General Japanese Culture Thread

Often the characters are what make them appealing. Much like Japanese historical figures (Nobunaga, Yoshitsune etc.), the West also has its fair share of mythology built around its heroes and villains. I've seen some really weird material built around the Winter War.

Medieval chivalry, Greeks and others are exotic over there. Europe has had many "warring states periods" as well. Plenty of material to work with.

edited 28th Jul '16 4:14:51 AM by TerminusEst

There's also the advantage from an artistic standpoint in how there's greater opportunities for creative character designs with white phenotypes compared to East Asian ones.

Koei's attempts were actually aimed at a more western audience with those entries. The Dynasty Warriors gameplay is patented and they have applied it in pretty much every way possible and even have a marketing department to companies to make competing company's games with their franchises.

That's rather racist and very wrong. Koei is very liberal with its interpretations of historic characters with Dynasty Warriors, they will turn a 60 year old chinese man into a Bieber lookalike with knight armor [1]◊ for the fanservice. They will also add women into the action when they never fought in history.

edited 28th Jul '16 10:34:03 AM by Memers

Oh wow, you weren't exaggerating.

It's funny, the earlier games for all their wackiness were relatively tame and attempted to be at least a little authentic to Chinese culture in their character designs. It's with 6 and onward that they went all out with the Mukokuseki and Cast Full of Pretty Boys.

They changed directors after 5. But even before that Zhou Tai was very clearly Japanese and used a katana and was the Samurai bodyguard stereotype in china.

As for the girls added though, all but 2 of them were the default names for the female generic bodyguards in Dynasty Warriors 3 XL so they have had an idea who they wanted to add for a very long time.

edited 28th Jul '16 10:57:23 AM by Memers

A talk on the Emperor's possible abdication, and its implications and ramifications.

Again, a whole load of hooie at the end, there. Time to chuck the templates the shogunate rammed onto the Imperial household in a bid to keep their grubby mitts off real power.

Because, stuff like the terminology to describe who would inherit was a lot more fluid even back in the Heian period (not to mention more bloody). Because nephews and cousins (hastily adopted as sons or not) inherited. Chains of ex-Emperors-not-on-the-hot-seat-but-in-seclusion don't happen grandfather-father-son all that easily without a lot of conveniently loose definitions of "Crown Prince" and/or "son" going on.

Seriously, Japan: you can constitutionally monarch. You've got enough historical precedent to justify anything. <_< Including letting them have what they want, for a change. -_-

edited 28th Jul '16 12:08:52 PM by Euodiachloris

The Imperial Household Law was invented after the Meiji Restoration in 1889 to make the Emperor an actual monarch. It was then revised in the Imperial Household Act of 1947. Really the problems of succession was due to things invented 200 years ago.

Then of course, Aiko-sama is female so they're going to have to change the law even further allowing for female succession. Although IHA is somewhat leery of this, they hate everything that would change the status quo.

I also think that Japan would have a hard time justifying a constitutional monarchy to its neighbours, no matter how symbolic it would be.

edited 28th Jul '16 12:42:30 PM by TerminusEst

Yes, but... a lot of it was modelled more-or-less on Tokagawa ideas on how to bottle the Emperor up. Without officially dekamifying the role. In fact, adding extra god-spirit-special-sparkle allows more "let us just take this and that temporal fluff off your exalted hands *yoink*".

It's the whole "pure-and-exalted pedestal" thing even celebrity idols suffer from. The cultural template is hard to buck. :/

edited 28th Jul '16 12:52:50 PM by Euodiachloris

Honestly though, they needn't have bothered. The easiest way they've kept the Emperor in check was to have a bigger and better army since the Heian period. Or an army at all.

Yup. The major lesson of the Sengoku Jidai: out-gun, out-man and out-tactic everybody by having allies you can actually trust to have your back if even if you go down. :/

Heck, even though he lost, Oda Nobunaga basically still won. None of the clans anybody at the very beginning thought would be at the top got there in the end.

edited 29th Jul '16 8:37:53 PM by Euodiachloris

Yeah, but even then there was an element of luck involved. By all reports not even Nobunaga was certain what the outcome would have been if he had faced Uesegi Kenshin. Especially since by that time Kenshin had allied himself with his old rivals the Takeda.

Yeah, his dropping dead was... a bit random. Unless you're that little old lady my mum did shell painting with in Tokyo. Downright convinced the Oda and Matsudaira were being benefited by (and played with by) Oinari to ferment change.

But, seriously... luck always plays a part in battle. It's how well a commander spots it and uses the opening that counts.

edited 29th Jul '16 8:49:15 PM by Euodiachloris

Yeah, but Nobunaga really did have a serious lucky streak. Befriending Tokugawa as kids, the insane attack on the Imagawa forces, a disposed Shogun coming to him for help, Uesegi keeling over before he could do anything.

The Sengoku Jidai was a giant clusterfuck where every clan wanted to take the Shogunate, and each time somebody started to gain an advantage, someone else would go and try to stab them in the back. A crazy lucky streak is quite possibly the only way this could have been resolved, and I can't help but feel the only reason we ever even heard of Nobunaga as opposed to hundreds of other perfectly capable Daimyo is because he kept rolling sixes.

I suppose one could easily think that he really was blessed by the gods.

edited 29th Jul '16 10:53:26 PM by Kayeka

This is true, for the most part.

I think part of the reason I'm curious about what the outcome would have been if Nobunaga and Kenshin had faced each other is that the Hero of Echigo is one of the rare exceptions to the pattern. Despite his skill in battle (to the point that he was considered a living embodiment of Hachiman within his own lifetime) he was notable for his lack of ambition. His famed rivalry with Takeda Shingen aside, he was rarely the agressor, more often acting to save family members and allies who had over-extended themselves.

So tomorrow is 'Pantsu day' in Japan, because 8/2 in Japanese sounds like Pantsu.

All hail the almighty Shimapan!

Hachigatsu Futsuka sounds like Pantsu? Or is there some other way of saying August 2nd?

I think they mean in English, because "tsu" is pretty close to "two". No idea how "eight" becomes "pan" though.

Regarding Kenshin and Nobunaga, it is indeed a question for the ages what would have happened had they ever had an epic showdown. Though they did fight each other at Tedorigawa, which was a huge victory for the Uesegi. Granted, while both leaders were present, I think Shibata Katsuie had a bigger role to play with the Oda forces than did Nobunaga.

Speaking of luck, Nobunaga wasn't the only one to benefit from it. Hideyoshi is a strong candidate for "Greatest Rags to Riches story in the whole of human history" and I say that without hyperbole. I mean, dude was a peasant, son of a farmer, in a massively violent and classist society. And yet he somehow managed to find a genuine meritocrat to work for, and ended up the most powerful man in the whole of the Empire, even more powerful than the Emperor himself. Too bad he ultimately wound up becoming a megalomaniacal dictator.

Speaking of the Sengoku period generally, can anyone recommend good, accurate English language sources of information on the period? Most of the English literature on the subject appears to be either written by or else cite Stephen Turnbull - including the English Wikipedia. But every review site and forum I go to has nothing but contempt for his work. He seems to be considered good with stuff like castles, armour, weapons, etc, but not the actual events, battles, history or people.

And it's the latter that really interests me as someone who's been studying the subject on and off for the last few years. I've chosen it as my "specialist" area of history and I want to learn everything I can. I'm not sure if there's any basis for the criticisms of Turnbull, and if there is, what alternatives there are. I certainly don't want to commit to memory a lot of facts and understanding that's based on falsehoods and inaccuracies.

On the subject of "great men" history vs. Marxist history.

Eeeeehh, I'd give Toyotomi his victory without ifs or buts. While it was definitely uncommon for a peasant like him to be offered the opportunity to do great things, once he was given the chance, he achieved greatness under his own power.

Well, mostly. "Random shit" seemed to favour the terrible trio all the way, but I don't quite get the same "OMG, hax!" feel from Toyotomi's accomplishments.

Now that you mention it, I really haven't seen that many books on Sengoku personages. Weird.

My personal interest is in the Heian period and Japanese warfare on the individual level. While you can find sources for those, more in-depth looks are often expensive academic works. University of Hawaii Press has quite a bit on Japanese subjects (and East Asia in general), so you might find something there.

edited 1st Aug '16 10:48:15 AM by TerminusEst

World's first celebrity columnist and huge cultural history goldmine (despite very obvious biases): thank you, Sei Shōnagon.

While Murasaki and Sei-chan are good sources, they're often criticised for being useless for anything else except the investigation of court life. Although very amusing.

One of the books on the subject is interdisciplinary in nature, and falls afoul of the academic publishing mess.

edited 1st Aug '16 10:12:56 PM by TerminusEst