Anyone else remember this epic thread back from when this movie came out? Here it is preserved by the wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20031219092735/http://imdb.com/title/tt0325710/board/nest/2688896
PS I had forgotten how ugly those boards were back then.
Darn, I went to that guy's profile http://www.imdb.com/user/ur2235692/, but he hasn’t posted anything in years. Now I'll never know who his daimyo is. As an actual, real-life ronin, I was hoping he could hook me up with a job.
shareWell you know someone left an impact when you remember their 13 year old forum post. -_-
I'm 26 years old but I've been on IMDB since 1998! Yes, I been on here since I was eight years old, when this site was a damn baby. But I don't recall ever visiting this board back then, though.
I don't know, I think that jmagnolia guy was a troll reading through those post. I am someone who has been in martial arts for 17~ years and studied sword for a while, I have a belt in it. I wouldn't call myself a "samurai" though. The true samurai, the last of their kind withered away in the late 1800's. I'm more than certain a very few elite probably had their skills/teachings passed down. But I doubt some troll on an IMDB forum would be on of them bragging about his samurai status.
"studied sword for a while, I have a belt in it."
You have a BELT in your SWORD??
What?
In any case, it's not a matter of "what you call yourself" - a kid can call themselves emperor, but they will still have to obey their parents when it's dinner time. A teenager can call themselves 'rebel', but they will still do their girlfriend's bidding. An adult may call themselves 'Darth Vader', but they'll still just be a fat nerd in a costume.
There's a difference between actually BEING something, and simply CALLING yourself something. It's the difference between fiction an reality, imagination and truth, label and actuality.
You and that guy can call yourselves samurai all day long, that doesn't make you samurai.
From Wikipedia:
"Samurai (侍, /ˈsæmʊraɪ/) were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the 12th century to their abolition in the 1870s. They were the well-paid retainers of the daimyo (the great feudal landholders). They had high prestige and special privileges such as wearing two swords. "
Notice the word, "WERE". You can't be samurai anymore. They're gone. There are no more samurai. (Hence the title of the movie, 'The LAST Samurai' - referring to all those samurai shown in the movie, not Tom Cruise's character - people don't realize that japanese words have no plural form, so 'samurai' can mean either one, or many)
However, again from Wikipedia:
"The Sengoku jidai ("warring states period") was marked by the loosening of samurai culture, with people born into other social strata sometimes making a name for themselves as warriors and thus becoming de facto samurai."
So the best you can do is become a "DE FACTO" samurai, by 'making a name for yourself as warrior'.
I do not recommend this, though, because it's not only unlawful and illegal, it's also highly unethical and morally wrong. Don't kill or murder anyone.
The conclusion being;
Unless you have made name for yourself as a warrior, you can't EVEN be a DE FACTO samurai (and it's debatable as to how 'real' that is).
The troller in the old post was either deluded into thinking that as long as you follow 'the code' (which they didn't seem to know to have called "Bushidō (武士道, "the way of warriors")"), and simply CALL yourself a samurai, you somehow are a samurai..
..OR..
..they were just trying to provoke people and lied about their delusion, and didn't REALLY think they were a samurai after all.
Factually, those are the only two options.
By the way, it's 'troller', not a 'troll'.
Just because there's a folklore mythology about a being called 'troll', doesn't mean that 'trolling' has ANYTHING to do with that creature. Trolling is a form of fishing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing)
The term 'trolling' came from 'trying to fish as many reactions as possible by writing a ridiculously exaggerated comment'.
So 'trolling' is 'fishing for reactions', someone doing trolling is NOT a 'troll'.
Damn that old site design, brings back memories.
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