I looked over the notes I took on Ghost Dog and some of them, such as “shops all closed at night,” “Three mobsters = 3 Stooges,” and “Poetry of war,” made me start thinking about the analogy of East Meets West a little bit more.  With those three notes I specifically began to imagine the generic narrative of imperial Japan under circumstances of Yakuza rule, headed three idiot mob bosses who flamboyantly brandish their power.

The shops in the part of Jersey Ghost Dog drove through seemed predominantly closed and that made me think of japanese stories of the extortion of the poor and helpless, saved by the blade of the wandering samurai.  Although it was never explicitly said that shops were closed due to mob activity*, the imagery was dark and foreboding enough to seem that maybe there was a dark aura looming over the town, equating that aura to the presence of the mob.

As for the third note about the poetry of war, I’m not all too sure where it originated from, but I recall that there was a scene in the film that made me feel like there was some poetic aspect, either through mis-en-scene or narrative, and as causality, I thought of the Chinese treatise “The Art of War,” a book that each chapter deals with some aspect of warfare.  Although it isn’t Japanese literature, I think the inclusion of some reference to it is another analogy to how the East meets West narrative can be applied.  The way Ghost Dog takes down each boss is poetic in each way he decides to end them; instead of sniping the main boss from afar, he is met by a bird that changes his decision, making the kill personal by going in headlong, as he had described is the Samurai way.

*I acknowledge that there was a scene where the superintendent threatens the mob that he’ll throw them out if they don’t pay up their rent, which demonstrates that perhaps the common man isn’t as scared of the mafia as usually believed.