samurai influences
in American film, but in print fiction, either translations
of the source material or its adoption in western hardboiled.
For instance, I know I have read books where the heroes
and/or anti-heroes are explicitly placed without the
samurai/bushido code/tradition, but I can't remember which.
Does Crais refer to this in regard to Joe Pike in the Elvis
Cole books? I seem to remember a literary assassin placing
himself in this line, like the character in the movie Ghost
Dog (which owes a hell of a lot to samurai and yakuza films,
including the shot through a drain pipe hit taken from the
aforementioned Branded to Kill).
Mark
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