George Lucas has never been shy about the fact that he drew heavily on Japanese culture and history in his initial creation of the Star Wars universe. He was especially enamored with the director Akira Kurosawa’s historical epics. The influence can be seen in the storytelling; most famously, A New Hope’s focus on the two droids was inspired by The Hidden Fortress (1958), in which two bumbling peasants (one chubbier, one taller and slimmer) help rescue a princess.
But much of the influence can be seen in Lucas’s worldbuilding. The Jedi Order was his version of Kurosawa’s samurai. The robes of the Jedi are cut and fashioned to appear similar to those the samurai wore in daily life. Darth Vader’s armor was modeled after pre-Tokugawa samurai armor, down to the distinct helmet and face-mask. The lightsaber, the weapon of a Jedi knight, is an obvious stand-in for the katana, a samurai sword now famous in American pop culture; and the lightsaber fight scenes are inspired by the Japanese martial art of kendo. Even the name Jedi comes from the Japanese term for “period dramas,” jidaigeki, the genre Kurosawa mostly worked in.
Of course, the line between cultural influence and cultural appropriation can be blurry. Though I can only speak for myself, as one American among many with Japanese ancestry, I believe the Star Wars universe manages to draw on Japanese history and culture without exploiting it. For one thing, Lucas has always been open about the influence and given credit where it was due. He fell in love with Japanese cinema, as have many Americans since the Cold War, and his modeling of the Jedi after the samurai was done with respect rather than as caricature.
Moreover, Star Wars doesn’t really belong to America, at least not anymore. It’s become a huge success in Japan and influenced Japanese anime and live-action film; the influence, in other words, has gone both ways. There was even a remake of The Hidden Fortress that paid homage to the original film’s relationship to Star Wars, with the villain dressed in a black helmet and armor like Darth Vader.
It’s fitting that the Star Wars universe has begun featuring more Asian-coded characters and more actors of Asian or Asian-American heritage. The introduction of Bodhi Rook, Chirrut Imwe, and Baze Malbus (played by, respectively, one British Pakistani and two Chinese actors) in Rogue One; Kazuda Xiono, the male lead of the Disney Channel show Star Wars Resistance (voiced by a Japanese-American actor); Rose Tico, one of the leading characters in the new cinematic trilogy (played by a Vietnamese-American actor); and Fennec Shand in The Mandalorian (played by a Chinese-American actor)—there’s a part of me that can’t help but be excited by these choices. I guess it’s not that complicated: it’s nice to see, in a galaxy far, far away, more people that look like me.
Illustration by Audrey Estok.