Samurai Health, Nutrition, and Spirituality in The Last Samurai

Introduction: The Samurai Way of Life

According to Tom Stovall and Dustin Grainger, "The ancient Samurai, Miyamoto Musashi, wrote in his Book of Five Rings: 'It will be difficult for you to succeed unless you look at things on a large scale'" (PharmaCafe). Similarly, within the film The Last Samurai (2003), director Edward Zwick shows various ways in which the Japanese Samurai of the late 19th century looked at and holistically practiced nutrition; prayer, war, and death rituals; spirituality; and health care — all on a scale with nature. These holistic practices, in turn, promoted the Samurai's own inner harmony: mentally, physically, and spiritually.

The film depicts various nutritional practices, prayer rituals, pre-war and death ceremonies, attitudes about spirituality and the meaning of life, and medicinal philosophies within the Samurai culture. All of these were natural, profound, and in harmony with the external forces of nature. Several of these practices come into focus within the film after the capture of Captain Nathan Ahlgren by the Samurai.

The first natural practice that becomes apparent in the film involves the healing and recovery of Samurai warriors from battle wounds. Women — and one woman in particular, the widow of the Samurai killed by Nathan Ahlgren — took responsibility for tending to Ahlgren's injuries. She is shown sewing stitches into his shoulder, apparently with only the aid of some sort of balm or ointment. Notably, Ahlgren seems to experience little pain during this procedure.

Natural Healing and Recovery Practices

In terms of the Samurai approach to healing, the role of the healer is to promote natural recovery, while the role of the patient is to endure whatever pain and suffering are necessary in order to be restored — naturally — to purity of physical and mental health. There are no shortcuts, anesthesia, or quick fixes within the Samurai healing process. One must endure pain and suffering — that is, feel one's sickness — in order to truly become healed and feel one's wellness.

The woman caring for Ahlgren also refused to give in to his requests for sake (Japanese rice wine) once she recognized he was an alcoholic, even though this meant he experienced painful withdrawal symptoms. She told her nephew, who had favored giving Ahlgren sake whenever he asked, that she would not allow this in her home. Consequently, Ahlgren was forced to rid his body of alcohol entirely, and he is never again shown drinking anything alcoholic while among the Samurai. After returning from captivity, he initially refused alcohol even in Tokyo, but eventually began drinking again once he was stressed about the Emperor's rejection of the Samurai and away from their direct influence.

This arc suggests something meaningful about the Samurai lifestyle: it was healthy, wholesome, largely free of the stresses of Westernized existence, and attuned to the natural rhythms of the universe in ways that Western civilization is not. Life among the Samurai effectively cured Ahlgren's chronic alcoholism and allowed him to live authentically, without the crutch of alcohol, for the first time in many years. This transformation, the film implies, may be the central reason Ahlgren turned toward the Samurai way of life and away from the modernization he had originally been brought to Japan to support. He understood, perhaps better than anyone else in the film, the personal dangers and stress inherent in modern Westernized living.

The film offers somewhat less explicit detail about Samurai nutritional practices, but several patterns emerge clearly. Eating together as a family group was unmistakably a ritual. Food was always prepared and served by women. When Ahlgren is eventually invited to eat with the family of the woman caring for him — after initially being excluded — it signals that both the family and the Samurai community have begun to accept him.

Nutrition, Diet, and Family Ritual

From Ahlgren's requests for sake during his recovery, the viewer also learns that the Samurai did drink sake, but only occasionally with meals and always in moderation and in balance with other foods and drinks. This moderation carries a mental health implication: the Samurai believed that mental well-being must come from within oneself, not from addictive substances. The Samurai diet, as depicted in the film, also appears to contain nothing else — caffeine, excess sugar, simple carbohydrates — that could be considered addictive.

The meaning of food within this film is nourishment, family bonding, and community. Common foods are rice and tea, and these are indeed the only items the Samurai are actually shown consuming. The young woman who nurses Ahlgren and her two small sons share several meals with him, apparently eating only rice and soup. The soup is drunk directly from a small bowl; rice is eaten with chopsticks from a larger bowl. At a meal where Ahlgren is offered a choice, he specifically requests tea rather than sake — a powerful turning point in his physical and mental recovery, one that likely would never have been achieved without the Samurai's influence.

At the very end of the film, a speculative voice-over narration shows what may have become of Ahlgren after the Japanese refused to sign the treaty with the Americans. These final scenes also depict Samurai women tending vegetable crops and raising chickens, presumably as food sources. Chickens appear briefly in an earlier part of the film as well, though the Samurai are never shown eating them.

Three substances notably absent from the Samurai diet — red meat, animal fats such as butter, and sugary sweets or pastries — are precisely the kinds of foods associated with obesity and physical sluggishness in Western dietary patterns. The Samurai also appear not to consume milk or dairy products, drinking tea instead, which is recognized as a healthier alternative. Even the very young children in the film are shown drinking tea rather than milk.

Conclusion

The Last Samurai. With Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. Dir. Edward Zwick. Warner Brothers, 2003.

Stovall, Tom, and Dustin Grainger. PharmaCafe. Retrieved May 24, 2005, from <