Samurai and Cowboys Existed at the Same Time
A samurai and a cowboy standing back to back in a dusty frontier town, both ready to draw, with a Pacific Ocean dividing the background
The samurai class was not officially abolished in Japan until 1876, which overlaps directly with the American Wild West era of the 1860s through 1890s. For at least a decade, samurai and cowboys coexisted on opposite sides of the Pacific.
Why Itβs Interesting
Pop culture treats them as belonging to completely different eras, but they were contemporaries. It was theoretically possible for a samurai to board a steamship to San Francisco and meet a cowboy. Akira Kurosawa understood this β his samurai films directly inspired Western movies.
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