Director James Mangold has claimed Japanese film influences on his Marvel comic adaptation ¡°The Wolverine,¡± including Akira Kurosawa¡¯s 1957 film ¡°Kumonosu-jo (The Throne of Blood).¡± But the film, in which Hugh Jackman¡¯s immortal Wolverine character comes to Japan, falls in love with a local beauty and fights local baddies, has much more in common with similarly themed Hollywood movies set in this country.

One is ¡°Blood on the Sun,¡± the 1945 thriller starring James Cagney as an intrepid reporter for the fictitious ¡°Tokyo Chronicle¡± who unmasks a secret Japanese plot for world domination. In the ensuing struggles with his Japanese adversaries (white actors in yellow-face makeup) Cagney demonstrates some slick judo moves, despite being in his mid-40s when he made the film. (Whether he was an inspiration to the seriously buff Jackman, now 44, is not known.)

Among others are the many set-in-Japan Hollywood films that feature an East-West romance, with the inevitably male star usually saying sayonara to his Japanese inamorata by the final fade-out. A standout is ¡°Shogun,¡± the 1980 smash-hit U.S. mini-series, later released theatrically in a shortened version in Japan, about the adventures of a shipwrecked English seaman (Richard Chamberlain) in 17th-century Japan. Yoko Shimada won international acclaim as the hero¡¯s English-speaking love interest, though her samurai-class character was derided by Japanese critics for an unseemly naked romp in the bath with her foreign lover.

Action-wise, ¡°The Wolverine¡± also has many Hollywood precedents. Its suicidal gangsters, rushing in human waves against the superpowered hero and his allies, are reminiscent of the hoods in Sydney Pollack¡¯s 1975 ¡°The Yakuza,¡± who keep advancing with drawn swords on Robert Mitchum¡¯s pistol-wielding hero even as they are being shot down like carnival targets. But Mangold¡¯s film shares more DNA with ¡°You Only Live Twice,¡± the 1967 James Bond installment set in Japan, from the hairbreadth high-speed action sequences (though Bond, played by Sean Connery, lacked Jackman¡¯s CGI assists) to the fighting ninja, the hero¡¯s doughty female ally (the bikini-clad Kissy Suzuki in the Bond film, the red-haired Yukio in ¡°The Wolverine¡°) and the climatic assault on the villain¡¯s isolated and impregnable lair.

There is, however, one difference. Whereas Bond finally faces off against the villain¡¯s hulking human bodyguard, Wolverine finds himself confronting a giant metal robot warrior.

Fans of the 1966 ¡°Daimajin¡± trilogy, starring a towering statue in samurai armor that comes fearsomely to life, will instantly see the resemblance. It¡¯s not Kurosawa, but as an actual Japanese film reference, it¡¯s close enough.