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signalburst · 8 months ago

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Shōgun Historical Shallow-Dive: the Final Part - The Samurai Were Assholes, When 'Accuracy' Isn't Accurate, Beautiful Art, and Where to From Here

Final part. There is an enormous cancer attached to the samurai mythos and James Clavell's orientalism that I need to address. Well, I want to, anyway. In acknowledging how great the 2024 adaptation of Shōgun is, it's important to engage with the fact that it's fiction, and that much of its marketed authenticity is fake. That doesn't take away from it being an excellent work of fiction, but it is a very important distinction to me.

If you want to engage with the cool 'honourable men with swords' trope without thinking any deeper, navigate away now. Beyond here, there are monsters - literal and figurative. If you're interested in how different forms of media are used to manufacture consent and shape national identity, please bear with me.

I think the makers of 2024's Shōgun have done a fantastic job. But there is one underlying problem they never fully wrestled with. It's one that Hiroyuki Sanada, the leading man and face of the production team, is enthusiastically supportive of. And with the recent announcement of Season 2, it's likely to return. You may disagree, but to me, ignoring this dishonours the millions of people who were killed or brutalised by either the samurai class, or people in the 20th century inspired by a constructed idea of them.

Why are we drawn to the samurai?

A pretty badly sourced, but wildly popular history podcast contends that 'The Japanese are just like everybody else, only more so.' I saw a post on here that tried to make the assertion that the show's John Blackthorne would have been exposed to as much violence as he saw in Japan, and wouldn't have found it abnormal.

This is incorrect. Obviously 16th and 17th century Europe were violent places, but they contained violence familiar to Europeans through their cultural lens. Why am I confidently asserting this? We have hundreds of letters, journals and reports from Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch and English expressing absolute horror about what they encountered. Testing swords on peasants was becoming so common that it would eventually become the law of the land. Crucifixion was enacted as a punishment for Christians - first by the Taiko, then by the Tokugawa shogunate - for irony's sake.

Before the end of the feudal period, battles would end with the taking of heads for washing and display. Depending on who was viewing them, this was either to honour them, or to gloat: 'I'm alive, you're dead.' These things were ritualised to the point of being codified when real-life Toranaga took control. Seppuku started as a cultural meme and ended up being the enforced punishment for any minor mistake for the 260 years the ruling samurai class acted as the nation's bureaucracy. It got more and more ritualised and flowery the more it got divorced from its origin: men being ordered by other men to kill themselves during a period of chaotic warfare. I've read accounts of samurai 'warriors' during the Edo period committing seppuku for being late for work. Not life-and-death warrior work - after Sekigahara, they were just book-keepers. They had desk jobs.

Since Europe's contact with Japan, the samurai myth has fascinated and appalled in equal measure. As time has gone on, the fascination has gone up and the horror has been dialled down. This is not an accident. This isn't just a change in the rest of the world's perception of the samurai. This is the result of approximately 120 years of Japanese government policies. Successive governments - nationalist, military authoritarian, and post-war democratic - began to lionize the samurai as the perfect warrior ideal, and sanitize the history of their origin and their heydey (the period Shōgun covers). It erases the fact that almost all of the fighting of the glorious samurai Sengoku Jidai was done by peasant ashigaru (levies), who had no choice.

It is important to never forget why this was done initially: to form an imagined-historical ideal of a fighting culture. An imagined fighting culture that Japanese invasion forces could emulate to take colonies and subdue foreign populations in WWI, and, much more brutally, in WWII. James Clavell came into contact with it as a Japanese Prisoner of War.

He just didn't have access to the long view, or he didn't care.

The Original Novel - How One Ayn Rand Fan Introduced Japan to America

There's a reason why 1975's Shogun novel contains so many historical anachronisms. James Clavell bought into a bunch of state-sanctioned lies, unachored in history, about the warring states period, the concept of bushido (manufactured after the samurai had stopped fighting), and the samurai class's role in Japanese history.

For the novel, I could go into great depth, but there are three things that stand out.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. He's a novelist, and he did what he liked. But Clavell's novel was groundbreaking in the 70's because it was sold as a lightly-fictionalised history of Japan. The unfortunate fact is the official version that was being taught at the time (and now) is horseshit, and used for far-right wing authoritarian/nationalist political projects. The Three Unifiers and the 'honour of the samurai' magnates at the time is a neat package to tell kids and adults, but it was manufactured by an early-20th century Japanese Imperial Government trying to harness nationalism for building up a war-ready population. Any slightly critical reading of the primary sources shows the samurai to be just like any ruling class - brutal, venal, self-interested, and horrifically cruel. Even to their contemporary warrior elites in Korea and China.

Fake history as propraganda. Clavell swallowed and regurgitated the 'death before dishonour', 'loyalty to the cause above all else', 'it's all for the Realm' messages that were deployed to justify Imperial Japanese Army Class-A war crimes during the war in the Pacific and the Creation of the Greater East Asian Co-Properity Sphere. This retroactive samurai ethos was used in the late Meiji restoration and early 20th century nationalist-military governments to radicalise young Japanese men into being willing to die for nothing, and kill without restraint. The best book on this is An Introduction to Japanese Society by Sugimoto Yoshio, but there is a vast corpus of scholarship to back it up.

Clavell's orientalism strays into outright racism. Despite the novel Shōgun undercutting John Blackthorne as a white savior in its final pages - showing him as just a pawn in the game - Clavell's politics come into play in every Asia Saga novel. A white man dominates an Asian culture through the power of capitalism. This is orthagonal to points 1 and 2, but Clavell was a devotee of Ayn Rand. There's a reason his protagonists all appear cut from the same cloth. They thrust their way into an unfamiliar society, they use their knowledge of trade and mercantilism to heroically save the day, they are remarked upon by the Asian characters as braver and stronger, and they are irresistible to the - mostly simpering, extremely submissive - caricatures of Asian women in his novels. Call it a product of its times or a product of Clavell's beliefs, I still find it repulsive. Clavell invents (nearly from whole cloth, actually) the idea that samurai find money repulsive and distasteful, and his Blackthorne shows them the power of commerce and markets. Plus there are numerous other stereotypes (Blackthorne's massive dick! Japanese men have tiny penises! Everyone gets naked and bathes together because they're so sexually free! White guys are automatically cool over there!) that have fuelled the fantasies of generations of non-Japanese men, usually white: Clavell's primary audience of 'dad history' buffs.

2024's Shōgun, as a television adaptation, did a far better job in almost every respect

But the show did much better, right? Yes. Unquestionably. It was an incredible achievement in bringing forward a tired, stereotypical story to add new themes of cultural encounter, questioning one's place in the broader world, and killing your ego. In many ways, the show was the antithesis to Clavell's thesis.

It drastically reigned in the anachronistic, ahistorical referencees to 'bushido' and 'samurai honor', and showed the ruling class of Japan in 1600 much more accurately. John Blackthorne (William Adams) was shown to be an extraordinary person, but he wasn't central to the outcome of the Eastern Army-Western Army civil war. There aren't scenes of him being the best lover every woman he encounters in Japan has ever had (if you haven't read the book, this is not an exaggeration). He doesn't teach Japanese warriors how to use matchlock rifles, which they had been doing for two hundred years. He doesn't change the outcome of enormous events with his thrusting, self-confident individualism. In 2024's Shōgun, Blackthorne is much like his historical counterpart. He was there for fascinating events, but not central. He wasn't teaching Japanese people basic concepts like how to make money or how to make war.

On fake history - the manufactured samurai mythos - it improved on the novel, but didn't overcome the central problems. In many ways, I can't blame the showrunners. Many of the central lies (and they are deliberate lies) constructed around the concept of samurai are hallmarks of the genre. But it's still important to me to notice when it's happening - even while enjoying some of the tropes - without passively accepting it.

'Authenticity' to a precisely manufactured story, not to history

There's a core problem surrounding the promotion and manufactured discussion surrounding 2024's Shōgun. I think it's a disconnect between the creative and marketing teams, but it came up again and again in advertising and promotion for the show: 'It's authentic. It's as real as possible.'

I've only seen this brought up in one article, Shōgun Has a Japanese-Superiority Complex, by Ryu Spaeth:

'The show also valorizes a supreme military power that is tempered by the pursuit of beauty and the highest of cultures, as if that might be a formula for peace. Shōgun displays these two extremes of the Japanese self, the savagery and the refinement, but seems wholly unaware that there may be a connection between them, that the exquisite sensibility Japan is famous for may flow from, and be a mask for, its many uses of atrocious domination.'

Here we come to authenticity.

'The publicity surrounding the series has focused on its fidelity to authenticity: multiple rounds of translation to give the dialogue a “classical” feel; fastidious attention to how katana swords should be slung, how women of the nobility should fold their knees when they sit, how kimonos should be colored and styled; and, crucially, a decentralization of the narrative so that it’s not dominated by the character John Blackthorne.'

It's undeniable that the 2024 production spent enormous amounts of energy on authenticity. But authenticity to what? To traditional depictions of samurai in Japanese media, not to history itself. The experts hired for gestures, movement, costumes, buildings, and every other aspect of the show were experts with decades in experience making Japanese historical dramas 'look right', not experts in Japanese history. But this appeal to 'Japanese authenticity' was made in almost every piece of promotional material.

The show had only one historical advisor on staff, and he was Dutch. The numerous Japanese consultants, experts and specialists brought on board (talked about at length in the show's marketing and behind the scenes) were there to assist with making an accurate Japanese jidaigeki. It's the difference between hiring an experienced BBC period drama consultant, and a historian specialising in the Regency. One knows how to make things look 'right' to a British audience. The other knows what actually happened.

That's fine, but a critical viewing of the show needs to engage with this. It's a stylistically accurate Japanese period drama. It is not an accurate telling of Japanese history around the unification of Japan. If it was, the horses would be the size of ponies, there would be far more malnourished and brutalised peasants, the word samurai would have far less importance as it wasn't yet a rigidly enforced caste, seppuku wouldn't yet be ritualised and performed with as much frequency, and Toranaga - Tokugawa - would be a famously corpulently obese man, pounding the saddle of his horse in frustration at minor setbacks, as he was in history.

The noble picture of restraint, patience, refinement and honour presented by Hiroyuki Sanada as Toranaga/Tokugawa is historical sanitation at its most extreme. Despite being Sanada's personal hero, Tokugawa Ieyasu was a brutal warlord (even for the standards of the time), and he committed acts of horrific cruelty. He ordered many more after gaining ultimate power. Think a miniseries about the Founding Fathers of the United States that doesn't touch upon slavery - I'm sure there have been plenty.

The final myth that 2024's Shōgun leaves us with is that it took a man like Toranaga - Tokugawa Ieyasu - to bring peace to a land ripped assunder by chaos. This plays into 19th century notions of Great Man History, and is a neat story, but the consensus amongst historians is if it wasn't Tokugawa, it would have been some other cunt. In many cases, it very nearly was. His success was historical contingency, not 5D chess.

So how did this image get manufactured, to the point where the Japanese populace - by and large - believes it to be true? Very long story short: after a period of rapid modernisation, Japan embraced nationalism in the late 19th century. It was all the rage. Nationalism depends on a glorified past. The samurai (recently the pariahs of Japanese history) were repurposed as Japan's unique warrior heroes, and woven into state education. This was especially heated in the 1920s and 30s in the lead up to the invasion of Manchuria and Japan's war of aggression in the Pacific. Nationalism + militarism = the modern Japanese samurai myth, to prepare men to obey orders unquestioningly from a military dictatorship.

This persists in the postwar period. Every year since 1963, Japan's state broadcaster NHK commissions a historical drama - a Taiga Drama, where many of this show's actors got their starts - that manufactures and re-enforces the idea of samurai as noble, artful, honourable people. Read a book - read a Wikipedia article! - and you'll see that most of it stems from Tokugawa-shogunate era self-propaganda. It's much like the European re-interpretation of chivalry. In Europe's case, chivalry in actual history was a set of guidelines that allowed for the sanctioned mass-rape and murder of civilians, with a side of rules regarding the ransoming of nobles in scorched-earth military campaigns. In Japan's case, historical figures that regularly backstabbed each other, tortured rival warriors and their lessers, and inflicted horrific casualties on the peasants that they owned (we have a term for that) are cast as noble, honourable, dedicated servants of the Empire.

Why does this matter to me? Samurai movies and TV shows are just media, after all. The issue, for me, is that the actors, the producers - including Hiroyuki Sanada - passionately extoll 'accuracy' as if they genuinely believe they're telling history. They talk emotionally about bushido and its special place in Japanese society.

But the entire concept of bushido is a retroactive, post-conflict, samurai construction. Bushio is bullshit. Despite being spoken of as the central tenet of 2024's Shōgun by actors like Hiroyuki Sanada, Tadanobu Asano, and Tokuma Nishioka, it simply didn't exist at the time. It was made up after the advent of modern nationalism.

It was used to justify horrendous acts during the late Edo period, the Meiji restoration, and the years leading up to the conclusion of Japan's war of aggression in the Pacific. It's still used now by Japan's primarily right-wing government to deny war crimes and justify the horrors unleashed on Asia and the Pacific during World War II as some kind of noble warrior crusade. If you ever want your stomach turned, visit the museum attached to Yasukuni Shrine. It's a theme park dedicated to war crimes denial, linked intimately to Japan's imagined warrior past. Whether or not the production staff, cast, and marketing team of 2024's Shōgun knew they were engaging with a long line of ahistorical bullshit is unknown, but it is important.

It's also important to acknowledge that, having listened to many interviews with Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, they were acutely aware that they weren't Japanese, to claim to be telling an authentically Japanese story would be wrong, and that all they could do was do their best to make an engaging work that plays on ideas of cultural encounter and letting go. I think the 'authenticity!' thing is mostly marketing, and judicious editing of what the creators and writers actually said in interviews.

So... you hate the show, then? What the hell is this all about?

No, I love the show. It's beautiful. But it's a beautiful artwork.

Just as the noh theatre in the show was a twisting of events within the show, so are all works of fiction that take inspiration from history. Some do it better than others. And on balance, in the show, Shōgun did it better than most. But so much of the marketing and the discussion of this adaptation has been on its accuracy. This has been by design - it was the strategy Disney adopted to market the show and give it a unique viewing proposition.

'This time, Shōgun is authentic!*

*an authentic Japanese period drama, but we won't mention that part.

And audiences have conflated that with what actually happened, as opposed to accuracy to a particular form of Japanese propaganda that has been honed over a century. This difference is crucial.

It doesn't detract from my enjoyment of it. Where I view James Clavell's novel as a horrid remnant of an orientalist, racist past, I believe the showrunners of 2024's Shōgun have updated that story to put Japanese characters front and centre, to decentralise the white protagonist to a more accurate place of observation and interest, and do their best to make a compelling subversion of the 'stranger in a strange land' tale.

But I don't want anyone who reads my words or has followed this series to think that the samurai were better than the armed thugs of any society. They weren't more noble, they weren't more honourable, they weren't more restrained. They just had 260 years in which they worked desk-jobs while wearing two swords to write stories about how glorious the good old days were, and how great people were.

Well... that's a bleak note to end on. Where to from here?

There are beautiful works of fiction that engage much closer with the actual truth of the samurai class that I'd recommend. One even stars Hiroyuki Sanada, and is (I think) his finest role.

I'd really encourage anyone who enjoyed Shōgun to check out The Twilight Samurai. That was the reality for the vast majority of post-Sekigahara samurai

For something closer to the period that Shogun is set, the best film is Seppuku (Hara-Kiri in English releases). It is a post-war Japanese film that engages both with the reality of samurai rule, and, through its central themes, how that created mythos was used to radicalise millions of Japanese into senseless death during the war. It is the best possible response to a romanticisation of a brutal, hateful period of history, dominated by cruel men who put power first, every single time.

I want to end this series, if I can, with hope. I hope that reading the novel or watching the 1980 show or the 2024 show has ignited in people an interest in Japanese culture, or society, or history. But don't let that be an end. Go further. There are so many things that aren't whitewashed warlords nobly killing - the social history of Japan is amazing, as is the women's history. A great book for getting an introduction to this is The Japanese: A History in 20 Lives.

And outside of that, there are so many beautiful Japanese movies and shows that don't deal with glorified violence and death. In fact, it makes up the vast majority of Japanese media! Who would have thought! Your Name was the first major work of art to bridge some of the cultural animosity between China and Japan stemming from WW2, and is a goofy time travel love story. Perfect Days is a beautiful movie about the simple joy of living, and it's about the most Tokyo story you can get.

Please go out, read more, watch more. If you can, try and find your way to Japan. It's one of the most beautiful places on earth. The people are kind, the food is delicious, and the culture is very welcoming to foreigners.

2024's Shōgun was great, but please don't let that be the end. Let it be the beginning, and I hope it serves as a gateway for you.

And I hope our little fandom on here remembers this show as a special time, where we came together to talk about something we loved. I'll miss you all.

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ishido-enjoyer · 22 days ago

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So I know I haven't been so active in the Napoleonic community in recent months, as I've been pretty absorbed with studying Japanese history and the Japanese language, but the more I've learned about Hideyoshi, the more I found myself comparing him to Napoleon, so here's a post where my two main historical interests get to intersect. :)

Toyotomi Hideyoshi has often been referred to as Japan’s Napoleon Bonaparte. Perhaps a bit Eurocentric given that Hideyoshi was born in 1537, 232 years before Napoleon--if anything it could be said that Napoleon was France’s Hideyoshi, but unfortunately Hideyoshi is not a name most Westerners recognize—otherwise it’s an excellent comparison. I’ve read a great deal about Napoleon over the past several years, and, although my studies on Sengoku Japan are only really in their infancy, I couldn’t help but notice a striking number of parallels and similarities between the lives and military/political careers of Hideyoshi and Napoleon.

Both men came from relatively humble origins and experienced meteoric rises through the ranks via their military service. Napoleon’s family on Corsica were minor nobility—they were not wealthy by any means but at least possessed enough connections to get Napoleon into a military academy; once his training was completed, he was commissioned as an artillery officer. Hideyoshi was born a peasant; his father was an ashigaru (foot soldier) who served a samurai. Hideyoshi followed in his father’s footsteps and became an ashigaru himself, which at the age of 26 brought him into the service of Lord Oda Nobunaga, who was soon the most powerful daimyo in Japan. His talents and intelligence impressed Nobunaga, and Hideyoshi rose to become one of his top generals and retainers by his early thirties. When Nobunaga was betrayed and assassinated in 1582, Hideyoshi, then 35, moved quickly to step into the ensuing power vacuum; within three years he had defeated his main rivals, consolidated his power, and become the most powerful man in Japan himself. Napoleon Bonaparte became a general at age 24 and crowned himself Emperor of the French at age 35. Hideyoshi was never Emperor, nor, being from a peasant background, did he receive the title of shogun, but he was designated kampaku (Imperial Regent) by the Emperor at age 38 and was the real power in the land from this point until his death in 1598.

As a result of their respective meteoric rises and remarkable military successes, both men came to view themselves as destined for greatness. Napoleon frequently spoke of destiny and believed himself guided by it. “Is there a man so blind,” he wrote in December of 1798, “as not to see that destiny itself guides all my operations? Is there anyone so faithless as to doubt that everything in this vast universe is bound to the empire of destiny?” (Broers, Napoleon: Soldier of Fortune, 195) This belief, which pervaded through his life, also made him take great risks, convinced that he was destined to succeed in his endeavors. Hideyoshi came to genuinely believe his own rise was divinely inspired and even developed his own backstory, giving himself celestial origins, and making sure to mention them frequently in his letters to others as a means of convincing them of the rightness of his cause. “At the time my mother conceived me,” he wrote on one occasion, “she had an auspicious dream. That night, a ray of sun filled the room as if it were noontime. All were overcome with astonishment and fright and when the diviners had gathered, they interpreted the event saying: when he reaches the prime of life, his virtue will illuminate the four seas, his authority will emanate to the myriad peoples.” (Berry, Hideyoshi, 9). He even went so far as bringing up his supposedly heavenly origins in a letter to the King of Korea, in hopes of pushing his case to the King to permit his armies safe passage through Korea so he could carry out his planned conquest of Ming China.

Both were regarded as military geniuses by their contemporaries. Napoleon’s quick, dominant successes in Italy, and his crushing victories against Austria, Russia, and Prussia between 1805-1807, solidified his reputation as one of the greatest generals in European history, and arguably the best military commander of his time. Hideyoshi never suffered a defeat in the numerous campaigns he waged over the years to complete the work of unifying Japan that had begun under Nobunaga.

Likewise, both men’s reputations for military genius were severely tarnished by campaigns driven out of an increasingly megalomaniacal drive for conquest abroad. Hideyoshi, his confidence bolstered by his string of military successes, began setting his sights on China, and even hinted in his correspondence that one day, after China had submitted as his vassal, he might even attempt to conquer India. To begin his conquest of China, he first needed to bring his armies through Korea. He attempted to negotiate with the King of Korea to gain safe passage for his armies, but Korea had strong ties to the Ming Dynasty, the negotiations soon broke down, and Hideyoshi sent his armies to invade Korea in 1592. The Japanese initially smashed through the pitiful Korean defenses and made a rapid drive up the peninsula, but with Ming reinforcements soon arriving to turn the tide, and the Japanese navy being repeatedly pummeled by the brilliant Admiral Yi Sun-Sin, the Japanese advance was soon stalled. Eventually the Japanese forces retreated to the southern coastline, where they hunkered down in hastily-built fortifications while peace negotiations dragged out for years between Hideyoshi’s court and the Ming court. When these negotiations also eventually broke down, Hideyoshi launched a second invasion of Korea, less for the sake of conquering China this time than simply for punishing Korea as much as possible for thwarting his initial plans. Hideyoshi himself never actually personally led his armies in Korea—he never went to Korea at all—but relied instead on the reports of his generals and inspectors, whose reports often downplayed or whitewashed the truth of Japanese defeats out of fear. Additionally, some of his primary commanders (like Konishi Yukinaga and Kato Kiyomasa) openly hated each other and their quarrels and personal rivalries occasionally hampered military operations, not unlike the quarrels of Napoleon’s commanders in Russia. The second invasion was turning into a stalemate when Hideyoshi abruptly died in September of 1598 at the age of 61. The remnants of the Japanese army eventually returned to Japan, and a six-year period of nearly relentless horrors and atrocities in Korea had all been for nothing. Napoleon, of course, launched his infamous 1812 invasion of Russia, which, while of much shorter duration than Hideyoshi’s war(s) in Korea, led to a much more thorough destruction of his armies and arguably contributed to his fall from power in 1814. Not that the Korean conflicts left the Toyotomi forces unscathed, and it can also be argued that the extent to which the Western armies had bled themselves out in Korea helped contribute to the victory of Hideoyoshi’s rival, Tokugawa Ieyasu, against his Toyotomi-loyalist enemies at Sekigahara in 1600, as Ieyasu, based in Japan’s eastern Kanto region, had pointedly kept his own forces out of the war.

Both men enacted sweeping reforms in their respective societies which long outlasted either them or the dynasties they both failed to leave behind. Both initiated nationwide cadastral surveys and land registries to make tax collection more accurate and efficient. In 1595, six leading daimyo under Hideyoshi drafted, on his behalf, a code comprised of fourteen brief articles, all of which were centered around keeping the peace, carrying out justice, and governing the behavior of the various social classes in Japan. Napoleon issued his civil code (also not written by himself), now known as the Napoleonic Code, in 1804. While not as brief as the Toyotomi regime’s code, it was written in the vernacular to make it more accessible to the average person.

Both were patrons of the arts; in Hideyoshi’s case, of Noh theater (which he became so passionate about he eventually even performed in plays in front of his subordinates), tea ceremonies, and painting; Napoleon also patronized painters, established art museums and, while not up to becoming a performer in his own right like Hideyoshi, he did attend the opera regularly.

Both Hideyoshi and Napoleon struggled to produce an heir. Hideyoshi’s only son, Tsurumatsu, died at the age of 2 in 1591. Hideyoshi named his nephew Hidetsugu his heir in the meantime, but hoped to have another son. Neither his wife nor his considerable number of concubines were able to give him a child, leading historians to speculate that Hideyoshi may have been sterile by this point, possible as the result of a sexually transmitted disease. In 1592 his concubine Yodo-dono, also known as Chacha, gave birth to a son, Hideyori, who would become Hideyoshi’s only heir (the unfortunate nephew, Hidetsugu, was soon charged with treason and forced to commit seppuku not long after Hideyori’s birth). Hideyoshi’s inability to create an heir with so many other women led to rumors spreading, even before he died, that Hideyori was not really his child. Napoleon also struggled to produce an heir for years after crowning himself Emperor, but, as he demonstrated no problem creating sons with his mistresses, the problem was attributed to his wife’s infertility. He divorced Josephine, married a much younger princess, and soon enough had an heir of his own.

When Hideyoshi died in 1598, his heir was only five years old; when Napoleon fell from power in 1815, his heir was four years old. Both Hideyoshi’s heir and Napoleon’s heir died at the age of 21.

#Toyotomi Hideyoshi #Napoleon Bonaparte #Napoleon #Napoleonic wars #Sengoku Jidai #history #military history #Japanese history #samurai

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cid5 · 6 months ago

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Imperial Japanese Navy Air Force Kanoya Air Base circa May 1945 in Kanoya, Kagoshima, Japan.

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theworldatwar · 2 months ago

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Japanese paratroopers board their plane as the invasion of West Timor begins - Borneo 1942

#world war two #ww2 #worldwar2photos #history #1940s #ww2 history #wwii #world war 2 #ww2history #wwii era #paratroopers #japanese #west Timor #1942 #Borneo

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scrapironflotilla · 2 months ago

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Lessons to be learned by Regimental Officers from the Russo-Japanese War, Capt A Barrett, 1907.

Wooden mortars huh. Interesting that he recommended an infantry support mortar a good seven years before WW1. It took until 1915 for the British to get one into production with the Stokes Mortar.

#my research #russo-japanese war #japanese army #british army #history

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greatworldwar2 · 1 month ago

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• Satoru Anabuki (Japanese IJAAF Ace)

Lieutenant Colonel Satoru Anabuki 穴吹智, Anabuki Satoru, was depending on the source, the second or third highest-scoring flying ace of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force in World War II, with 39 victories (51 claimed).

Born into a farming family in the Kagawa Prefecture, he graduated high school to take the entrance examination for the Juvenile Flying Soldier School and entered the Tokyo Army Aviation School in April 1938, In Oct 1940, he was enrolled in Tachi'arai flight school in Fukuoka Prefecture graduating in March 1941 in the 6th Juvenile Soldier Course and receiving a promotion to corporal in October. He was assigned to the 3rd Company of the 50th Air Squadron, stationed on Formosa in 1941. With the outbreak of the Pacific War, he fought in the conquest of the Philippines, where he claimed his first victory, a Curtiss P-40, on December 22nd, 1941 flying a Ki-27 aircraft. On February 9th, 1942, he shot down two more.

He returned to Japan with his squadron in Apr 1942, where the squadron was re-equipped with Ki-43 Hayabusa aircraft; Anabuki named his new fighter "Fubuki", partially based on his own surname. In Jun 1942, his squadron was transferred to Burma, where he would see combat over Burma, India, and southwestern China. He was promoted to the rank of sergeant in Dec 1942. On December 20th, 1942, he shot down a Blenheim bomber over Magwe, Burma, the first of many bomber victories. On December 24th, he shot down three British Hurricane fighters in combat over Magwe, Burma. In May 1943, he received a new Ki-43 fighter; he named this new aircraft "Kimikaze" after his wife Kimiko. He was seriously wounded in combat while flying "Kimikaze" over Rangoon, Burma on October 8th, 1943; after initial recuperation, he was transferred to the Akeno Army Flying School in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan in Feb 1944.

In late 1944, after being cleared to fly once again, he shot down four US F6F Hellcat fighters over Takao, Taiwan and the Philippine Islands while ferrying Ki-84 Hayate fighters from Japan southwards. In December 1944, he was promoted to the rank of sergeant major. In the final months of the war, he was an instructor at Akeno with frequent combat assignments; in this role, he scored his 39th and final confirmed victory (53rd claimed victory), a B-29 bomber, over Japan while flying a Ki-100 fighter. After the war, he joined the Police Reserve in 1950, eventually reaching the rank of captain. Later, he joined the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, becoming a helicopter pilot stationed in northeastern Japan; he retired from his military career in 1971 at the rank of lieutenant colonel. He worked for Japan Airlines before retiring in 1984. Many of Anabuki's victory claims during the Burma Campaign have been contested by comparing them to Allied records of lost aircraft on particular occasions. In several cases, there were no records of Allied planes even operating in the area where the claims were made. Anabuki passed away on an unknown date in June of 2005 at the age of 83 years old.

#second world war #world war 2 #world war ii #wwii #military history #aviation #aviation history #ww2 aces #japanese history #imperial japan #airforce history

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feyd-meowtha · 3 months ago

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A PSA regarding MOTA and propaganda:

So.... as much as the show tries to make out like the US didn't do carpet bombing, it is a lie, and I feel the need (as someone currently living in Tokyo) to highlight one event in particular - the 1945 firebombing of Tokyo by the US military. Officially the most destructive bombing raid in history.

Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia:

The raids that were conducted by the U.S. military on the night of 9–10 March 1945, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, are the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.[1] 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) of central Tokyo was destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless.[1] The atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945, by comparison, resulted in the immediate death of an estimated 70,000 to 150,000 people.

I'm not saying that any of us should stop enjoying the show but we need to be aware of the fact that any US reluctance to kill civilians VERY MUCH only applied to white, European people. I also urge you to go and look into what happened to Tokyo because while the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are widely known, this bombing was just as deadly and is hardly ever spoken about outside of Japan. I had never heard of it until I came here.

The US firebombed a city made of wood that was full of children, most of the city had to be rebuilt and there are still pushes to declare it a war crime due to excessive loss of civilian life.

So go on liking the show, I certainly will, but don't accept everything it says at face value. It is a part of the US military propaganda machine and it's important to remember that it has an agenda. It is especially important to remember this in light of the US support for the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

Links to more info and donations below the cut

#mota #history #japan #ww2 #ww2 history #tokyo #propaganda #world war 2 #world war two #hillyspeaks #this is also not me trying to defend japanese imperialism #i hope that is obvious

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dailyhistoryposts · 1 year ago

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On This Day In History

August 6th, 1945: The first nuclear weapon used in warfare, the "Little Boy', is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. It kills 70,000 people instantly and tens of thousands over the years.

#history #oppenheimer #nuclear war #hiroshima #war #atomic bomb #us history #japanese history #wwii

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odaclan · 3 months ago

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If the cuckoo doesn't sing...

This one may be a familiar story for those who are fans of Sengoku period.

Below is what is purportedly the original text of the story:

郭公を贈り参せし人あり。されども鳴かざりければ、なかぬなら殺してしまへ時鳥　織田右府鳴かずともなかして見せふ杜鵑　豊太閤なかぬなら鳴まで待よ郭公　大権現様

Someone sent a cuckoo as a gift. If it doesn't sing: If it doesn't sing, kill the cuckoo - Oda Ufu If it doesn't sing, make the cuckoo sing - Hōtaikō If it doesn't sing, wait until the cuckoo sings - Daigongen-sama

It originated from the Kasshi Yawa 甲子夜話, a text written in the Edo period by Matsuura Keizan 松浦静山, whose real name was Matsuura Kiyoshi 松浦清 (1760-1841). It's a text that included various subjects, from contemporary incidents of Matsuura's lifetime, to legends and folktales.

There are various interpretations that could be made, since those lines are very simple. For example, while the standard reading for the Hideyoshi line is to associate it with diplomacy, some has interpreted it as a tyrannical force, making people obey by threat.

Regardless of what the original author intended those lines to mean, though, this was written in the Edo period. It may have very well been passed down through hearsay to boot. It only gives us an image of the perception that people of the Edo period have of them, and not an actual proper description.

Per the customs of the time, the three unifiers were not listed by their plain names, but their honorific titles. 右府 Ufu is the title designating the post of Minister of the Right, which Nobunaga did hold for a time. 太閤 Taikō is a title that is used to refer to a Kanpaku that has formally resigned, but still continues to hold influence. 豊太閤 Hōtaikō is the term used to refer to Hideyoshi specifically. 大権現 Daigongen is an abbreviation of 東照大権現 Tōshō Daigongen. When Ieyasu had died, he was deified by that name.

An interesting thing to note is that "hotototogisu" (cuckoo) is written with different kanji for each person.

Nobunaga's hototogisu is written as 時鳥. The kanji is translates to "the bird that tells time". Hototogisu are active in the early summer (around late May to June), so in olden times it was said the farmers star planting rice when the hototogisu sings.

Hideyoshi's hototogisu is written as 杜鵑. This was taken directly from the Chinese word for a cuckoo (Dù Juān in modern Chinese pinyin). It's originally referring to a different species of bird than the hototogisu cuckoo, but was adapted as such by the Japanese. It is a name connected to a legend where a Chinese king became a cuckoo after his death.

Ieyasu's hototogisu is written as 郭公, alternately pronounced as kakkou. This is the simplest one, derived from the sound of "cuckoo cuckoo" call. As with the above, this originally does not refer to hototogisu, but the Japanese adapted its usage because the bird is of similar species.

I have not seen any theories or analysis relating to why the kanji used to write them is different. Perhaps it's simply for aesthetic reasons.

#oda nobunaga #nobunaga oda #toyotomi hideyoshi #hashiba hideyoshi #tokugawa ieyasu #samurai #sengoku #sengoku jidai #sengoku era #sengoku period #warring states era #warring states period #warring states #japanese history

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sgtgrunt0331-3 · 10 months ago

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"We wanted to pull the beach over our heads like a blanket."

On February 19, 1945, U.S. Marines land on the black, volcanic sands of Iwo Jima. For the next 36 days, the Marines fought one of the most ferocious and bloodiest battles in their history.

(Video footage courtesy of the film "To the Shores of Iwo Jima")

#iwo jima #usmc #us marines #world war 2 #wwii #pacific #japanese #island #military #history #video #to the shores of Iwo Jima

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historyfordummies · 2 months ago

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The Vietnam War

French colonisation of parts of Southeast Asia (French Indochina)

While there were previously conflicts between different areas of Vietnam, the start of the Vietnam War (or, as the Vietnamese call it, the American War) lies in the French colonisation of Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia (such as Laos and Cambodia).

2. World War One and the Paris Peace Talks

It was during this period that much of the colonised countries (not just in East and Southeast Asia, but globally) decided to request international assistance in freeing them from their imperialist rulers, partly motivated by the Paris Peace Talks, where U.S. president Woodrow Wilson stated that all nations have the right to self determination. This gave hope to leaders of independence movements all over the world, so Kim Kyu-sik and, importantly, Hồ Chí Minh, who requested U.S. support for Vietnamese independence. This, however, was ignored by Wilson, and it became obvious to leaders of independence movements across the world that the right to self determination was a right given to "white" nations only. This did its part in radicalising some of these movements, who now knew that they could not depend on Western assistance in their struggle for national self determination and independence.

3. World War Two and the First Indochina War (The French War)

During World War Two, Vietnam, as much of East and Southeast Asia, had been colonised by Japan. For countries such as Korea, this meant their first experience with colonisation, but for Vietnam, it was exchanging one colonial ruler for another, with little substantial difference for most Vietnamese.

Significant, though, was the end of the war and Japanese surrender, leading (most) Japanese troops to be expelled from Vietnam through the August Revolution. For a short period, an independent Vietnam seemed possible; the Việt Minh (Việt Nam Độc lập Đồng minh Hội; League for Independence of Vietnam) were made the government of the now independent Vietnam, under the leadership of Hồ Chí Minh (who had disassociated from his communist ties to fight for a unified Vietnam), and with (now former) emperor Bảo Đại as "supreme advisor" to the Việt Minh government.

Part of the success of the Việt Minh was owed to their massive popular relief efforts during the Vietnamese famine, which, much like the Irish famine in Great Britain, had much to do with French and Japanese colonial adminstration forwarding Vietnamese food to their own countries while the Vietnamese were starving.

This independence, however, was not due to last. With the Japanese surrender, the French anted "their" colony back, but met fierce Vietnamese resistance. The Vietnamese, naturally, did not want to be re-colonised by the French now that they had regained independence, however briefly.

The First Indochina War (in Vietnamese known as the French War) was what followed, with French troops and the Vietnamese Imperial Army fighting Vietnamese independence fighters under the Việt Minh. The French, however, were devastated by World War Two and unable to keep a colonial war going for very long; they simply did not have the means. This is where the United States comes into the picture.

4. The French War becomes the American War (Second Indochina War)

After it became clear that the French could not keep up the war, the Geneva Accords of 1954 temporarily split the country along the 17th parallel, promising elections in 1956 (much as had been the case in Korea, and with similar success). This resulted in a communist North and a South led by the pro-American president Ngô Đình Diệm.

The United States, much in contradiction of their declaration that every nation has the right to self determination, had supported the French, who were not able to continue their war economically, since they had to focus on rebuilding France. For much of the First Indochina War, the United States stood for majority of the costs, as much as 70%. They also provided troops, equipment, and, eventually, they took over the war, partly motivated by the Domino Theory, which hypothesised that if one country falls to communism, its neighbours will soon follow. After the defeat on the Korean peninsula, which established a communist North Korea, and after the "Loss of China", they did not want yet another communist country in Eastern Asia. So they fought.

Worth noting is, though, that they did not fight the North much. Instead, they focused on finding "Communist collaborators" in the South, using this as an excuse to spray large parts of the South with Agent Orange, and to kill numerous civilians, oftentimes after torturing (or, in the case of women and girls, raping) them. Body counts became a competition, and any Vietnamese could be labelled a Communist collaborator, though the Americans did not always even bother claiming that. Entire villages were slaughtered, and racism among the American troops ran rampant, causing them to treat the Vietnamese as less than human. Song My/My Lai is perhaps the most well known massacre of a Southern Vietnamese town, but by far not the only one. This "search for communist collaborators" devastated the South, and is the reason why most Vietnamese refugees are originally from Southern Vietnam, contrary to what one would expect when knowing that it was North Vietnam who was the "communist enemy", and South Vietnam was supposed to be the United States' ally.

The U.S. were not able to successfully fight the North Vietnamese troops, and as the war dragged on, it became obvious that the United States would not be able to win. So, instead, they tried to find a way to retreat without being humiliated.

5. "Vietnamisation" of the War

This, along with a constantly worsening public opinion, led to the "Vietnamisation" of the war, meaning that the United States would remove its troops and leave the South Vietnamese to fend for themselves. What followed rather soon was the Fall of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, which was captured by Northern troops. Thus, Vietnam was united under the North Vietnamese, with Lê Duẩn (General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam since 1960) as fe facto head of state.

6. Other Aspects Worth Noting

The Vietnam War was very useful for South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee, who offered the United States South Korean military support in exchange for economic support for the South Korean economy. Additionally, he used it as leverage to keep the U.S. "tame" regarding some of his policies that the U.S. government would not otherwise have accepted as easily as they did within this context.

South Korean troops were known as some of the most brutal ones towards the South Vietnamese civilians.

Additionally, calling it the "Vietnam War" is misleading, since the Americans also bombed parts of Laos and Cambodia, despite not formally being at war with them. The North Vietnamese fighters got much of their supplies through mountain paths in these countries, which, to the United States, meant they were free game. This, however, is not usually mentioned in discussions of the war, nor is the Third Indochina War, in which Vietnamese troops invaded neighbouring Laos and Cambodia, and which forced China to intervene, making use of the domino theory themselves, claiming Vietnam had to be stopped from throwing its neighbours into chaos.

Sources:

Lecture materials (will not disclose the names of my lecturers/my university for privacy reasons)

Brocheux, Pierre: Ho Chi Minh. A Biography

Hägerdal, Hans: Vietnams historia

Immerwahr, Daniel: How to Hide an Empire. A Short History of the Greater United States

Kim, Byung-Kook & Ezra F. Vogel: The Park Chung Hee Era. The Transformation of South Korea

Smedberg, Marco: Vietnamkrigen 1880-1980

Turse, Nick: Kill Anything That Moves. The Real American War in Vietnam

Young, Marilyn B., John J. Fitzgerald & A. Tom Grunfeld: The Vietnam War. A History in Documents

See also: Snow in Vietnam (Amy M. Le), All They Carried (Tim O'Brien), The War Prayer (Mark Twain) for fictionalised narratives.

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