Trivia / The Last Samurai

• California Doubling: Filmed on location in New Zealand. Mount Egmont-Taranaki doubled as Mount Fuji, as the real deal was too heavily developed with human activity.
• The Cast Show Off: Many of Samurai's actors actually practice the arts they portray.
• Method Acting: Tom Cruise spent two years studying Japanese language and swordsmanship to prepare for this movie.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Ken Watanabe, Masato Harada, and Shichinosuke Nakamura reprise their respective roles as Katsumoto, Omura and the Meiji Emperor for the Japanese dubs of the home media and Fuji TV editions.
• On-Set Injury: Tom Cruise was almost killed by Hiroyuki Sanada (Ujio) during the filming of the fog battle. The mechanical horse he was atop malfunctioned (it was supposed to move him backwards). He therefore had no chance to dodge out of the way of the sharpened steel katana that was swinging at his neck. Luckily the person doing the swinging was a Master Swordsman and stopped it. One inch from his neck.
• Similarly Named Works: Do not confuse this movie with The Last Samurai starring Lance Henriksen from 13 years earlier.
• Star-Making Role: Ken Watanabe broke into the Hollywood scene with this film.
• Uncredited Role: There's no record of who played Hirotaro, Taka's husband.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Professional wrestling legend Satoru Sayama, a fan of samurai culture, passed the auditions for an undisclosed role in Katsumoto's faction, but he backed down upon discovering he couldn't commit to the long shooting.
  • Early revisions of the script expanded upon the raid on the Native American village that was at the source of Algren's PTSD. Algren, acting as a liaison to the village, had promised its leader, a man named Black Kettle, that they would not be harmed if they stayed on their reservation; however, Bagley had led the attack against the village as punishment for a raid conducted by different natives against an American settlement. The raid includes Nathan wandering through the burning village afterwards and coming across a boy holding his mother's body.
• Word of God: Some viewers bristled with the assumption that a white American man was the eponymous "Last Samurai", but the word of god clarified that the title refers to Katsumoto and his samurai. The "samurai" in the title refers to plural samurai.

---