The Marmot’s Hole

Kang Byeong-jin has a pretty good piece over at OhMyNews on the way in which The Last Samurai fails to break from Hollywood stereotypes of East Asian women. I haven’t seen the film, so I really can’t judge the validity of Kang’s arguments as far as they apply to the movie (although the general criticisms made of Western film depictions of Asians — and Asian women in particular — are hard to argue with). What I CAN say, however, is that as far as Japanese women are concerned, Hollywood isn’t the only place making money off tired depictions of the quiet, mysterious, self-sacrificing, male-serving “Oriental” woman — I have yet to see a Korean movie featuring Japanese women that depicts those women in a way that isn’t 100%-pure Korean middle-aged male fantasy. This isn’t saying that Hollywood should should be let off the hook, but certainly, there is a fair amount of room for self-reflection on Ch’ungmu-ro, too.