John Man

No, it can not be seen from space [...]. This statement was of course founded on no evidence at all, since it was made 30 years before anyone had been in space, 40 years before lunar landings.

You would think from most portrayals of samurai that they were solely a medieval phenomenon. They should have been. The middle ages were their heyday. Yet they survived not only as anachronisms but as a vital part of Japanese society until their destruction in the rebellion of 1877, as anyone who has seen Tome Cruise in The Last Samurai knows. That's about the only historical fact you should take from the film, which is hardly more about samurai than Star Wars. It is a beautiful made, well-acted hall of mirrors, splicing together bits of fact and fiction to make a story appealing to western tastes.