In 1878, the last samurai of the dying feudal eras of Japan, after being forcibly ousted by the new “modern” Japanese government of course based off of European models, gather together to participate in a battle royale with a hundred thousand yen prize, given to the last survivor who reaches Tokyo.
Japanese history is fraught with war, there is no doubt about that, both from without and within, but rarely do these battles concern the timeline of the country. Samurai are obviously thought of being from a bygone feudal era, where they served the daimyo and the Shogun and other masters, with honor and distinction. But these bushi, these warriors, are not soldiers answerable to the government, and as Japan struggles to be reborn as a modern nation by shucking a great many of these ways of life connected with the feudal eras, suddenly many samurai find themselves ronin, or masterless samurai, adrift without purpose. These men are proud and don’t want things to change, but they’re being forcibly rebranded as shizoku, supposedly a term representing their former samurai status, by the government, who are trying to establish a Western-style national army that is making the entire samurai class obsolete. Imagine the gall – “Thank you very much for your service, but your entire way of life is no longer wanted by anyone in charge, please go away.”
Saga Shujiro (Jun’ichi Okada) is a man weary of war, admittedly a killer among killers with a fairly sterling reputation as far as samurai go, who over many battles earned himself the unwelcome moniker “Kokushu the Manslayer”. With his samurai world being upended, Shujiro simply wants to live in peace with his wife and child, but all that goes out the window when they both come down with the second thing responsible for decimating the samurai class of Japan: cholera. After his beloved daughter dies and it looks like his wife will soon follow suit, Shujiro casts about in desperation for a fast way to make money to afford treatment and medicine for her. Shujiro finds himself responding to a notice about a martial arts tournament where the prize offered is one hundred thousand yen, and heads to Tenryu-ji temple, where the beginning of the contest is being held.
Here at the temple, amidst quite a few other desperate men, and some women too can’t forget them, Shujiro learns that the game is a far cry from your traditional martial arts tournament. Instead, everyone will be participating in a game they call “Kodoku”, a race of endurance, cunning, and the merciless slaughter of your fellow competitors. Each participant is given a numbered tag and told they have one month to pass seven checkpoints on the Tōkaidō Road from Kyoto to Tokyo. Points are needed to pass each checkpoint, and participants gain points by taking away other player tags. Each and every single last player in the Kodoku game is registered, tagged and numbered, has their information recorded, and even gets a rough ink drawing of their portrait, an early version of a player profile. Anyone without a tag for longer than a certain count, is taken out by a cadre of uniformed men all carrying rifles. These dark soldiers ostensibly belong to the organizer of the game, and they serve as a very bleak reminder that somehow, the officiants of the game are always watching. But why? Who is sponsoring this murderous game, ponying up that large amount of cash, and to what end? Well there’s no time for that now, for once everyone has been tagged and profiled and the games rules have been laid out pretty clearly, it’s time to begin!
What begins isn’t a footrace towards the next checkpoint, no, immediately several game participants suddenly morph from curious and greedy men, into whirling dervishes of unstoppable death. Monsters erupt from human skin and PTSD-laden memories of war and bloodshed, and rings of dead men begin forming around them. Of course Shujiro happens to come across a girl who needs help, someone desperate for money just like the rest of them, but clearly about as suited to the warrior life as an ice flow in hell. Futaba Katsuki (Yumia Fujisaki) is there to try for the prize money for her village, struck down by cholera too, as medicine and doctors are prohibitively expensive. Though she has zero warrior training, Futaba is a shrine maiden, a dancer trained by her mother in the sacred dances offered to the Gods, which gains her a tiny sliver of advantage over the average player. And none of that matters to Bukotsu Kanjiya (Hideaki Itô), who recognizes Shujiro as Kokushu the Manslayer from previous battlefield slaughters, and screams the hated epithet at him as he charges, intent on killing Shujiro and anyone who gets in the way of that.
Elsewhere, the fledgling government of Japan, led by one Home Minister Lord Okubo (Arata Iura), is tottering along like a baby bird, fragile and in danger of destruction at any moment. Lord Okubo styles himself after the European counterparts he seems to so admire, down to the dark modern gentlemens suit and the ridiculously turned-out beard, and with the help of Superintendent General Kawaji (Gaku Hamada), a man with a hidden agenda all his own, these two men are dragging Japan kicking and screaming into the modern era. Or trying to. Sadly Lord Okubo is generally looked upon as a figurehead leader who is afforded the staged-play “privilege” of rubber-stamping whatever those in the shadows, the ones with the real power here, put in front of him.
Side note, there is a whole culture and system, like most feudal Japanese things, around the wearing of beards. And the fact that Lord Okubo, a young man with no victories or known accomplishments under his belt, dares to wear a beard, especially in that totally foppish way he has it turned out and oiled and overly treated just like his white-European counterparts, is a giant insult to his entire history, that he wears brazenly on his face every single day. This detail isn’t explored in the show, but the fact that the show went the extra mile to demonstrate this sort of kowtowing to European ideals in such a visual way, is a real cultural treat.
Shujiro finds allies, like his old acquaintance Kyojin Tsuge (Masahiro Higashide), a clever man with dubious morals who nonetheless is willing to partner up with Shujiro and his companions while it suits his purposes, and Iroha Kinugasa (Kaya Kiyohara), Shujiro’s adopted sister from the Kiyohachi-ryu sword school, again bringing up painful history that Shujiro would just as soon forget, but with a skill set he simply can’t turn down, strength in numbers and all that.
Enemies on the other hand, are in no short supply: not just the other players of the game, but the zaibatsu who provided the guns and such to make Koduko possible, the officiants of Koduko itself, the entire new Japanese government, even the common people who know if they openly cheer for the samurai they still hold in their hearts, they stand a good chance of being shot for it. But Shujiro is desperate and determined in equal measure, and together with his allies, friends, and an annoyingly persistent sense of justice and insistent search for the truth, he will make it through Koduko and expose the rot at the center of his world for all to see!
Con men with partners have been known to pull large cons, and a known oft-used chestnut is called, “Let’s you and him fight”. Basically you convince your enemies to take each-other out, and thus prove yourself the victor and the smartest, right? Which is essentially at its very simplest, what Koduko is: a way for “modern” Japan to get rid of these annoyingly persistent samurai, ostensibly disguised as a game, but in actuality a thinly veiled cover for mass mutual slaughter. And the villain behind it all, one of many but the man considered to be the official organizer of Koduko himself, is both a genius and a certified madman, bearing the dubious distinction of being the foremost corrupt cop of the new Japanese regime.
Season One of Last Samurai Standing boasts only six episodes, each one packed with emotional drama and more martial arts and old-vs.-new fighting styles than you can shake a rifle at. Season Two has already been confirmed, is currently in production, and we can’t wait!
Catch Last Samurai Standing before he falls, on Netflix now!
Reviewed by Alicia Glass