Web Video / Linfamy

"Learn about the history of Japan from the very beginning! Occasionally funny. New video every Saturday!"

—The description Linfamy gives for his youtube channel.

Linfamy is a Japanese history youtube channel which uses animations to talk about the history and the folklore of Japan. His videos can be found here.

Linfamy provides an example of:

• At Least I Admit It: Shuten Doji uses this to excuse his actions, and considers himself morally superior to the Raiko for this reason.
  Shuten Doji: "There is nothing false in the words of demons."
• Black Comedy: Used in the episodes about Mabiki.^note A euphemism for infanticide in pre-industrial Japan.
  Linfamy: Babies are terrible at fighting back.
• Brother–Sister Incest: In "How Japanese Royals Kept Their Blood Pure", Japanese Princes would marry their half-sisters to limit the number of heirs and thereby reduce the chance of a secession crisis.
• Cats Are Mean: Played with in "Vampire Cat of Nabeshima (and a Huge Kitty Battle :3)". This video talks about how ancient Japanese superstition held that Cats were greedy and how, once they lived among humans long enough, they turned into monsters. However Cats with white, black, and brown fur are considered loyal and even lucky. The Vampire Cat in the story is also sympathetic, only sucking the life from Lord Nabeshima after said lord murdered his master.
• Child Soldiers: Linfamy talks about the subject of children being forced into war, in the videos about schoolgirls forced to become battlefield nurses and the boys who were turned into child soldiers during WWII. The videos are appropriately somber in tone, sharing the tragic stories about what happened to the kids.
• Decadent Court: If a video mentions the Imperial Court then it will most likely feature a power struggle between either different members of the Royal Family or between the Emperor and the different clans.
• Demon of Human Origin: Shuten Doju and Emperor Sutoku are both examples of this. The former was turned into a demon after drunkenly wearing a demon mask and harassing children at a festival, while the latter died and was reborn as a demon after dying bitter over his lot in life.
• Easily Forgiven: The old couple in "Hanasaka Jiisan" are willing to lend things and give extra money to their neighbors even after the latter borrowed and murdered their beloved dog.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Shuten Doji offers his "monk" guests a meal of human blood and flesh, then is shocked by how enthusiastically they take him up on it.
• Everything's Better with Samurai: Subverted more often than not. As noted in various episodes, throughout much of Japanese history, a samurai are more likely to act like a mercurial and insubordinate Glory Seeker at best and a treacherous and greedy bandit at worst rather than the honourable and sagely warrior many people in modern times imagine them to be.
• Fountain of Memes:
  • His video about the Nine-Tailed Fox led to lots of Naruto references.
  • Also, expect to see references about the Uchiha Clan every time the likes of Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, Susanoo, Izanagi, Izanami and other gods are brought up.
• Gilded Cage: In "Life of Early Japanese Women (So Much Cheating...)", aristocratic Heian women weren't allowed to leave the home and were often extremely bored. This drove them into devoting much of their time in art and poetry and partly contributed to the explosion in culture during the Heian Period.
• Happily Adopted: Kaguya-hime and Tamamo no Mae were both adopted by childless parent couples. Both of them had loving relations with their adoptive parents.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: Linfamy states that the story of the 47 Ronin does this to Kira, whose only crime was to want Asano to follow the proper rituals and to survive a murder attempt by Asano's hands.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: In "The Demon Emperor", Emperor Sutoku tried devoting his life to Buddha after his attempt to usurp the throne from his younger brother failed. He tried sending some holy documents he wrote to the Royal Court as atonement, but his brother sent them back. This refusal to let him do good caused Emperor Sutoku to actually curse Japan, to spend his last days praying to be reborn as a demon, and (according to legend) to cause misfortune to the country.
• Love Redeems: In "Tale of the Nine-tailed Fox (Tamamo no Mae Seduces the Powerful)", the demon Tamamo no Mae repents after a Buddhist Monk asks for her side of the story and takes pity on her. In "The Demon Emperor (Emperor Sutoku Goes CRAZY)", the Menji Emperor tries to invoke this by moving Emperor Sutoku's body back to the Imperial Capitol and burying him with the honors due to an Emperor.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: In "The Demon Emperor", it's speculated that the biological father of Emperor Sutoku was not his legal father Emperor Toba, but rather his legal grandfather Emperor Shirakawa. This resulted in Sutoku being hated by Toba, being forced to abdicate to his younger brother, and starting a civil war over the loss of his birthright.
• Nature Abhors a Virgin: In the Heian period aristocratic women who were virgins were often held to be possessed by demons.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Women in Japan had received rather egalitarian treatment in early Japanese cultures until Chinese cultural influence started to creep in. Afterwards it was mostly this trope. It gets to rather ridiculous levels during times like the Heian Era when women (At least the aristocratic ones at the capital) were basically under near-perpetual house arrest in a Gilded Cage, while Japanese Buddhist beliefs have the Blood Pool Hell in store for women who died in childbirth - or even just for being a woman in general. Linfamy and many other watchers and fans blamed one single influence above all else for this persistent misogyny in Japanese culture.
  Youtube Comment: How could anyone possibly believe such a horrible fate for women in the afterlife is fair and - Oh, wait. Confucianism. Nevermind.
• Undying Loyalty: There are some examples.
  • Deconstructed in "47 Ronin, the REAL Story", when Linfamy analyzes it. He considers the real life figure of Kira an innocent man and Asano a letch who didn't deserve to be avenged.
  • In "Vampire Cat of Nabeshima", said cat tried to suck the life out of the Lord of Nabeshima after said lord murdered his master wantonly. Lord Nabeshima's bodyguard also qualifies, sleeping outside his Lord's bedchamber and killing the Vampire Cat to protect him.
• The Unfettered: "Tale of the Drunken Demon (Shuten Doji...Will He EAT You?)" reveals Minamoto no Raiko to be this. He gains access to the fortress of the demon Shuten Doji by pretending to be a Buddhist Monk, and eats human flesh at the demon's dinner table in order to gain his trust.
• Unproblematic Prostitution: Averted. Linfamy's videos on the different kinds of prostitution in the Edo period make it clear that it was a miserable, exploitative, and often short life.
• Villain-by-Proxy Fallacy: The Vampire Cat of Nabeshima killed and ate Lord Nabeshima's wife as part of his revenge against the lord for murdering his master. Subverted in that he only did this because he needed to shape-shift into Lord Nabeshima's wife to get close to him, rather than because he felt the Lord's wife deserved to die.
• You Killed My Father: In "Battle of the Monkey and the Crab (Popular Bedtime Story)" the Crab's children kill the Monkey in retaliation for the Monkey killing their parent. In "Tale of the Nine-tailed Fox (Tamamo no Mae Seduces the Powerful)", Tamamo no Mae tries to kill the Emperor after he sentences her adoptive father to death on false charges of treason.
• Youkai: A frequent topic of his videos. To whit:
  • Asian Fox Spirit- a fairly common video topic.
  • Kappa- Has a video on them.
  • Our Mermaids Are Different- a video on the Ningyo, the Japanese equivalent.
  • Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl- his video on Onryos includes the most famous one of all, Oiwa Iemon.
  • Tanuki- a video on the topic.
  • Tengu- A video on a Tengu story.
  • Tsuchigumo and Jorogumo- one video on each.
  • Yuki Onna- Done a video explaining them and a video on a famous Yuki-Onna tale.
  • Linfamy has also done videos on Yokai that don't have their own TV Tropes pages, such as Tesso the Iron Rat, smallpox demons, Rokurokubi, and exploding mice. He's also made compilation videos of weird and dangerous Yokai.