Samurai

Japanese heart throb-turned-tough guy Junichi Okada hopes to have a global hit on his hands with the upcoming Netflix tentpole Last Samauri Standing, and the formula he believes will work is a combination of contemporary aesthetics with a healthy dose of old school action.

Speaking on the sidelines of this week’s 30^th Busan International Film Festival, Okada — a veteran now of two decades in cinema — explained that the aim was to produce Japanese period drama and action that “speaks to the new generation.”

“I was thinking about how I could deliver this, and what I had in mind was taking traditional elements, the intrinsic parts, the basics [of martial arts], but we encapsulate them in stories and characters for the younger generation,” says Okada. “We wanted to look into how people could experience the action.”

Audiences in Busan have this week been treated to a preview of Last Samurai Standing, Netflix’s much hyped six-part actioner that’s set for a November 13 global rollout.

The series throws its 292 fallen samurai warriors into a fight to the death and, ultimately, for the winner, untold riches, with period echoes of FX’s wildly successful Shogun and plot echoes of Netflix’s own blockbuster Squid Game. But the style and substance in the action sequences is its own.

As Okada — onboard as lead actor, producer and action choreographer — and director Michihito Fujii explained, the plan here has been to eschew leaning heavily on CGI in order to capture the spirit of history’s martial arts masters — and to not allow technology to distract from the drama.

“I wanted to make sure that the human drama is not something separate from the action sequences that we will be delivering in the show,” says Fujii, who named-checked the likes of great cinematic “realists” Buster Keaton and Akira Kurosawa as his inspirations.

A former member of Japanese boy-band V6, Okada has become one of Japan’s most bankable stars in recent years thanks to a brand of believable action built on his own decades-long commitment to traditional martial arts. His proficiency in Japanese and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, as well as Jeet Kune Do and Kali fight styles, has helped him become one of the industry’s leading fight choreographers.

Okada today gives a nod to the great Japanese director Kurosawa, creator of the epic Seven Samurai along with a string of hits that redefined action cinema, and a filmmaker who learned martial arts in order to make his films feel more real.

“I am a martial arts geek, or otaku,” says Okada. “Ever since I was a child, I wanted to work in movies. I wanted to work in action. I started out as an idol, a pop star, and being in the movies was my dream. Basically, to do that I looked into what Kurosowa did and what he did is he had these people around him to make it authentic, actual martial arts experts, sword fight experts. So to be authentic, I wanted to make sure I had the skills of martial arts. Having that is kind of my weapon, that is my skill.”

Last Samurai Standing is set in 1878 Japan, the post-samurai period when these famed warriors had — along with their swords — been left on society’s scrap heap, as the country’s feudal system came to an end. Drawn by mysterious invitation to the historic grounds of the Tenryuji Temple in Kyoto, they are tempted into a game of survival, with the claim that 100 billion yen awaits the winner. Cue violence, and a wild cast of characters and — in case we’ve not mentioned it — a bloody fight to the death.

The series comes lifted from the pages of Shogo Imamura’s best-selling Ikusagami series of novels, later turned into a manga series.

The show is quite obviously a passion project for Okada. “I felt that in the original source material, [Shogo Imamura] was basically working on period drama but trying to change the model,” he says. “I wanted to speak to a newer audience.”