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 LordofHats wrote:

If the book was so authentic, why was it ignored for so long until the Imperial Japanese Army started the propaganda train in full? (this is an aggressive open but stick with me)

Because it was a passion project by one of the few left with access to the written material one would need to create such a book.
Its like the betrayal only ordo reductor tactica i wrote for this site - nobody needs it currently, but in a few decades some random 'old edition' fan will do an interweb search and find it.

 LordofHats wrote:
Like, to use a literal example from Hagakure; Tsunetomo criticizes the 47 Ronin and says they should have moved to take immediate revenge. Let's set aside whether or not he's right or wrong. That he even makes the argument, is your first sign that Tsunetomo is not speaking from the perspective of some pan-Samurai understanding of honor. If there ever was such a thing, why is Tsunetomo's ideas of it automatically more valid than anyone else's?

The fact he needs to point out these ronin did not act in accordance with the code of the bushi is due to the tale of the 47 ronin being a folk tale propogated by the peasant class, not house records.
Samurai retell the drawing of their masters sword in the imperial palace as a cautionary tale against losing ones gak over triggering words.

 LordofHats wrote:
No one particularly read Tsunetomo's work until the Imperial Army adopted it in the 1930s and what the Imperial Army liked about it was all the death stuff.

Yeah, the japanese are an evolutionary culture and they were all trying to move on and make money now they werent expected to commit harikiri and had no battlefield duty.
The feckless death-cult approach by the imperial army is an insult to the bushi - your death is supposed to be an essential part of turning your life from a meaningless existence into a performance art where the manner of your death says things about you.

 LordofHats wrote:
That this book made zero splash, and goes out of its way to contradict and try to correct thinking the author considered wrong, is your first clue that you should not blindly accept its contents as reflective of anyone but the author.

He was the only one left who even cared about the code of the bushi - he was effectively the leading authority on the matter and his abridgment is nessecary because he was bringing a code of conduct back from the dead.

 LordofHats wrote:
Like I do think the author was trying to write something of a rescue attempt. He was born in the mid-1700 century and Tsunetomo spent his entire life as a paper pusher. And I think he struggled to try and figure out what to do with that. He was a member of a warrior class that no longer had any business as warriors.

Agreed. Its like us re-recording the victorian book of polite conversations and urging others to use it when using social media. Not going to happen.

 LordofHats wrote:
To which I'd further argue to you that the Imperial Army fundamentally missed most of the point of Hagakure (or just didn't care, really), which is not that 'death is amazing, go die now, that's the right way for Samurai to do things' but rather that it was possible for samurai to remain samurai in his age without war and no need for warriors.

No argument here, they unequivocally and intentionally missed the point of the book for their short-term nihilistic needs.

 LordofHats wrote:
While he would phrase it as a rescue, I think a better word for it is reorientation.

Reorientation implies people were still using it in a different way - he was straight-up trying to make sure that the memory and knowlege of the way of the bushi and the importance of giri didnt actually die.

 LordofHats wrote:
He wanted to take what he saw as old samurai philosophy and expectations of conduct and apply it to the new reality. So long as the samurai conducted themselves as samurai, then they were still samurai regardless of what they were actually doing in their day jobs.

He was relaying an understanding of the fundamentals of the way of the bushi so that samurai houses of his time could find new meaning from the old knowlege. Book 2: Nostalgia for the past is a mistake - "The spirit of an age is something which cannot be changed. The fact that it gradually goes downhill is because the world is in decline.... ....Thus even if one wants to return to the superior spirit of 100 years ago, it cannot be done. Accordingly, the important thing is to lead the world toward improvement in accord with ones own age. People who are nostalgic for the past are mistaken because they fail to understand this."

 LordofHats wrote:
In either case, it would be erroneous to confuse Tsunetomo's recollections published in the early 18th century with the opinions of a samurai living in the 16th. Especially when Tsunetomo was clearly not representative.

Recollections? More like a recounting of the writings over time by noble samurai houses which would have been given to the inheritor of said houses upon the death of their father. Its more like him performing greek philosophy.
He had access to more than just his own houses writings so dismissing his words as 'inaccurate' or 'not representative' is unfair at best.

 LordofHats wrote:
At the same time, I think the debate in public channels has become too much about whether or not 'Bushido' existed.

And you think these 'public channels' have a leg to stand on?
The way of the bushi was first agglomerated as such sometime around 1330 but because no internet every house had their own version with unique to their house nuances and local traditions mixed in - its a part of the persuasion of master choon that he isnt familiar with a certain houses exact rules.

 LordofHats wrote:
That Tsunetomo even felt a need to disagree with the 47 Ronin's conduct is a good indicator that the samurai had notions of honor and proper conduct, but they didn't all agree on what those were. There was no 'grand code' that every samurai adhered to, but they didn't exist in a cultural void where their actions had no sort of context of ethics or philosophy.

The code was formalised enough under Ashikaga Yoshimitsu that individuals would beleive they knew all the rules while in a different region and then get rugpulled as master choon did.
The basis of all bushido is giri and every samurai houses nuances are rooted in that concept. Giri is the loyalty/respect relationship between lord and retainer and is the basis of any noble house existing.

 LordofHats wrote:
Hagakure is a good example of this, as it's very clear in both the text and how the text came to be regarded across time that there was an entire milieu of thought within the samurai about being samurai, and this milieu was not something that happened all at once and never changed. Like any other group of people, the samurai adapted to time and circumstance and sought rationales to justify and explain their actions that made sense to them.

I agree that there were localised nuances, but the honour code of the bushi is nicely consistent despite each house being an intellectually seperate entity.

I mean, we dont have a standard on what chivalry is but im pretty sure if you describe your idea of it, that will basicly be that same as what i would assume chivalry to be and that is an important paralell with Bushi-do's origins and evolution.

 LordofHats wrote:
Gaijin way back when had the connotation of 'enemy' along with foreigner or outsider. So the word has always had an inherently hostile element to it. Barbarian entering the mis? I don't know, but Gaijin has historically carried heavily negative presumptions that someone isn't just an outsider but is a hostile element.

Not going to comment on the question wether Yasuke was a Samuraj or not anymore but thought to chime in on this as the language to refer to so called barbarian outsiders isn't isolated either.

Gadjo (romani)
Gwald(old welsh)
Goyim(hebrew)(or Gaj in the wider semitic language)
Gweilo(chinese) is more modern, but all these mean 'tribes' or 'nations' depending on the context, in some ways 'other nations'/'outsider' than the indigenous.
Gaijin actually does come from Chinese though; ngwàj-nyin.
Japanese being Gai+Jin or Gaikoku' as an outside nation.

Now do mind that the absolute root to the asiatic adress of barbarians is 'Yi' (meaning big hunter/archer) as in the Dong-yi (umbrella term for eastern barbarians as Dong means east) or Dong-hu (specified eastern barbarians as Hu means barbarian literally).
Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua%E2%80%93Yi_distinction

When it comes to Dongyi carvings (oracle bone carvings of the characters) it is thought to refer to defeated peoples/enslaved peoples as the meaning in the Shang dynasty was human+corpse or hunched over captured people. To me personally it would remind of the depictions of the captured Lullubi who lived on the southern side of the Tarim basin, closer to mesopotamia.

The relevance of Chinese and Gojoseon adress is, again' that Qin (china/sinai) is the foundation of the minamoto emperial line of Japan through the so called 'weavers' (silk road), see the Hata clan for one'.

Such is important heritage to understand the entire culture, but also the meaning of the language, which admittedly did change often with new migrations and cultures blending. As is stated throughout this thread, both Hideyoshi and Tokugawa had wild ideas about the status of the hierarchies causing the meaning of its positions and its perks to read differently depending on which era's material, despite his own exotic mindset Nobunaga lived during that hierarchical culture in which Samuraj were pretty high up the ladder, just below a Daimyo' and held immense power and responsibilities.

Herzlos wrote:


Can you explain the etymology here and why you think Samuraj is the correct term?

All I can see from a quick search is that Samuraj is essentially just the Slavic translation of Samurai - they are the same thing. But your profile has you as being in the Netherlands rather than a Slavic country so I'm curious as to where it came up.

I'll concede I'm definitely not an expert on etymology though it's definitely an interesting subject.

Sami/Samu is Uralic (finno-ugric) for land (as in habitation), and also spread through the samoyedic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages
One could speculate wether there exists a root with sham as in the Sun' (see shamash for one, or Shem meaning the name) so to the context of land habited; the land on which the sun shines considering the peoples we are talking about here were all nomads who traveled along the seasons.
But that is my mind going here, its not that rare to find potamian-turkic-asiatic correlations in language, take the magyar word for land/habitat; Orszag and hold it against the potamian form of a band of warriors; Ursag and the turkic Urasag; squire.

You also have the related adress Sama (meaning kin/tribe)..

All such peoples were called reindeer peoples, like the warka/jurchen (before they were taken into the Manchu collective, Jurchen is an umbrella term for many tungu tribes) but also other pre-khan mongolians such as the tsaatan (a very early uighur tribe) peoples. Such tribes are all related from the ancient hallstatt celts as much as seabound celts that spread across the entire earth founding many a region's culture. (do note celt just is a modern (Roman) word to refer to gaelic (this word means wild/roaming) peoples in the sense of a people who had no written language, as celt means hidden'), perhaps its easier to just refer to these as nomadic peoples' to avoid misconceptions although the ancient celtic attire would emediately remind one of the japanese.
(illustration from the 1500eds: https://cdn.thecollector.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/irish-celtic-warriors-codice-trajes.jpg )

Anyway, so the Tungus had tribes such as the Orochs/Warka (this word is actually also connecting to Sumer as Sumer is called Warka aswell) which probably rings a bell to all those enjoying fantasy writers coming up with Orks, because yes.. the Orks are based on this exact culture.. atleast.. from the bedrock of the mongolian horde under Ghengis Khan that is.. drawing mainly from the terror that is ingrained in european history concerning'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oroks

And yes, they also live in japan yes (see the wiki) although they are almost entirely extinct now and practically forgotten.

The name Orok just refers to that they too were a subtribe of the greater' -reindeer- people' as in nomadic shamanic peoples moving about and being called barbarian (because they weren't understood, barbar afterall means unintelligable language', and so that specification is also in all the other adress of foreigners this concerns with).

When it comes to the RAI/RAJ part referring to a lord of the household, region or country' like raja (king in indus), raj (lord in romani), roj (swarm/flock/horde in magyar) and ra (sun, to which the idea was that kings were made the intermediary of the sun (god in all ancient cultures) it all is a status that is given by heaven, atleast.. that is the thought held in ancient times, all across the earth.

In the secondary sense in syncretism between Rai in (much older) proto slavic referring to the heavens and in japanese referring to lightning which in many cultural-overlaps have lingual connections' it also refers to wealth (of a population included), which in esoterics is thought of as -divine providence-.
This is also echoed in Iranian, which is at its (slavic syncretic) root saaremaatian (persis was founded by saaremaatians who came down south through the caucasus mountains, referred to as people from the severe/angry star (pole star); zoro-aster' although specification is modern (greek) and the reality is the adress mazdayasnan; those who revere mazda (in celtic this would be written dru-id as in those who know-the-tree/oak(of life) as mazda means knowledge/wisdom aswell) all entailing the hyperborean/tungus nomadic tribes of which the saaremaatians were one (and one with a pretty relevant creation mythos to the symbology spread into the far east, as to the Estonian mythology that is; the fall of tharapita), all things considered; Persis is ofcourse not the bedrock of the region itself, as Persis was founded on the preexisting Parthia. It was continually the arena of many a geta(scythian/saka as in nomad) influx.

So how did Raj/Rai end up in Japan as a word to attach to 'increment' or abundance to whichever context of a great number of people ruled over by a divine-intermediary (king) as in pharaoh or simply ruler?..

This has to do exactly with the Solar theme brought into Japan from Qin, which is still saturated in its mythologies.
The emperor was ordained by the Sun, in the Japanese case the Emperor has to go to the shrine of Amaterasu;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthronement_of_the_Japanese_emperor

In the chinese case the Emperor has to be made into the son of heaven by the mandate of heaven though to come from -the yellow emperor- (the supreme god also called the yellow god, the one who has four faces (four directions of vision) or the god on the central peak, echoing the tharapitaean/horagalles mythologies of the sami regions) and lastly simply the deity of light' all referring' naturally.. to the Sun.

I know this is a lot, and it took me a while to type down but I hope it is appreciated as the undercurrent to the culture behind the Samuraj concept which, again' as I have proven with the Ashigaru wiki link originates with land owners who's workers were their footsoldiers.
To conclude, this is hardly everything I could elaborate on (for one the massive syncretism between solar deities in asia and the northern shamanic cultures, especially when it comes to the sun-on-top-of-a-mountain theme' but it would risk turning this post into a book.)

Kind regards.

 SirDonlad wrote:

Because it was a passion project by one of the few left with access to the written material one would need to create such a book.

There were lots of books like Hagakure written in the 17th and 18th century. The idea Tsunetomo possessed unique knowledge or had access to unique sources is silly. He did not and even if he did that would argue against trusting Hagakure as representative of broader samurai thought even further.

The fact he needs to point out these ronin did not act in accordance with the code of the bushi is due to the tale of the 47 ronin being a folk tale propogated by the peasant class

I'm not sure what you're getting at there.

The incident with the 47 Ronin happened in 1703. It happened while Tsunetomo was dictating Hagakure to the man who would ultimately publish it (it actually became a point of contention on which it was even challenged if Tsunetomo was really the author of Hagakure but as far as I know this challenge has been discarded as not very probable). The 47 ronin was a concurrent event to the writing of Hagakure.

He was the only one left who even cared about the code of the bushi

And I'm a Nigerian prince with some land to sell anyone who actually believes that.

Recollections?

Yeah. He's not entirely unlike Plato in comparison, relating Socrates' thoughts but you can find a whole wealth of debate pointing out that Plato's work, even when it invokes or claims to speak for Socrates, is still Plato's work.

And very yes. Recollections, because in the writing of Hagakure we have an authorial complication in that the book is very literally the the stories of a guy, as relayed by another guy, to another guy. I think the idea Tsunetomo isn't the real author of Hagakure has been discarded as bunk (it was the last time I looked, anyway) but it's still important to remember that the book was compiled by someone other than Tsunetomo and published after Tsunetomo died.

The book straight up, is one guy's recollections of conversations he had.

He had access to more than just his own houses writings so dismissing his words as 'inaccurate' or 'not representative' is unfair at best.

And that's not what I said. I don't think Tsunetomo was a liar. I think Tsunetomo was an outlier. He was a man with typical concerns and life experiences of his time, but not the time before him, and his response to those experiences is his response. It can't be attributed to speak for everyone living in his time, especially when his book was a dud until the Imperial Army death cult decided they liked it.

I think internet discussions have a tendency to take complex debates that bleed out of Academia and render them down to banalities. It has largely escaped the ivory tower that 'Bushido' is a fairly modern invention. A construction of Imperial Japanese nationalism (There's a good 'all in one' book on this Inventing the Way of the Samurai by Oleg Benesch). But the internet has taken that idea, and rendered it down into a more banal claim that isn't what is actually being said. Modern notions of samurai codes and honor are modern notions, but the samurai for thousands of years had a wealth of philosophical thought. Modern notions of bushido being modern != the samurai had no notions of their own (that would be silly).

Citing that there was even a debate about whether or the 47 Ronin acted properly, is a clear sign they had notions that they put stock in. That it was a debate, is a clear sign they didn't all have the same notions. It's important not to confuse theme with answer on this.

To wit, again, why should we regard Tsunetomo as having special secret knowledge other samurai didn't? That answer is rather plainly that we shouldn't. That's fairly absurdist as a claim on its face. The Big of Five Rings is a similar work with a focus on state of mind and personal ethic, but you can see the evolution of samurai concerns between those works. When Miyomoto Musashi wrote the Book of Five Rings in the mid-17th century, there were still many living samurai with combat experiences. His work reflects that time with a focus on combat, Buddhist philosophy, and a lot personal flair put to paper that would have excited the young men of Tsunetomo's generation. Fast forward something like 65ish years, and Hagakure comes out which displays a very different set of concerns presented in a very different way.

I mean, we dont have a standard on what chivalry is but im pretty sure if you describe your idea of it, that will basicly be that same as what i would assume chivalry to be and that is an important paralell with Bushi-do's origins and evolution.

I would not.

Chivalry as we understand it is largely a romantic French notion that tends to be overblown. It does share elements with Bushido in the sense it is largely an invention of popular literature from a certain time pointed at a certain audience (gotta make those French court ladies swoon / Victorian era Europeans wanted to swoon) and it is very hard to find chivalry being practiced as it was written about. Where its pointed at, it's often in the form of post-hoc idealizations, not any sense of a living person doing it because they genuinely believed in it.

There are yet more parallels there with bushido, but I'd also point out differences. The samurai class clearly had idealized and romantic role models throughout its history, and there's lots of famous cases of those role models being idealized and even deified in some instances based on approval of their conduct. Particularly in the conflict that saw the overthrow of the Kamakura Shogunate and the rise of the Ashikaga, a lot of bad ass samurai guys got themselves immortalized as bad ass samurai guys, and there was a clear shift in this era away from valuing someone for how many people they can kill (compared to say the Genpei War where it's mostly about how many dudes did you kill) and instead a focus on how someone conducted themselves.

But, and this is worth stressing, that entire conflict ended when Ashikaga Takauji betrayed his lord and taking power for himself. And he didn't just do it twice. He did it like 3 times in his rise to power. The samurai having romantic notions of how they should conduct themselves, should not be confused with how they actually conducted themselves. As much as loyalty became a significant byword in samurai philosophy, it's very evidently clear that their ethics were, in the words of the great Hector Barbarossa, more like guidelines than actual rules.

 LordofHats wrote:


But, and this is worth stressing, that entire conflict ended when Ashikaga Takauji betrayed his lord and taking power for himself. And he didn't just do it twice. He did it like 3 times in his rise to power. The samurai having romantic notions of how they should conduct themselves, should not be confused with how they actually conducted themselves. As much as loyalty became a significant byword in samurai philosophy, it's very evidently clear that their ethics were, in the words of the great Hector Barbarossa, more like guidelines than actual rules.

Further to this- people tend not to make a big deal out of something if everyone already does it. Idealising loyalty was probably a response to people not being very loyal in the first place.

I... forget how this interesting tangent related back to Yasuke?

Also, it is funny to on the one hand claim that we shouldn't regard the behaviour of the 47 Ronin as examples of good Samurai behaviour due to the nature of the story being something told and shared by the lower classes akin to folklore, to then turn around and say we all share an idea of what chivalry is when that same idea has largely been shaped in the public consciousness by folklore such as the stories of King Arthur, for example.

Was Chivalry not more about “we don’t kill fellow nobility, we ransom them back”?

At least until Crecy and Agincourt. And even then, the whole finishing off Knights stuck in the mud wasn’t done by the English Nobility, but the men at arms and archers and that?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Was Chivalry not more about “we don’t kill fellow nobility, we ransom them back”?

At least until Crecy and Agincourt. And even then, the whole finishing off Knights stuck in the mud wasn’t done by the English Nobility, but the men at arms and archers and that?

Plenty of ransoming done in the Hundred Years War, that's what made so many English knights so wealthy.

Agincourt was unusual because Henry V ordered the captives executed at the end of the battle as he thought another attack was coming and didn't think he had the numbers to guard the prisoners and hold of an attack. This was a very unpopular order amongst his knights as that was like setting fire to a pile of money. The order was rescinded when it was clearno further attack was coming but a good chunk of the captives were killed in the meantime.

It does give a good indication about how much Henry V thought he could trust chivalry to keep the captives out of the fight- i.e. not enough to leave them alone.

 LordofHats wrote:
There were lots of books like Hagakure written in the 17th and 18th century.

Please give me some titles. I like this stuff and use it.

 LordofHats wrote:
The idea Tsunetomo possessed unique knowledge or had access to unique sources is silly. He did not and even if he did that would argue against trusting Hagakure as representative of broader samurai thought even further.

The guys job, his only job, was to curate his masters library of clan knowlege (he is part of one of the most established samurai houses there is).
If the records therin were not unique that is counter to your position that there were radical differences in the honour code between samurai houses. Which is it?

 LordofHats wrote:

I'm not sure what you're getting at there.

The incident with the 47 Ronin happened in 1703. It happened while Tsunetomo was dictating Hagakure to the man who would ultimately publish it (it actually became a point of contention on which it was even challenged if Tsunetomo was really the author of Hagakure but as far as I know this challenge has been discarded as not very probable). The 47 ronin was a concurrent event to the writing of Hagakure.

The idea that the 47 ronin were acting out of honour for their lord was populated by the peasantry.
Tsunetomo needed to point out that there was nothing in the way of the bushi which regarded the action as honourable - it was a risky belated vengeance scheme with virtually no honour displayed until the ronin committed harikiri. They acted like shinobi and the peasants love sticking it to the ruling class when they can get away with it.

 LordofHats wrote:
And I'm a Nigerian prince with some land to sell anyone who actually believes that.

If he wasnt the last one left who cared then why was his work basicly ignored on release?
His master was supposedly being a bit weird by collecting the works in his library.

 LordofHats wrote:
Yeah. He's not entirely unlike Plato in comparison, relating Socrates' thoughts but you can find a whole wealth of debate pointing out that Plato's work, even when it invokes or claims to speak for Socrates, is still Plato's work.

Semantics to justify a perspective. "he dictated it therfore the book was written by the scribe!" is not an argument. And "he was re reading the work of others therefore it was his opinion!" is illogical as it is untrue.
There are moments where its obvious he is speaking directly to the scribe about a current event (the tale about clerks reasoning about a petition) but its obvious when that happens because he uses the term 'recently' or 'nowadays'.

 LordofHats wrote:
And very yes. Recollections, because in the writing of Hagakure we have an authorial complication in that the book is very literally the the stories of a guy, as relayed by another guy, to another guy.

As i state above, its him reciting works from his masters extensive library for a general record for anyone who still cared enough to pay attention.

 LordofHats wrote:
I think the idea Tsunetomo isn't the real author of Hagakure has been discarded as bunk (it was the last time I looked, anyway)

Good, thats an absurd notion.

 LordofHats wrote:
but it's still important to remember that the book was compiled by someone other than Tsunetomo and published after Tsunetomo died.

No, the recitation is the compilation. His masters library wasn't small - he'd been collecting examples to add to it for a long time. I recon Tsunetomo knew it wouldnt be a popular book for the time.

 LordofHats wrote:
The book straight up, is one guy's recollections of conversations he had.

Its him repeating examples from his masters library to a scribe for reproduction and later dissemination. He is trying to embody the way of the samurai and does so by focussing his entire being on the works he was ordered to curate. Hence the oral dictation - its a dedication to your purpose thing.

 LordofHats wrote:

And that's not what I said. I don't think Tsunetomo was a liar. I think Tsunetomo was an outlier.

So you agree he was basicly the only one left who cared about the honour code of the bushi?

 LordofHats wrote:
He was a man with typical concerns and life experiences of his time, but not the time before him, and his response to those experiences is his response. It can't be attributed to speak for everyone living in his time, especially when his book was a dud until the Imperial Army death cult decided they liked it.

Agreed.

 LordofHats wrote:
I think internet discussions have a tendency to take complex debates that bleed out of Academia and render them down to banalities. It has largely escaped the ivory tower that 'Bushido' is a fairly modern invention.

Agreed. Thats why im careful to use the term "the way of the bushi" and not Bushido which is a 1600s thing. (yes, i understand that the translation of those is the same, but the term Bushido to refrence the honour culture was coined in the 1600s.

 LordofHats wrote:
A construction of Imperial Japanese nationalism (There's a good 'all in one' book on this Inventing the Way of the Samurai by Oleg Benesch). But the internet has taken that idea, and rendered it down into a more banal claim that isn't what is actually being said. Modern notions of samurai codes and honor are modern notions, but the samurai for thousands of years had a wealth of philosophical thought. Modern notions of bushido being modern != the samurai had no notions of their own (that would be silly).

Yeah, the inclusion of shinto buddhism was a key part of turning the samurai from paid thugs in silk robes to noble-warrior-philosiphers and 'modern' takes are unhelpful.

 LordofHats wrote:
Citing that there was even a debate about whether or the 47 Ronin acted properly, is a clear sign they had notions that they put stock in. That it was a debate, is a clear sign they didn't all have the same notions. It's important not to confuse theme with answer on this.

I think they didn't have the opportunity.
The guy which forced their master to draw his sword in the palace was associated with ninja - the triggering words concept is an off shoot of Kuji-kiri which is a ninja thing. So if this guy planned ahead to trigger his opponent into having to commit harikiri whats the chances he would realize his opponents retainers might try to avenge him? And then make arrangements to ensure they would not be able to in a timely manner thereby putting an honour barrier between them and a belated attempt?

 LordofHats wrote:
To wit, again, why should we regard Tsunetomo as having special secret knowledge other samurai didn't? That answer is rather plainly that we shouldn't. That's fairly absurdist as a claim on its face.

What makes that absurd? You know that the code of honour was fairly dead at that point, you know his master was collecting written work on samurai life and culture, you know just from what a bestseller the book was at the time that everyone else was discarding the systems of the past at that point.
Is it that hard to accept his master was essentially going round the yard sales and hoovering up all the discarded clutter of a bygone era to everyone elses amusement?

 LordofHats wrote:
The Big of Five Rings is a similar work with a focus on state of mind and personal ethic, but you can see the evolution of samurai concerns between those works. When Miyomoto Musashi wrote the Book of Five Rings in the mid-17th century, there were still many living samurai with combat experiences. His work reflects that time with a focus on combat, Buddhist philosophy, and a lot personal flair put to paper that would have excited the young men of Tsunetomo's generation. Fast forward something like 65ish years, and Hagakure comes out which displays a very different set of concerns presented in a very different way.

The book of five scrolls was a hammerblow to the bushi.
Musashi was an antagonist to the code of honour which he stood apart from - his outlook of 'only survival matters' is in direct contrast to the way of the bushi who saw it as 'only your honour matters'.
He declared the peasants could claim as much honour as the samurai; arguably the book of five scrolls is responsible for much of the wests outlook on Bushido. The perfectionism, the 'wandering ronin' as a positive concept, starting duels over words, duelling in front of a crowd, etc
Ironic really, that he started a school of martial form which then formed an honour culture around him which he had spent his entire life antagonising and resisting.

 LordofHats wrote:
I would not.

Chivalry as we understand it is largely a romantic French notion that tends to be overblown. It does share elements with Bushido in the sense it is largely an invention of popular literature from a certain time pointed at a certain audience (gotta make those French court ladies swoon / Victorian era Europeans wanted to swoon) and it is very hard to find chivalry being practiced as it was written about. Where its pointed at, it's often in the form of post-hoc idealizations, not any sense of a living person doing it because they genuinely believed in it.

So Dartanion, three musketeers, sir lancelot, yeah? It started as a french thing but there was a british knight responsible for popularizing the notion in britain. Cant remember too much apart fom it got discussed on QI while stephen fry was hosting it. Despite your insistence, we clearly both know that a huge part of chivalry was respect for and by women.

 LordofHats wrote:
There are yet more parallels there with bushido, but I'd also point out differences. The samurai class clearly had idealized and romantic role models throughout its history, and there's lots of famous cases of those role models being idealized and even deified in some instances based on approval of their conduct. Particularly in the conflict that saw the overthrow of the Kamakura Shogunate and the rise of the Ashikaga, a lot of bad ass samurai guys got themselves immortalized as bad ass samurai guys, and there was a clear shift in this era away from valuing someone for how many people they can kill (compared to say the Genpei War where it's mostly about how many dudes did you kill) and instead a focus on how someone conducted themselves.

Yeah, Nobunaga is either regarded as a demon or a fool depending on whos answering.

 LordofHats wrote:
But, and this is worth stressing, that entire conflict ended when Ashikaga Takauji betrayed his lord and taking power for himself. And he didn't just do it twice. He did it like 3 times in his rise to power. The samurai having romantic notions of how they should conduct themselves, should not be confused with how they actually conducted themselves. As much as loyalty became a significant byword in samurai philosophy, it's very evidently clear that their ethics were, in the words of the great Hector Barbarossa, more like guidelines than actual rules.

His choice was be a loyal servant or try and take the lords place.
That's a one-way street!

My view is that he might have "technically", and we are using the loosest form of technically, been a Samurai. In that he was a sworn servant of his lord, which possibly maybe made him eligible on paper for Samurai status in Japan.

Was he actually living as what we might think of as a Samurai and was he treated as such by the rest of Japan? Absolutely not. He was nothing more than an exotic servant his master could show off to display his status. And as for what he did when actual war came, the sources seem to portray him as a bit of a coward when ended up being a bit of a disgrace at the end.

Basically, he's not really someone to idolize and he didn't do anything of note other than just exist. His situation was basically on par with a European noble having a pet dwarf or a foreign born servant. He's there for his oddity, not for any real value his service is providing.

 Grey Templar wrote:
His situation was basically on par with a European noble having a pet dwarf

I legit chuckled reading this. I mean, I compared him with a Sultan's paradisal bird but your version may be better.

So you agree he was basicly the only one left who cared about the honour code of the bushi?

I think he thought that is some regards.

I also think history is full of fringe-types who in the aftermath of radical changes in their society saw themselves as islands and the 'last true scotsman.' Just because they think that, doesn't mean we should believe them nor regard their thoughts as indicative of the whole. For all that is often made about honor, loyalty, and being brave in the face of death, none of these are the most consistent themes I think you'll find in samurai history.

Really the most consistent theme is victory.

So long as you came out on top, whatever excuse you managed to cobble together to justify your actions tended to be accepted. Nothing was more honorable than winning. Nothing was more loyal than winning. Nothing was more heroic than winning. Push aside a lot of the romance and you'll find something a lot more practical underneath. All glory to victor, which I'd argue is the single most consistent theme in the history of the samurai.

EDIT: And to be clear, this was true across lines. See for example see the Tainei-ji Incident, a regional conflict between related families.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Was he actually living as what we might think of as a Samurai and was he treated as such by the rest of Japan?

Something I'd love to know is what exactly was Yasuke doing on the day of Hanno-ji?

He wasn't at the temple where Nobunaga died. Nothing attests to that. He only enters the incident as one of the men defending Nobutada, Nobunaga's heir. Why was he there? What transpired to put him in that place? I could speculate as to reasons but ultimately our source materials provide no reason except that he was there and presumably participated in the defense.

Speculatively, I have to imagine anyone would prefer having a stipend and their own house to the kind of labor Yasuke did for the Jesuits. Given Japan's intense focus on hierarchy, common people probably just respected the rank if not the man and that had to be a more comfortable living even if the samurai class regarded him as some kind of clown of Nobunaga's. When he surrendered, it would have been abundantly obvious it was done so I couldn't blame him for seeing the writing on the wall and taking the out when it was offered to him.

the sources seem to portray him as a bit of a coward when ended up being a bit of a disgrace at the end.

I wouldn't say that. The sources do credit him with fighting for a time. I don't think there was any disgrace in the description, because I think he was an 'other.' The other samurai did not regard Yasuke seriously, nor did they necessarily go out of their way to kick him just cause. He was in essence, outside their concerns and they didn't care in the end. Would have been interesting if Mitsuhide lived like... at all. He probably would have had quite a few things to say for himself but alas, he didn't long live his strike on Nobunaga.

His situation was basically on par with a European noble having a pet dwarf or a foreign born servant. He's there for his oddity, not for any real value his service is providing.

He was definitely an oddity, but we're also told outright Nobunaga was impressed with his strength. In that regard, Nobunaga probably saw it as two birds and one stone. He had this neat interesting 'thing' to show off, and the guy was jacked and would make a good bodyman.

Whether or not he was a samurai is missing the forest through the trees.
He's depicted as a samurai in Nioh and Nioh 2. I haven't played Nioh, but in Nioh 2 he serves as a boss fight. I know he's depicted as a samurai in other games as well. There was zero controversy that I'm aware of with his depiction in the Nioh series because he wasn't a playable character and Nioh plays fast and loose with history. Hideyoshi is an amalgam of the player character Hide (a half-yokai) and another character.

Strangely enough the comment that appears to have started this discussion wasn't even about AC.

 Ahtman wrote:
I just use it to check on distant friends/family but been seeing a lot of fake history pop up there. Several times it was an AI generated image meant to look like an old photo of an African samurai and family in Japan and with an article about African Samurai in the 14th to 18th century. The photograph was from a time before photography was invented and the comments were full of "I knew it!" and "the real history they're trying to hide" type posts.

Another stated that China was originally inhabited by black people and that Asians colonized it and drove them out.

Not trying to pick on African history it is just the two most egregious that stood out from my brief stops to FB and I imagine is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to bad history.

This is just standard Hotep stuff, but that's a whole other rabbit hole. Both the AC controversy and Hotep conspiracies are likely outside the purview of DakkaDakka since the ban on politics.

 LordofHats wrote:


I think he thought that is some regards.

I also think history is full of fringe-types who in the aftermath of radical changes in their society saw themselves as islands and the 'last true scotsman.' Just because they think that, doesn't mean we should believe them nor regard their thoughts as indicative of the whole.

He did have a larger wealth of writings available to him than any other, i think that is the defining factor of the Hagakure over the works from other houses ive managed to get or read translations of. The other works can only provide ideas and perspectives from within their own house.

 LordofHats wrote:
For all that is often made about honor, loyalty, and being brave in the face of death, none of these are the most consistent themes I think you'll find in samurai history.

Really the most consistent theme is victory.

So long as you came out on top, whatever excuse you managed to cobble together to justify your actions tended to be accepted.

Thats every ruling regime ever in human history, not just Japan; 'Might is Right'.
Giri is 'the most consistent theme' of samurai life and i argue, always was.
Without that they are just mercenaries.

 LordofHats wrote:
Nothing was more honorable than winning. Nothing was more loyal than winning. Nothing was more heroic than winning.

'Glorious' is the term gained for winning, surely? Its honourable to serve your lord into death and give him many glorious victories along the way.
Its very intresting to me that you retain your honour in death if you are still holding your weapon.
The concept shows the existence of the idea that you could lose your battle with honour.
Even the direction you fell in could be seen as honourable

 LordofHats wrote:
Push aside a lot of the romance and you'll find something a lot more practical underneath. All glory to victor, which I'd argue is the single most consistent theme in the history of the samurai.

Every civilisation has claimed glory in victory but Giri is what defines the samurai - a pact between lord and retainer of honour and duty combined.

 LordofHats wrote:
EDIT: And to be clear, this was true across lines. See for example see the Tainei-ji Incident, a regional conflict between related families.

I dont follow you on this tbh, they pulled a coup d'etat because they wanted to win? Just because it was glorious?
I recon it was because they wanted to be in charge.

It's that loyalty and honor into death is very pomp and little circumstance. You won't find anything applicable in something like Tainei-ji, where ultimately the coupers won and winning trumped more romantic concerns. Even the guys who did kill themselves had practical concerns; being captured was humiliating and usually ended in torture in early samurai history. Killing yourself was a quicker and less ignoble way out.

Giri is romantic, but you'll have a very hard time finding example of it in real terms. When prompted, most samurai did not put loyalty and duty to a lord over personal interest. Those who did were rare enough that they tended to get whole legends stuck to their name, but that's because they were atypical.

The story of the 47 Ronin spread so wide and far, because they went to a length that was no common. There's quite a few great revenge stories in Japanese history, but nowhere near as many as you'd think.

Because yes. Like every civilization ever, members of warrior classes were largely defined and judged by their ability to win battles. Loyalty was applauded, but quick to be cast aside when convenient.

Ultimately, Yasuke was only remarkable in that he was an African Foreigner. Nothing he actually did while in Japan was really noteworthy, if he had been native Japanese nothing about him would have been worthy of writing down.

trexmeyer wrote:
Whether or not he was a samurai is missing the forest through the trees.
He's depicted as a samurai in Nioh and Nioh 2. I haven't played Nioh, but in Nioh 2 he serves as a boss fight. I know he's depicted as a samurai in other games as well. There was zero controversy that I'm aware of with his depiction in the Nioh series because he wasn't a playable character and Nioh plays fast and loose with history. Hideyoshi is an amalgam of the player character Hide (a half-yokai) and another character.

Strangely enough the comment that appears to have started this discussion wasn't even about AC.

The discussion was started when wikipedia was starting to get edits by the devs trying to artificially induce legitimacy.
Thing is, AC has the outward status that it is actually somewhat legitimate on history, you know all the kids that go around stating how much they learned about egypt from origins? When a franchise is expected to be truthful about historical aspects and then gets caught falsifying it that justifies all the criticism it got.

WAIT people take AC seriously?

Like I know there are some games that are built around being accurate ,but I'd never expect that of a game where you literally run around assassinating people with wrist blades in public all the time; which represents some secret alien mystical invasion where the main character spends all day daydreaming in an office booth in future or something.

 Overread wrote:
WAIT people take AC seriously?

Like I know there are some games that are built around being accurate ,but I'd never expect that of a game where you literally run around assassinating people with wrist blades in public all the time; which represents some secret alien mystical invasion where the main character spends all day daydreaming in an office booth in future or something.

Well not the Animus aspect, but the historical settings have always been heavy on portraying the reality of it.
AC 2 already has lots of inaccuracies granted, I rather meant what people expect of it.. like the atmosphere and how a place looks like as authentic possible within the story-setting, when you know history the story weaved through shows in particular that which is ignored' more than that which is portrayed but ok..

I'm not saying that I expect AC to be realistic mind you, but we're talking about this because the devs actively tried to blend their fiction with reality (altering wiki pages)

 Leopold Helveine wrote:

I'm not saying that I expect AC to be realistic mind you, but we're talking about this because the devs actively tried to blend their fiction with reality (altering wiki pages)

Got a source for this particular claim? Or, you know, any of your claims?

 Leopold Helveine wrote:
The discussion was started when wikipedia was starting to get edits by the devs trying to artificially induce legitimacy.

This one in particular.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Leopold Helveine wrote:
The discussion was started when wikipedia was starting to get edits by the devs trying to artificially induce legitimacy.

This one in particular.

Indeed. In fact it seems that it was actually people denying that Yasuke was a samurai that leapt to wikipedia to edit it to say he wasn't one, after the reveal of him as the protagonist of the game.

Basically, it's just gamergate lies and bs all over again.

https://www.gamingbible.com/news/assassins-creed-shadows-yasuke-wikipedia-634509-20240517

I have no idea about what the Ubisoft devs did or didn't do, but there is a lot of controversy surrounding Thomas Lockley who is used as one of the primary sources for Yasuke on wikipedia.

There have been some Japanese men that have gone into detail on their blogs about how Lockley has been editing Wikipedia and the issues with his works, to include how the Japanese and English versions of his Yasuke publications differ significantly. You can easily find it on Google if you care, but I won't be providing links because nothing is confirmed and unless you can read Japanese, you're reliant on someone else translating for you. Which isn't great when it's not reviewed and confirmed by other sources. It's all speculative and there are certainly bad faith actors at large.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:


Basically, it's just gamergate lies and bs all over again.

https://www.gamingbible.com/news/assassins-creed-shadows-yasuke-wikipedia-634509-20240517

The existence of bad faith actors on one side doesn't disprove the existence of them on the other.

trexmeyer wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:


Basically, it's just gamergate lies and bs all over again.

https://www.gamingbible.com/news/assassins-creed-shadows-yasuke-wikipedia-634509-20240517

The existence of bad faith actors on one side doesn't disprove the existence of them on the other.

There is no "other side". There are gamergate morons and people who live in reality. The entire idea that there is a "side" for "gamers" to fight against is a mass delusion. There is no shadowy cabal of people seeking to make games worse. The people seeking to make games worse do it out in the open and they are the CEOs of video game companies who abuse their staff, cover up sexual harassment of their staff, insert addictive and exploitative monetisation into games aimed at children etc.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

trexmeyer wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:


Basically, it's just gamergate lies and bs all over again.

https://www.gamingbible.com/news/assassins-creed-shadows-yasuke-wikipedia-634509-20240517

The existence of bad faith actors on one side doesn't disprove the existence of them on the other.

There is no "other side". There are gamergate morons and people who live in reality.

What are you even talking about?
You're grossly misinformed if you think that is the only opposition involved here.

trexmeyer wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

trexmeyer wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:


Basically, it's just gamergate lies and bs all over again.

https://www.gamingbible.com/news/assassins-creed-shadows-yasuke-wikipedia-634509-20240517

The existence of bad faith actors on one side doesn't disprove the existence of them on the other.

There is no "other side". There are gamergate morons and people who live in reality.

What are you even talking about?
You're grossly misinformed if you think that is the only opposition involved here.

Please explain, why was it that after the announcement of Yasuke as the next protagonist of an Assassin's Creed game that his wikipedia was instantly mass edited to say he wasn't a samurai?

I already answered that.
It's unbearably simple. Just because one faction is altering facts to suit their purposes doesn't mean that they are the only faction engaged in such activity.

Again, I think this discussion is outside the scope of what is allowed on DakkaDakka. It's very easy to find multiple viewpoints on this controversy if you care enough to inform yourself.

trexmeyer wrote:
I already answered that.
It's unbearably simple. Just because one faction is altering facts to suit their purposes doesn't mean that they are the only faction engaged in such activity.

Again, I think this discussion is outside the scope of what is allowed on DakkaDakka. It's very easy to find multiple viewpoints on this controversy if you care enough to inform yourself.

Except there isn't any evidence presented supporting the existence of this other side.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Indeed. In fact it seems that it was actually people denying that Yasuke was a samurai that leapt to wikipedia to edit it to say he wasn't one, after the reveal of him as the protagonist of the game.

That's what I thought I saw when I was skimming the Talk archives and edit history over there, but didn't want to be definitive unless I'd missed soemthing.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

trexmeyer wrote:
I already answered that.
It's unbearably simple. Just because one faction is altering facts to suit their purposes doesn't mean that they are the only faction engaged in such activity.

Again, I think this discussion is outside the scope of what is allowed on DakkaDakka. It's very easy to find multiple viewpoints on this controversy if you care enough to inform yourself.

Except there isn't any evidence presented supporting the existence of this other side.

https://x.com/Grummz/status/1790821830972031314

That just sounds like someone undoing a bad edit?