Cinematic samurai have long been depicted as sword-fighting, philosophy-spouting, honor-bound warriors of feudal Japan, but some movies thankfully go deeper and explore more nuanced and historically accurate truths about this social class. Everything from dealing with poverty in a myriad of ways to cruelty fueled by unearned privilege have all made their way to big-screen productions that today serve as valuable educational tools. The following five movies cast a light on many real yet often overlooked aspects of samurai life and expose the humanity (or lack thereof) behind their legend.1. Harakiri (1962): The Theater and Tragedy of Ritual SuicideStill from the Movie Harakiri directed by Masaki Kobayashi, 1962. Source: Harakiri original trailerMasaki Kobayashis Harakiri cuts deep into the myth of samurai honor and the Japanese warriors supposed embrace of death while revealing the blood-soaked reality beneath. Set in 17th-century Edo (modern-day Tokyo), the movie follows Tsugumo Hanshiro (Tatsuya Nakadai), a ronin who arrives at the estate of the powerful Ii clan and requests to commit seppuku in their courtyard to escape his life of poverty in a dignified way. What follows next is a powerful showcase of samurai as human beings, with all their fears, arrogance, and cruelty, as well as a lesson in ritual suicide in Japan.The film contrasts two key practices: Seppuku, a ritual of self-disemboweling that typically ends with beheading by a second (kaishaku), and harakiri, the physical act of cutting open the stomach, which is certainly a part of formal seppuku but which by the Edo Period (1603-1868) had mostly been turned into a symbolic gesture.Traditionally, a samurai choosing death on their own terms bathed, dressed in white (the color of the dead), and then cut open their belly, which showed they were not afraid of pain and which, most importantly, was believed to release their spirit through the stomach wound. However, starting in the 17th century, many samurai would instead simply touch their abdomens with a sword or fan before being decapitated. The reality is that the samurai, as human beings, did not really want to needlessly suffer unimaginable pain in their final hours, even at the supposed cost of their souls becoming trapped.Tousei buyuuden: Takasaki Saichirou, Ukiyo-e woodblock print of warrior about to perform seppuku. Kunikazu Utagawa, 1850s. Source: Wikimedia CommonsHarakiri acknowledges these trends among Edo-period samurai and then additionally criticizes the practice of seppuku when a young ronin is forced to actually slice open his belly before receiving the kaishakus mercy. Worse yet, he has to do it with a bamboo sword. It was a gruesome act that was driven by practicality and cruelty masquerading as honor. The people behind it, the men of the Ii clan, wanted to discourage other ronin from pretending to want to commit suicide in the courtyards of great houses in the hopes of being given some money to go away, which was apparently common at the start of the Edo Period when many former warriors had trouble finding work.Historical records confirm that by this time, seppuku had changed from the way for a warrior to arrange their death on their own terms into a tool for punishment. What transpires next in the movie is a violent takedown of this way of thinking that, nonetheless, exposes the honor of seppuku as little more than a faade.2. Ran (1985): The Insignificance of Family During a Quest for PowerStill from the Movie Ran (1985), directed by Akira Kurosawa. Source: Official trailerAkira Kurosawas Ran fuses Shakespeares King Lear with Japanese history to show that, when it came to consolidating power during Japans Sengoku Period, blood-ties meant very little. In the movie, Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) divides his domain among his two sons while disinheriting a third one. This leads to bloodshed and the titular chaos (the literal meaning of ran) as Ichimonjis sons betray their father.The movie captures a sad truth of the period: for samurai, family was expendable when lands, castles, and power were on the line. The famous warlord Oda Nobunaga, who kickstarted the unification of Japan following the decline of the Ashikaga Shogunate, orchestrated the deaths of two of his family members. During the early stages of his career, Nobunaga killed his uncle (by forcing him to commit seppuku) to strengthen his control of the Oda as Nobutomo was unwilling to accept his young nephew as the head of the clan.Ukiyo-e of Oda Nobunaga, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1830. Source: Wikimedia CommonsLater, Nobunagas younger brother Nobuyuki (also known as Nobukatsu) plotted with another family to overthrow Nobunaga. Twice. The second time earned him a death sentence after being lured into a castle in Kiyosu thinking that he was visiting his sick brother.Nobunaga additionally ordered his retainer, Tokugawa Ieyasu, to sentence his own son and wife to death after the two were alleged to be working with Oda rivals. Ieyasu was not in a position to rebel against Nobunaga but he never made a move against him after rising through the ranks, suggesting that he simply accepted the trade-off of his family for his political ambitions.In Ran, the eldest sons turn on their father with cold efficiency, echoing the unfortunate yet historic truth of the Sengoku period when samurai honor coexisted with calculated familial murder.3. The Twilight Samurai (2002): The Rural Samurais Late-Stage Farmer-Warrior DualityStill from the Movie The Twilight Samurai directed by Yoji Yamada, 2002. Source: Official trailerYoji Yamadas The Twilight Samurai dismantles the myth of the samurai as noble warriors by following Seibei Iguchi (Hiroyuki Sanada), a low-ranking samurai in rural Yamagata (northeastern Japan) during the final days of the Edo Period. The most fascinating thing about Seibei is, ironically, how boring his life is. He is shown to be a capable warrior but he is primarily a clerk and farmer growing his own crops for survival. When he is not at the office (shuffling paper around and taking stock of a feudal lords provisions), there seems to be little to no outward difference between Seibei and a peasant, up to including his tattered clothes and smell. And that is precisely the point.Historically, samurai have held many roles. They are best known as warriors, but the high-ranking ones were also administrators of provinces, while everyone else tried their hand at everything from teaching to office work and farming. A samurai primarily made their living by receiving a rice stipend, sometimes in literally rice but oftentimes in its monetary equivalent. Near the mid-19th century, as Japans borders were forcibly opened and feudalism was on its way out, those stipends were severely reduced. Rich samurai were not affected by this but low-rank ones like Seibei struggled and were pushed into farming. Rice stipends would also ultimately be one of the main causes behind the famous last stand of the samurai.Japanese peasants. Photograph from a Russian book entitled Japan and Japanese, 1902. Source: Wikimedia CommonsIn The Twilight Samurai, Seibei is pleased with his lot in life and does not mind the prospect of becoming a full-time farmer once the feudal classes are abolished. But it is important to remember that for him and many others like him, farming was not a hobby; it was first and foremost a means of survival. For centuries, Japan lived by the iron-clad rules of a hierarchical society where peasants were peasants, merchants were merchants, and samurai were samurai. While these groups were supposed to stay out of each others way, the prospect of famine caused societal rules to take a backseat.The juxtaposition of Seibei with his sword and his day-to-day life as a clerk and farmer reveals the reality of late-stage Japanese feudalism when famine blurred class lines and made even the greatest sword masters realize that a man cannot eat honor.4. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999): Bushido in a World That Forgot ItStill from the Movie Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai directed by Jim Jarmusch, 1999. Source: Official trailerJim Jarmuschs Ghost Dog is a tale of the titular, modern-day hitman (Forest Whitaker) who follows the Hagakure, a centuries-old samurai manual written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo. Seemingly the epitome of bushido, the famous samurai code of honor, the book guides Ghost Dog in his quest to be a 20th-century samurai but, in the end, it is the thing that gets him killed because samurai values have no place in a world of the American mob. That is very apt, considering the origin of the book and the very idea of bushido.Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1719) was a scribe with no combat experience. He lived in a time of peace, having been born long after Tokugawa Ieyasu completed his unification of Japan. Tsunetomo wrote of loyalty, death, and service, but from the safety of a time period where those ideas could never truly be tested. It is not merely a question of the Hagakure being from another time. Trying to live by an unflinching code of honor would have gotten a samurai killed during the vicious Sengoku period when not only retainers rebelled against their lords but whole families went at each others throats. Hagakure is ultimately nostalgia for a world that never existed.Place of Origin and a Stone Monument of Hagakure, A Lesson of Samurai Knowledge by Yamamoto Tunetomo, Pekachu, 2016. Source: Wikimedia CommonsYamamotos contemporaries must have felt that way since his book was ignored for centuries. It really only took off in the 20th century when even more people started to romanticize the idea of samurai while ignoring historical reality. Some of them, like author Yukio Mishima, who wrote a famous commentary on Hagakure, did end up losing his life by suicide after a failed coup attempt because he tried to implement made-up samurai rules to real life.In the movie, Ghost Dog similarly lives by the rules of the Hagakure, being loyal to a mobster who ultimately betrays him for his own selfish needs, and never even considers defending himself from his master. In the end, Ghost Dog is the only one who sees honor and glory in his death. To everyone else, he just looks like a man viciously gunned down in the street.The film dissects Hagakure and ultimately reveals it as a code rooted in a romanticized idea of war, written in peace, and revived only by those longing for meaning and simplicity in a confusing modern world.5. The Sword of Doom (1966): The Evil That Samurai DoStill from the Movie The Sword of Doom (1966), directed by Kihachi Okamoto. Source: Official trailerKihachi Okamotos The Sword of Doom follows Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai), a samurai whose only purpose in life is killing. He butchers an innocent pilgrim at a remote mountain pass for no reason. He uses any excuse to take a life, like when an opponent comes at him with an illegal move during an exhibition match. He eventually becomes a hired killer, driven only by his bloodlust and his protective status as a samurai. His story, though fictional, is not that out of the ordinary. Samurai, as all people, came from all walks of life. And some of them were psychopathic killers.Sano Jirozaemon, a samurai, killed a prostitute in Edos Yoshiwara red-light district in 1696, and that seems to have broken something in him because he went on to kill anywhere between 12 and 20 people during his spree. Actually, the finale of The Sword of Doom, might have been inspired by the story of Sano Jirozaemon as it also takes place in a pleasure quarter and seems to have been triggered by a courtesan.The movie takes place near the end of the Edo Period but Japan had seen mentally unstable samurai before like Kani Saizo (1554-1613), who reportedly took 17 heads at the great Battle of Sekigahara, which he marked by stuffing them with bamboo leaves and grass. Hence his nickname: The Bamboo Samurai.Sano Jirozaemon, Utagawa Kunisada, 1860. Source: Wikimedia CommonsPop culture tends to have an image of the samurai who did not kill. They dueled, or they avenged, or protected. But this portrayal ignores things like kirisute-gomen, the samurais right to strike down disrespectful commoners for perceived slights, as seen in the first episode of Shogun. It was not a license to kill but being legally allowed, under the right circumstances, to take the life of a person who had no way of protecting themselves. That is a system that is just asking to be exploited by the worst of humanity.Sano Jirozaemon was ultimately sentenced to death on account of insanity, but Kani Saizo retired as a celebrated hero. The Sword of Doom comments on these kinds of samurai by using Ryunosuke to ask a question: What happens when you give a sword and unchecked privilege to a monster?