The Last Samurai

Listen, I can’t teach you anything special

I’ve merely had a lot of fighting experience

Go away and forget about following me

It’s for your own good

L: I’m determined to follow you, whatever you say

L: I forbid you

I can’t afford to have any followers

Mifune runs up and stares at the samurai. Kambei: Onushi—samurai ka? Mifune (drawing himself up) : [incomprehensible shout]

L: Are you a samurai?

L: Of course!

Kambei and Katsushiro walk away. A farmer runs forward and falls to his knees.

I tell L that in the autobiography Kurosawa has nothing but praise for the marvellous Mifune except possibly that he had a rather harsh way of talking which the microphones had trouble picking up. I say that it’s very charming the way the translators have translated the Japanese into Penguin.

L: What’s Penguin?

I: It’s what English translators translate into. Merely had a lot of fighting experience! Determined to follow you! As it happens most English speakers can understand Penguin even if they wouldn’t use it in daily life, but still.

L: Isn’t that what they say?

I: They may be speaking Penguin Japanese, we can only surmise. Kambei says Tada kassen ni wa zuibun deta ga, tada, just, kassen is battle or combat according to Halpern (but I wonder whether that isn’t just Penguin infiltrating the dictionary), ni in, wa topic particle, zuibun a lot, deta happened, ga another particle which we won’t go into now but which seems pretty common, it’s hard to believe it is giving the flavour of Penguin to the

L: When are you going to teach me Japanese?

I: I don’t know enough to teach you.

L: You could teach me what you know.

I: [NO NO NO NO] Well

L: Please

I: Well

L: Please

Voice of Sweet Reason: You’ve started so many other things I think you should work on them more before you start something new.

L: How much more?

I: Well

L: How much more?

The last thing I want is to be teaching a five-year-old a language I have not yet succeeded in teaching myself.

I: I’ll think about it.

I would like to strike a style to amaze. I think I am not likely to discover the brush of Cézanne; if I am to leave no other record I would like it to be a marvel. But I must write to be understood; how can formal perfection be saved? I see in my mind a page, I think of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum: across the top one Latin line, the rest English (or possibly German), identification of persons obscure after 2,000 years. Just so will this look if I explain every reference for 45th-century readers, readers who may, for all I know, know the name of a single 21st-century genius (the one now five years old). What I mean is that I see in my mind a page, across the top a line with the words Carling Black Label, the rest a solid mass of small type describing Carling Black Label the beer, Carling Black Label ads the glory of British advertising, Levi’s the jeans, stonewashed Levi’s ad parodied in classic ad for Carling Black Label, lyrics of I Heard It Through the Grapevine classic song sung by Marvin Gaye in classic jeans and classic beer ad, not to mention terrible deprivation of American audiences of the time able to export the jeans and import the beer but not to sample the glories of British advertising to which these gave rise. What I mean is that I have read books written 2,000 or even 2,500 years ago or 20 years ago and in 2,500 years they will need everything even Mozart explained and when once you start explaining there is no end to it.

HOW MUCH MORE?

HOW MUCH MORE?

HOW, MUCH, MORE?

I: Well if you read the Odyssey and Books 1–8 of the Metamorphoses and the whole Kalilah wa Dimnah and 30 of the Thousand and One Nights and I Samuel and the Book of Jonah and learn the cantillation and if you do 10 chapters in Algebra Made Easy then I will teach you as much as I can.

L: Then that’s what I’ll do.

I: All right.

L: I will.

I: Fine.

L: You’ll see.

I: I know.

L: Will you teach me the alphabet while I’m working on the rest?

I: It doesn’t have an alphabet. It has two sets of syllabaries of 46 symbols apiece, 1,945 characters of Chinese derivation in common use since the Second World War and up to 50,000 characters used before then. I know the syllabaries and 262 characters which I keep forgetting which is precisely why I am not really qualified to teach it to you.

L: Then why don’t you get a Japanese to teach me?

This is a wonderful idea. I could get a benevolent Japanese male to act as an uncle substitute for L! A benevolent Mifune lookalike to come and talk about stamp collecting or football or his car in a language which would conceal the diabolical tedium of the subject. But he would probably want some money.

I: I don’t think we can afford it.