It is like drinking poisioned tea. One sip and I can smell death on the breeze. Not the sweet smell of success but the tainted odor of ones own body wafting back in time on the subtle chi's and chang's of serpent energy that swirls and darts in the body. I can smell it and I can see some strange shadow puppet stalking me, some awkward looking shadow whose blade of darkness means to rend from me my name...

I can't say if the shadow is sucking me in or if I am compelled to step into the shadow...

Strange Chracters Blaze and a soft geisha voice calls me RONIN...


(-fnord is snipped from the net)
Usually set during the Tokugawa Era (1600-1868), the Samurai film (like the Western) focuses on the end of an entire way of life. During this highly repressive time period, wherein Japan underwent a long period of perpetual peace after three hundred years of Civil War, the samurai in essence became obsolete as members of the bakufu (military government). Instead, under the weight of an ever-oppressive bureaucracy, the samurai became ronin (man on the wave) and roamed the countryside looking for legitimate employment or just getting into trouble. And by 1868, with the beginnings of the Meiji restoration, the days of the samurai were numbered. Their legacy undoubtedly lives on, but as a tangible force to be reckoned with the samurai were done for. It would now be in the realm of the imagination where these dejected ronin would ultimately find a home.


[POSTED BY CHRIS TITAN]