KEN (The Sword) - Film by Kenji Misumi, based on the book by Yukio Mishima

If You Like Rand, You'll Like...

KEN (The Sword) - Film by Kenji Misumi, based on the book by Yukio Mishima

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danconia76 04-04-2009, 2:59 PM
It was Jeff Britting, producer of Ayn Rand's Sense of Life, that turned me on to Japanese author Mishima. Like most Japanese artists and thinkers, Mishima masks many pro-individualists leanings within the context of traditional Japanese arts and philosphies (bushido, etc.). In fact, Mishima's works often touch, sentence by sentence, much of what we love of Ayn Rand as do the majority of pre 1970 screenwriters in Japan.

In stark contradiction to what we often hear of Japanese culture, authors like Mishima attack the "group-think" mentality and often advocate a very subtle and then again not-so subtle form of hero worship.

In the film KEN, which is available in some spots online, we find a young Roarkish Kendo student who is solely interested in his art and perfection of self, to the annoyance of his corrupt family, his fellow students, and one particularly nasty (social)kend-climber a la Peter Keating. This is not an Objectivist work like King Rat (novel only) but touches so many of the ideas and principles of Objectivism, that anyone who is a fan of Ayn Rand should enjoy it.