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How One See Through Death before They Know What Life Is? Bushido spirit is the code of morality and behavior followed by men in Japanese feudal society

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How One See Through Death before They Know What Life Is? Bushido spirit is the code of morality and behavior followed by men in Japanese feudal society. It linked patriotism and loyalty to the emperor. The samurai took death very lightly, they always hold the principle of being loyal, and not afraid of death. Only do they realize that death is not important, they get the spirit of Bushido. Japanese think that death is a glorious thing that will always live in people’s memory. Also, with the Japanese authorities in order to implement the policy of expanding the territory, the Bushido spirit gradually became a tool for spreading imperialist ideas. In the film Hana Yorimo Naho, Aoki was forced to pursue the spirit of Bushido, but at the village, he indeed found out the truth of life. The useless sacrifice was so fragile in the face of the understanding of life. Another main story is that a team of 46 people completed their revenge but in the end all of them committed suicide. By comparing the two different storylines, the director criticized the Japanese authority for garbling the Bushido spirit. In my personal view, the Bushido spirit does not allow people to see through the meaning of death. This is also in line with the director’s desire to express his opposition to the Bushido spirit. Revenge does not require violence and death to reflect the loyalty in the Bushido spirit. The director interprets another meaning of revenge from the perspective of a female Osae. In the film, through the influence of his family, Aoki Sozaemon constantly urged him to avenge his father and emphasize the loyalty of the Bushido spirit. But he was not interested in this violent Bushido. However, at the time, because the society was forced by the constraints of traditional ideas and family honor, Aoki had to start revenge and came to Edo. He loves life and will pursue all things that are full of hope. For example, he helps children and neighbors learn and write. The background music here is relaxed and cheerful, which also represents his love of life. At the same time, when the child worried about that his father and his birds were buried in the dark and cold ground, he comforted the child and prayed that they could live in a warm place. This also reflects his love for life. Aoki had a crush on a woman whose husband was killed. Her husband also left her son with a vengeance. For the same as mentioned before, in the thinking of others, it is a glorious thing to avenge the father. But Osae thought it was an unbearable thing. When Aoki asked why his son was not allowed to avenge his father, Osae believed that everyone treats life and hatred differently. She believed that people should not live with hatred, nor should they give up everything they should have because of the family’s last wish. The son should transform the hatred into a positive way to feel the true meaning of life. Aoki was influenced by her words, and this is what the director wants to express. When people love life and have sustenance on it, Aoki’s death due to revenge will be meaningless. On the contrary, Jirozaemon Hirano is a representative figure in pursuit of the hypocritical Bushido spirit. He envied Aoki's responsibility to avenge and the way his father died was so normal that he did not have a chance to get honor. Although he considered the sword as the most representative item of the samurai and carried it at all times, he was not proficient in swordsmanship. Although he wanted to obey the Bushido spirit and die with glory, he was afraid of death. He always imagined that he was a real samurai, falsely claiming that his family had a lofty honor, but he was very poor and even wanted to steal food. For example, he believes that making rice cakes and cleaning wells are things the samurai's entourage does. Another shot in the film also expresses the author's core ideas. When a drunk laughed at the fragility of the sword worn by Akio, the elderly next to him questioned the spirit of Bushido. The samurai nowadays neither farms nor does business. The samurai is just an accessory to the war. When the ruler made an overly distorted interpretation of it, this extreme thinking also promoted the birth of militarism. Different from Aoki’s life, there is a parallel storyline happened in the film, the 46 samurai also feared death but wanted to die in a glorious way. In this storyline, the director wants to show the truth of the sprite of Bushido. In the eyes of people who worship the spirit of Bushido, they only see the idea and concept of Bushido. It is glorious and tough to die for being loyal. However, as the director wants to express, the consequence and reality of Bushido was disappointing and abominable. After the 46 samurai died, they were used by others to create "Vengeful Buns" to obtain money. This is contrary to what they think is the sacred spirit of Bushido. Sword shots appeared many times in the movie. The sword represents the spirit of Bushido, it also represents the identity and status of the samurai. At the same time, he also symbolizes violence and death, it is just a murder weapon in killing. At the end of the story, Aoki has no revenge. When he saw that his enemy had put down the sword and stopped pursuing the sacred Bushido spirit, he also gave up the sword in his hand. Aoki said that his father taught him sword and Go. They are all necessary skills as a samurai. Sword represents courage, while Go represents reason. People should give up violent behaviors and think more about the true meaning of things. This also criticize the Bushido spirit as it does not grant people a way to think about what life is and what the truth is. Finally, the absurdity of blindly pursuing the spirit of Bushido is that it does not require people to think about what life truly is before they prepare to die gloriously. In the detailed depiction by director Hirokazu Koreeda, instead of glorify and exaggerate the moment of death, he spent more time on describing the true life story of a person or a group of people revenge based on the spirit of Bushido. In this way, we can really think about life while considering about Bushido. With the changes of the times, the Bushido spirit has become a tool for imperialism to rule and expand. At the same time, the decline and change of the Bushido spirit promoted the formation of Japan as imperialism. The authorities also exhibit the narrowest and extreme nature of the Bushido spirit. At one point in the film, Aoki once said that he wanted to die like a samurai and as noble as a Sakura. But the villagers replied that the reason why the cherry blossoms are so beautiful is because they will bloom next year. Although for the society at that time, it was a glorious thing to maintain the honor and death of the family and the individual. But for a person who loves life, it is meaningless. Sakura represent nobly, but when it withers, no one will remember it. What people remember is when it blooms again. Hatred is only temporary; we should turn it into a source of motivation for life instead of using death to end the beautiful life. Please based on the whole article to help me to improve my argument. Here is my argument. In my personal view, the Bushido spirit does not allow people to see through the meaning of death Also please help me to correct my grammar mistakes. (Also use MLA) Thanks! Instructions for Essays Length: First essay: 5-page minimum, second essay: 5-page minimum (but in each case more is okay, especially if you need more space to finish what you want to say). Please format your essays in US Letter size (not A3) at 12 points in the Times New Roman font, double-spaced. Topic: Examine one or more of the films we have viewed; you may also find that mentioning one or more of the texts read for this class will help you develop your argument. In addition you may of course refer to any other text that you find pertinent to your essay. Include in your analysis each of the following ways that the films examined address their audiences: images, storyline, dialog and/or other features of the soundtrack. As you write, you should also consider the cultural, social and historical context of both a film’s storyline and its production. Just about any comparative, analytical or critical approach is fine; it is up to you. One effective method is to choose one theme or issue and use it as a point of comparison between films and/or texts. Another is to compare and contrast portrayals of two or more characters. In any case, your paper needs to be centered on an argument that is worth making. This argument should not be so obvious that there is no need to go about supporting it. (I.e., if your argument can be paraphrased by saying “these two films are the same, except for where they are different,” or “there is toilet humor in ‘Hana yorimo nao,’” you need a new argument.) I encourage 6 students to come up with their own topics, but if you decide that you would rather be assigned a topic, please let me know. You do not necessarily need to cite any of the readings assigned for this course. However, if some portion of the readings is highly pertinent to your argument, but you fail to engage with it, you are in effect giving either me or my reader (or sometimes both of us) the impression that you did not read the text or passage in question. No additional reading or research is necessary, but it is not forbidden, either. I do not need to agree with your arguments, I only want to see that you have thought carefully about the materials you analyze and have offered evidence to support your arguments. In fact, as indicated above, an argument is not worth making if it is so self-evident that anyone familiar with the material in question would likely agree with it without having to be persuaded. Avoid saying something is “interesting”; it does not constitute a sufficiently weighty assertion, and it is in fact very boring to write in a paper that something is “interesting.” Avoid contractions in academic writing; for example, write “do not” instead of “don’t.” Only make assertions you can back up; you can often resolve this issue by slightly weakening or qualifying an assertion. In this context it is important to remember that the feature films we will view are all works of fiction, and often portray exceptional behavior because it is interesting and dramatic. For example, do not on the sole basis of the storyline of “Cruel Story of Youth” jump to the conclusion that typical Tokyo teenagers in 1960 were sexually entrapping and extorting money from middle-aged men. Reduce summaries to the bare minimum needed to support your arguments, especially when dealing with materials with which your audience (i.e., I and my reader) is certainly familiar. Be precise and specific in your use of language. Learn and observe the US punctuation conventions regarding the use of single and double quotation marks. Or, if you are more comfortable following the British conventions, feel free to do so. But please do not mix and match these randomly. (Students do this all the time; they must stop.) Please be aware that if you are writing in recognizably American English but occasionally throw in a chiefly British word, such as “whilst” for “while” or “amongst” for “among,” the effect can be jarring rather than elegant, as if you were to switch from a California accent to the BBC standard in the middle of a 7 conversation. However, if for whatever reason that sort of transatlantic blending comes to you naturally, do not let me stop you. Consult the citation guidelines, etc., given either in the MLA Handbook or The Chicago Manual of Style. (Both are available online.) Please make sure to mark titles as titles, and to do so consistently. For example, some writers put the titles of films in quotation marks, others italicize them; both approaches are acceptable, but it is not acceptable to switch back and forth between the two approaches. Bad: “O? shima’s opinion with regards to U.S. military bases in Japan...” Good: “O? shima’s opinion with regard to U.S. military bases in Japan...” Even better (because more concise): “O? shima’s opinion regarding U.S. military bases in Japan...” Bad: “This argument is obviously based off of Bakhtin’s writings on dialogism in fiction.” Good: “This argument is obviously based on Bakhtin’s writings on dialogism in fiction.” “As such” does not mean the same thing as “accordingly” or “therefore.” Please note that when writing about films or works of literature the convention is to use, in most cases, the “historical present” to describe their content and to use some form of past tense when describing the historical framework in which they were produced or are set. For example: “In 1960 the Kishi government’s efforts to renew the Japan-America Security Treaty met with passionate and well-organized opposition. The young protagonists of ‘Cruel Story of Youth’ pursue a turbulent love affair against the backdrop of antiSecurity Treaty protests.” Generally, I recommend the following structure, with which most of you are probably already familiar: Introduction. Thesis statement (i.e., a succinct statement of your main argument, preferably in your first paragraph). Evidence for your thesis (the bulk of the paper). Conclusion (to some extent a restatement of the points introduced in the introduction). Write at least two drafts of each essay before turning it in. First drafts that need no revision are extremely rare. Things that tend to deserve special attention in 8 second (and third and fourth...) drafts include paragraph structure, transitions, concision, and fine-tuning of the introduction, thesis statement and conclusion. People’s thoughts tend to develop as they write, so when one goes back to one’s introduction after completing a first draft it is typical to find that this introduction needs substantial revision to make it match and give an adequate foretaste of the essay that now follows it. This is especially true of the thesis statement, which is the most important part of the introduction. Before turning in your essay, please print out what you have written, read it aloud to yourself and correct any errors you might find. (This may sound strange, but it is the best way I know of to cut down on grammar errors, etc., in the final product.) If you are not confident in your writing, I strongly suggest that you pair up with another student in this course, read each other’s essays and give each other suggestions as to how they can be improved. (However, you may NOT do this with your responses to essay questions on the exams.) If you are not confident in your writing I also suggest that after consulting another student you make use of the services provided by the Student Academic Success Center. Grammar matters, on your papers, in social interactions and on the job. If I sense that you have tried to write something conceptually complex and are not sure about how to do so in a grammatically and idiomatically correct manner, I will take that into consideration when grading your paper. If, however, you make basic grammatical mistakes that thorough proofreading should eliminate, points will be deducted. The instructor and his reader reserve the right to return without a grade essays that contain three or more basic usage, spelling or grammatical errors. (Please do not take this to be an offer of free proofreading services; it is not.) There are many grammar references available online and in print; please use one of them when the need arises. Many of you might find the following course useful; a student whose judgment I trust recommends it highly: