Reminds me of a funny video I saw that talked about some of the most famous Japanese warlords and their depiction in media; one of the warlords is often depicted as a funny monkey man but he was a brutal war criminal who tried to invade Korea and killed tons and tons of people, and he mentioned something about the other two but I can’t recall what it was exactly (I think one of them was Nobunaga who I think he said was the least worst of the bunch but still bad).
You get this simple philosophy here but the history behind the group is actually quite horrific (if I recall correctly, wikipedia even has a page just for Tibetan torture methods).
I hate how Nobunaga gets venerated as a god-general-statesman in cultural exports when he was just a ruthless conqueror the same as anyone else. I wish one one-hundredth of the ink spilled for him was spilled for the Ikko-Ikki peasant revolt he crushed. Were that the case, I might be able to successfully research it.
The whole Samurai caste is romanticized, especially outside of Japan. They were the ruthless, opportunistic enforcers of the hierarchy, not honorable warrior-scholars. Bushido is what led Japan down the path of imperialism and resulted in WWII.
There is a thesis that one of the main reason Hideyoshi ordered invasion of Korea was to actually get rid of the dregs of Sengoku period, if they succeeded it would be a bonus But they failed on both fronts what ensued was three biggest and bloodiest civil wars campaigns in feudal Japan history, only then they settled up and became one of the most useless parasitic classes in history of mankind. And eventually they got outparasited by usurers and become prime source of imperialist lackeys.
There’s fun (and actually non bloody or horrible for once) example of the real Samurai ethos i read in book. I think it was in XVIII century, when a small and pretty isolated garrison of 200 men in mountains of central Japan got denounced to bakufu, and inspection turned out that basically nobody there was doing any samurai things, most of them even sold their swords and entire garrison just said “fuck this” and they were working in nearby pottery. Normally this would be horrible scandal ending up in the mass suicide order (bakufu did such things), but this particular pottery was famous for producing very high quality tea sets for arsitocrats so entire case was hushed.
The Ikkō-ikki bands of the 16th century, due largely to their origins as countryside mobs, used quite varied armor and armament. Many wore the more traditional priest robes, with varying degrees and types of armor. Some wore various sorts of helmets, while others opted for the straw hat and cloak of a peasant. Naginata remained very common, along with a variety of swords and daggers, and a limited number of arquebuses. Finally, while not truly armor nor armament, a very common item wielded by the mobs of Ikkō-ikki priest warriors was a banner with a Buddhist slogan written upon it. Some of the more common slogans included the nenbutsu chant “Hail to Buddha Amida!” (Namu Amida Butsu; 南無阿弥陀仏) and “He who advances is sure of salvation, but he who retreats will go to hell”.[3]
Iirc at some point in Sengoku era they controlled entire Kaga province for years, but fell later as daimyos consolidated the power.
There was also armed buddhists temples, like Mount Hiei or temple at Osaka had few thousands armed monks at some points, and they were better armed than all feudal armies since some temples in Japan were for some reason arm producing centers and that included firearms. Unfortunately the usual organised and armed religion thing ticked off for them and unlike most ikko-ikki they were scourge of nearby territories, once even almost completely torched Kyoto in probably biggest and most violent monachomachia in history of mankind. Wiping them out was really best thing Nobunaga did.
“Ninja” were mainly samurai doing spy shit. They might disguise themselves as peasants, but usually they were from the warrior caste acting on behalf of their lord. The whole “sneaky guys in black pajamas” was something that came from plays where people playing ninjas would dress in black to hide in the background of a scene. Then they would enter the stage and it would look like they appeared out of nowhere.
No, ikko-ikki were the local self-defence groups made of petty samurai, armed monks and peasantry in the Sengoku era, they were reaction to feudal warlords doing usual warlordy things.
Ninjas, more properly called shinobi, were just medieval kind of intelligence operatives working on behalf of usual feudal lords. They mainly did spying and occasional assassination or sabotage, and didn’t dressed funny.
Not to my knowledge, but as I said I have mostly failed at successfully researching them. I think ninjas were mostly peasants and samurai working on behalf of warlords, whereas the Ikko-Ikki was more of a grassroots movement.
lol, was it this guy, Hideyoshi Toyotomi? He was in every Onimusha game too as Nobunaga’s sidekick before becoming the ruler of Japan between the third and fourth games. The final Onimusha game is actually all about his atrocities- invading “the continent”(the country is never specified), massacring civilians, outlawing Christianity and killing all Western missionaries (though that last one doesn’t sound too bad)
The funny thing is that he ends up completely exonerated in Onimusha lore- he was just a smol bean who became possessed by demons and he feels real bad about it
outlawing Christianity and killing all Western missionaries (though that last one doesn’t sound too bad)
Most of work here was done later by Tokugawas: Ieyasu, Hidetada and Iemitsu, but despite brutality it was a W (most of said brutality happened really during Iemitsu reign). Hideyoshi observed in real time how christianity served as softener for colonialism and it’s clear he wanted to avoid it, though preferably keeping trade with Europeans. Interesting fact is that christianity was pretty thin in Japan as in case of both Sekigahara campaign and later sieges of Osaka, overwhelming most of Japanese christians supported Hideyoshi’s heir Hideyori.
Nobunaga seems to be portrayed as a literally demonic monster in a lot of Japanese games and media. Same as Muramasa being reduced to a stock villain whose swords are magical and evil.
Wasn’t Muramasa just a competing swordsmith? It’d be like if that one guy in ancient Mesopotamia with the shitty copper was turned into some kind of Final Fantasy final boss.
I don’t think he was even a competitor. Apparently Masamune was like 300 years prior. Supposedly Murmasa’s school made swords for many of Tokugawa’s troops and retainers so when the Tokugawa’s had disasters playwrights would spice things up by attributing it to Masamune’s demon swords or something.
Stories don’t have to be true, and one story I did read was about them being competing contemporaries trying to make a superior blade, one of them cutting too forcefully and the other being very gentle and smooth, or something like that.
I did like the Taoist idea I read a while back about a blade being sharp enough to sort of unmake something as it cuts through it, keeping its edge by not hitting any points of resistance that it didn’t need to.
I even worked that into a key moment in my second book, from an antagonist character that had a habit of breaking swords a bit too much before that moment.
Reminds me of a funny video I saw that talked about some of the most famous Japanese warlords and their depiction in media; one of the warlords is often depicted as a funny monkey man but he was a brutal war criminal who tried to invade Korea and killed tons and tons of people, and he mentioned something about the other two but I can’t recall what it was exactly (I think one of them was Nobunaga who I think he said was the least worst of the bunch but still bad).
You get this simple philosophy here but the history behind the group is actually quite horrific (if I recall correctly, wikipedia even has a page just for Tibetan torture methods).
I hate how Nobunaga gets venerated as a god-general-statesman in cultural exports when he was just a ruthless conqueror the same as anyone else. I wish one one-hundredth of the ink spilled for him was spilled for the Ikko-Ikki peasant revolt he crushed. Were that the case, I might be able to successfully research it.
The whole Samurai caste is romanticized, especially outside of Japan. They were the ruthless, opportunistic enforcers of the hierarchy, not honorable warrior-scholars. Bushido is what led Japan down the path of imperialism and resulted in WWII.
This doesn’t excuse them from being forces of reaction, but they did become much more scholarly after they stopped having wars to fight.
There is a thesis that one of the main reason Hideyoshi ordered invasion of Korea was to actually get rid of the dregs of Sengoku period, if they succeeded it would be a bonus But they failed on both fronts what ensued was three biggest and bloodiest civil wars campaigns in feudal Japan history, only then they settled up and became one of the most useless parasitic classes in history of mankind. And eventually they got outparasited by usurers and become prime source of imperialist lackeys.
There’s fun (and actually non bloody or horrible for once) example of the real Samurai ethos i read in book. I think it was in XVIII century, when a small and pretty isolated garrison of 200 men in mountains of central Japan got denounced to bakufu, and inspection turned out that basically nobody there was doing any samurai things, most of them even sold their swords and entire garrison just said “fuck this” and they were working in nearby pottery. Normally this would be horrible scandal ending up in the mass suicide order (bakufu did such things), but this particular pottery was famous for producing very high quality tea sets for arsitocrats so entire case was hushed.
Even when you fight Nobunaga in media you’re usually doing it as the stooge of some other warlord
There definitely needs to be more media featuring the Ikko-Ikki. So many fascinating stories to tell.
Iirc at some point in Sengoku era they controlled entire Kaga province for years, but fell later as daimyos consolidated the power.
There was also armed buddhists temples, like Mount Hiei or temple at Osaka had few thousands armed monks at some points, and they were better armed than all feudal armies since some temples in Japan were for some reason arm producing centers and that included firearms. Unfortunately the usual organised and armed religion thing ticked off for them and unlike most ikko-ikki they were scourge of nearby territories, once even almost completely torched Kyoto in probably biggest and most violent monachomachia in history of mankind. Wiping them out was really best thing Nobunaga did.
This is an entire section of history I know next to nothing about. I think I’ll enjoy finding more.
Always fun to play as in total war
Were the Ikko-Ikki peasants the ones who became ninjas?
“Ninja” were mainly samurai doing spy shit. They might disguise themselves as peasants, but usually they were from the warrior caste acting on behalf of their lord. The whole “sneaky guys in black pajamas” was something that came from plays where people playing ninjas would dress in black to hide in the background of a scene. Then they would enter the stage and it would look like they appeared out of nowhere.
No, ikko-ikki were the local self-defence groups made of petty samurai, armed monks and peasantry in the Sengoku era, they were reaction to feudal warlords doing usual warlordy things.
Ninjas, more properly called shinobi, were just medieval kind of intelligence operatives working on behalf of usual feudal lords. They mainly did spying and occasional assassination or sabotage, and didn’t dressed funny.
Not to my knowledge, but as I said I have mostly failed at successfully researching them. I think ninjas were mostly peasants and samurai working on behalf of warlords, whereas the Ikko-Ikki was more of a grassroots movement.
lol, was it this guy, Hideyoshi Toyotomi? He was in every Onimusha game too as Nobunaga’s sidekick before becoming the ruler of Japan between the third and fourth games. The final Onimusha game is actually all about his atrocities- invading “the continent”(the country is never specified), massacring civilians, outlawing Christianity and killing all Western missionaries (though that last one doesn’t sound too bad)
The funny thing is that he ends up completely exonerated in Onimusha lore- he was just a smol bean who became possessed by demons and he feels real bad about it
Yesssssss, that’s the guy! He did so much monstrous stuff but he’s usually depicted in a goofy manner!
Most of work here was done later by Tokugawas: Ieyasu, Hidetada and Iemitsu, but despite brutality it was a W (most of said brutality happened really during Iemitsu reign). Hideyoshi observed in real time how christianity served as softener for colonialism and it’s clear he wanted to avoid it, though preferably keeping trade with Europeans. Interesting fact is that christianity was pretty thin in Japan as in case of both Sekigahara campaign and later sieges of Osaka, overwhelming most of Japanese christians supported Hideyoshi’s heir Hideyori.
Nobunaga seems to be portrayed as a literally demonic monster in a lot of Japanese games and media. Same as Muramasa being reduced to a stock villain whose swords are magical and evil.
Wasn’t Muramasa just a competing swordsmith? It’d be like if that one guy in ancient Mesopotamia with the shitty copper was turned into some kind of Final Fantasy final boss.
I don’t think he was even a competitor. Apparently Masamune was like 300 years prior. Supposedly Murmasa’s school made swords for many of Tokugawa’s troops and retainers so when the Tokugawa’s had disasters playwrights would spice things up by attributing it to Masamune’s demon swords or something.
Stories don’t have to be true, and one story I did read was about them being competing contemporaries trying to make a superior blade, one of them cutting too forcefully and the other being very gentle and smooth, or something like that.
That seems to be how they’re frequently depicted in media. And also lol “oh no my sword is too good at cutting! It’s evil cutting!” playwrights lol.
I did like the Taoist idea I read a while back about a blade being sharp enough to sort of unmake something as it cuts through it, keeping its edge by not hitting any points of resistance that it didn’t need to.
I even worked that into a key moment in my second book, from an antagonist character that had a habit of breaking swords a bit too much before that moment.
Would you happen to have a link handy? A cursory google search yields nothing but the expected anti-Maoist trash
Sorry, forgot to reply; I believe the info was here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy