General Japanese Culture Thread

@Demongodofchaos 2

Well, if I have learned anything for those years of consuming fiction, then pretty much anything can be done and pretty much anything can be done badly. Execution is not everything, but in many ways it is a decisive factor.

Edited by Risa123 on Aug 3rd 2023 at 5:32:57 PM

Going back to that talk about Ninjas a while back, I'm not super familiar with the RL history, but I'm curious, where did the idea of Ninja villages come from?

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

@Red Hunter 543 Apparently that's a thing that existed in some form in real life. In Iga and Kōga there were these secluded villages that trained an awful lot of Ninjas.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

Ah, and is it true they took on a lot of contracts as mercs?

I'm not sure how loyal Ninja are to their master compared to Samurai.

EDIT: Every time I try looking up Ninja villages, all I get are results of Naruto.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Aug 4th 2023 at 2:10:38 AM

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

@Red Hunter 543

I'm mostly looking up "Ninja" on Wikipedia admittedly.

But it appears that Ninjas often did act as mercenaries. To my understanding it wasn't too uncommon for Samurai to do so as well.

Though I'll note that the two aren't quite mutually exclusive. A mercenary might be a soldier-for-hire but they might have a concept of loyalty to the effect of "I'm loyal to whoever my client is, whether it's strictly profitable or not".

I'll also note that, while they're often contrasted with each other, a lot of Ninjas actually were Samurai. So a Lord having a loyal Samurai who was also a Ninja is probably something that happened in general.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

As we have pointed out, all ninjas were samurais because ninjas weren't a thing during the time periods the samurai warrior class was active.

Speaking of which, what do the words "samurai" and "ninja" actually mean? Like, what would be the closest English equivalent?

El sexo es temporal. LA PENITENCIA ES ETERNA!

Well, from my admittedly limited knowledge, samurai more or less the same what knights were in the west. A class of people who provided military service to nobility.

Edited by Risa123 on Aug 3rd 2023 at 9:02:42 PM

Apparently, the Etymology of Ninja means "One who is invisible" and Shinobi means "One who sneaks".

The Etymology of Samurai to my understanding translates literally into something like "Retainer" or "One who serves nearby".

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In terms of equivalent concepts in English, Samurai can be compared to Knights in a lot of ways. And Ninjas are, well, spies and assassins.

The modern equivalent of Knights and Samurai would probably be an Officer and a Gentleman. IIRC Knights generally transitioned to that role as time went on.

Ninjas, likewise, the modern equivalent would be Special Forces ala a Navy SEAL.

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

FYI when I asked about "closest English equivalent" I meant the word, not conceptually.

So by the logic posted above "Samurai" would just translate to "retainer", for instance.

El sexo es temporal. LA PENITENCIA ES ETERNA!

Yeah, I get that Ninja were also Samurai, but I was curious about those who were trained from those villages.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

A lot of the real life idea of ninja are related to samurai from two specific districts: Koga and Iga.

Koga was situated in what is modern day Koga city, Shiga prefecture. Koga had a lot autonomy and was unusual for governing themselves with a democratic system where villages would form unions of both samurai and commoners that would come together to vote on decisions that affected the Koga district as a whole. People in Koga would usually work as farmers or merchants, but the area grew a lot of medicinal herbs and the Koga were known for having a lot of people skilled in medicine and magic tricks. It was said that Koga ninja would pose as medicine merchants to travel around and collect information, and use their medical skills in making poisons and gunpowder. Koga was allied with the Rokkaku clan, which was the largest military power in the greater Oumi province that Koga was inside of. In the late Muromachi Era, the shogunate was growing weary of the Rokkaku because of them growing more powerful and ignoring the shogunate's orders. The shogunate launched in invasion in 1487, which the leaders of the Rokkaku escaped from and hid in Koga. From there the Koga spent a couple years fending off the invading army using guerrilla tactics, including hiding, ambushing, and setting fire to enemy camps at night. The invasion was ended when its general died of illness, leading to an effective victory for the Rokkaku and Koga, and Rokkaku survived into the Sengoku Era. It's thought that this war was the start of the idea of the Koga ninja, with their skills further being used in the Sengoku Era, first under Rokkaku and then under Oda Nobunaga after he defeated them.

Iga was a bit further south of Koga, in what is modern day Iga and Nabari cities, Mie prefecture. In contrast to the Koga who are known for being loyal to a single superior, the Iga ninja are known for having acted as mercenaries who would take any job. There were even cases of Iga ninja being hired by opposing armies, in which case they were expected to dutifully complete their job even if it meant cutting down a fellow Iga ninja on the opposite side. Throughout the Kamakura and Muromachi Eras, the Iga was often caught in the middle of wars between rivaling powers, and it's because of that that they gained their mercenary attitude and skills in guerilla warfare. As neighbors to the Koga, they perhaps naturally were similar in many ways, including being rather autonomous and having a democratic system to govern themselves, though unlike the Koga their system was often ignored to follow orders from three specific leading samurai families (The Three Jounin Houses).

The common modern day image is that the Koga and Iga ninja clans were rivals that would fight against each other, but in actuality the two were on friendly terms and even had an agreement to help each other of one was invaded. While there are records of Iga ninja being on the opposing side, more often the two were allies, including in the above invasion of Rokkaku in which the Iga also helped the Koga in. Koga and Iga would also eventually both come under the control of Oda Nobunaga during the Sengoku Era.

Ninja (忍者) simply means "stealthy person". 忍 = stealth, sneak, act without being noticed. 者 = person.
Shinobi (忍び) is just an altered form of the verb shinobu (忍ぶ), meaning the above. It basically just means "someone who is sneaking".
Note that the word ninja didn't really become a thing until modern day and wasn't actually used back when ninja actually existed. At the time they were generally called by various other more metaphorical names, like rappa (乱破、乱波 "savage", "chaotic wave") or suppa (透波、素破 "invisible wave", "pulling out [without being noticed]").
Samurai (侍) originally meant "retainer", someone who served royalty and nobility. It was originally a noun form of the verb saburau, meaning to serve. As the royal court and nobility lost power and was replaced by the military, samurai came to mean anyone who fought in battle. During the Sengoku Era, anyone who fought in war was a samurai, regardless of social rank, but afterwords in the peaceful Edo Era, samurai became codified as the highest social rank that from then you were either born into or you weren't.
Side note, the general word in Japanese for "warrior" is bushi (武士), which is sort of synonymous with samurai. You might recognize it's a part of the word Bushido (武士道).

Edited by KuroBaraHime on Aug 3rd 2023 at 4:15:44 AM

Fascinating history lesson thank you.

I find that whole professional aspect of the Iga clan to be very interesting in particular.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

Loyalty is good and all, but if you're caught between competing powers much stronger than you, simply being useful to whoever happens to prevail is much safer. And mercenaries with a great deal of professionalism were highly prized around the world.

Edited by Kayeka on Aug 4th 2023 at 6:12:09 PM

True, but a mercenary's reputation for reliability is just as valuable as money. If nobody is willing to hire you because you keep switching sides whenever the enemy matches the offer of your current employer, you're out of business for all intents and purposes.

Edited by amitakartok on Aug 4th 2023 at 7:06:37 PM

Hence the professionalism being highly valued. Mercenaries that switch sides at the drop of a hat are not very useful. Mercenaries willing to switch sides only after the war is lost are.

Yeah the professionalism that I complemented specifically was their adherence to the contract they were given, and how they would go against another Iga member if the contract lead to it but no grudge over the whole thing.

I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.

Jumping in to say that there are some good isekai works out there.

I still stan I'm in Love with the Villainess for example, and My Next Life as a Villainess was also pretty good.

I think "otome villainess isekai" can be classified as a different genre entirely from other types of Narou isekai. It's not the sort of thing people are generally thinking of when they complain about isekai stories.

They certainly share the issue of being incredibly derivative and made in what might as well be a factory production line, though.

El sexo es temporal. LA PENITENCIA ES ETERNA!

The same goes for any genre though? Most of the works in any given genre are going to be pretty bad.

Like the two I mentioned above, I do like some works that fall under "Isekai", so it does annoy to see people writing off the entire genre. Especially when the logic they use could apply to any genre.

For what it's worth, we have a General Isekai Thread where people are likely to be more inclined to discuss isekai's (general) issues as a genre.

It's been fun.

A bit belated but:

Sadly enough, the most popular fantasy nowadays isn't just about getting payback against the corporate overlords...but BECOMING the said corporate overlords.

You'd be (un)surprised by how many Korean webnovel these days have "Chaebol" (a large industrial South Korean conglomerate run and controlled by an individual or family, for those of you who don't know) in the title.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

That is indeed not surprising.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Its similar to how a lot of Modern Chinese Webnovels that aren't in the Spirit Cultivation Genre are also about teenage billionaires. who might also be Cultivators anyhow because Chi is cool.

Watch Symphogear

Actually I can see chi cultivation leading to becoming a multi billionaire. Because chances are if you got godlike power, then business is far more simplifies (though not to the point where "give me your assets or I'll smite you" is a thing, presumably), and chances are there are businesses designed towards teaching people how to manipulate chi or analogues of such (like nanomachines)

plus immortality is feature of xianxia works, and people like Peter Theil are already Immortality Seekers IIRC, so its not liek there is an incompatibility on that end

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 5th 2023 at 12:32:51 PM