Golden Kamuy is the turn of the century story of a war veteran that teams up with a native girl out to avenge her father’s murder as they hunt for a missing treasure of raw gold in an untamed, rugged frontier rich in natural resources. They tangle with soldiers, bad men, bears, and seek refuge amongst native people when not hunting game and searching for clues in frontier towns in a world that is slowly being encroached upon by modernity.

This could be an American western, except that it’s entirely Japanese. This is Golden Kamuy.

Taking place in post-Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) Hokkaido, it makes use of Japanese history to create a Western-style adventure that’s unique and new yet familiar. It uses a Japan that most Westerners are not familiar and one of my favorite periods of Japanese history and digs into a corner of it that’s under-explored in modern media as the period between the age of samurai and World War II usually gets glossed over.

The odd couple protagonists are Russo-Japanese War veteran Sugimoto and young Ainu hunter Asirpa. The “Immortal” Sugimoto is a survivor who has no qualms about killing anyone before they kill him, in the most brutal ways possible when necessary, but otherwise acts like a kind older brother and feels remorse about harming cute animals for food. Asirpa is as stubborn as Mattie Ross in her quest to find her father’s killer and acts as Sugimoto’s guide to wilderness survival as all of his survival instincts are from the battlefield.

A big part of the show is the Ainu and their way of life. The Ainu are similar to American Indians in this time period in that they’re an indigenous people within a nation but not of it. Then, like now, the small population is watching its traditional way of life go away as they’re absorbed more into Japan proper and the conveniences of the modern world become available.

This is also where the cooking show reference comes in as Ainu living is the ‘slice of life’ aspect of Golden Kamuy. Man doesn’t live on adventure alone, but on fish, bear and squirrel brains. A good deal of time in many episodes centers on the most minuet details of hunting, cooking and prep in the Ainu way and also explaining how its related to Ainu beliefs and their relationship with the environment.

The adventure elements are what you’d find in a Clint Eastwood Western and the action is rough, visceral and very bloody. When it’s not man killing man, its man vs. nature and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much game killed, skinned and butchered on a TV show.

Golden Kamuy’s Hokkaido is inhabited by colorful people and groups just as intriguing as the main cast, especially the other treasure hunters. There’s the rogue 7^th Army Division platoon led by Lt. Tsurumi, a disenfranchised veteran and psychopath who wants to use the gold to turn Hokkaido into his own country and build a weapons industry to support war widows, orphans and unemployed veterans. He also wears a metal plate to cover the half of his skull that was blown off during the war.

The other major player is Toshizo Hijikata who is a former member of the Shinsengumi, a Kyoto Shogunate police force, who wields a katana like Miyamoto Musashi (or like Toshizo Hijikata) and a Winchester like John Wayne. Hijikata wants to re-establish the short-lived Ezo Republic. Hijikata is based on a real figure in Japanese history, a kind of “what if” if things had gone differently.

After seeing the Ezo reference I had to look that up. The Ezo Republic was established by loyal Tokugawa retainers attempting to preserve their last shreds of power. Their method was creating Japan’s first modern, democratic republic which would pledge loyalty to the Emperor, kind of like the domains during the Edo Period. The Meiji government wasn’t keen on this and after defeating the Ezo military at the Battle of Hakodate, where the real Hijikata died, put an end to the upstart republic. It lasted six months.

All of this right here is history porn as it covers so many obscure parts of Japan’s past, especially the republic. Japan won the Russo-Japanese War at great financial cost that it wasn’t able to recoup leaving the nation poor immediately after hostilities ended. At home there were riots and protest against Japan’s “weakness” for signing the Treaty of Portsmouth and not forcing Russia to hand over greater financial reparations. If the Russians had the will to fight on they could have potentially forced the Japanese to stalemate on financial grounds, something the Meiji government was fully aware of.

I can’t say that re-establishing the republic or starting an independent nation run by a pissed off lieutenant would be possible in such a time, but the show makes an amusing argument that with enough gold and guns, one could make themselves king of the north.

I like that watching this show, whether its portrayals are fully accurate or not, did challenge me to learn. All this historic background is really just a backdrop for the classic adventure of men (and Ainu girls) racing for a golden treasure, but I can honestly say that I’ve gotten more than just entertainment value from watching it.

Currently it’s between seasons on TV in Japan, but for those outside Japan it can be legally watched on Crunchyroll.com and at Amazon.com.