A Samurai Called Lemon.

The new Japanese horror film I started watching last night featured a samurai called Lemon. It struck me that Lemon is a somewhat inappropriate name for a samurai, which maybe explains why he is a very grumpy samurai. Lotus Blossom would probably have been worse, but Lemon is bad enough.

He was very tall, very fat, very ugly, and very fierce when he wanted to be, and he had one of those very deep gravelly voices for which Japanese men used to be famous. That was before the modern world encouraged Japan’s young men to have their hair manicured and dyed blond so they would feel at home when emigration to California became irresistible. (The film I’m watching was made in 1956.) I expect they call themselves Wayne, Justin and Kurt now, but I doubt there are any Lemons among their slim-hipped ranks. (Plenty of lemons, maybe, but that’s different.)

Anyway, back to our grumpy samurai. He said ‘ugh’ a lot (in that deep, gravelly voice for which Japanese men used to be famous…) I don’t know what ‘ugh’ means, but I assume it’s something horrific in Japanese. The first twenty minutes contained nothing else that was even slightly horrific, so I suspect the ughs must give the clue.