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William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

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Re: William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

#51

Post by mariuolo »

rsynnott wrote: post #14
dfxm12 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was there really a legitimate legal issue needed to be accounted for at the time, across these borders? Additionally, ostensibly to Adams, it would have been something he would have to answer to his creator for moreso than the crown or Shogun, if he was a true believer anyway.

> Additionally, ostensibly to Adams, it would have been something he would have to answer to his creator for moreso than the crown or Shogun, if he was a true believer anyway. I mean, bear in mind that about 30 years before Adams was born, Henry VIII had broken with Rome so that he could get a divorce. Religious views on the sanctity of marriage in England were, ah, evolving rapidly at this point.

> Henry VIII had broken with Rome so that he could get a divorce

As far as I know, Henry VIII never divorced any of his wives, they all ended because of annulment or death.

Re: William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

#52

Post by rsynnott »

mariuolo wrote: post #51
rsynnott wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Additionally, ostensibly to Adams, it would have been something he would have to answer to his creator for moreso than the crown or Shogun, if he was a true believer anyway. I mean, bear in mind that about 30 years before Adams was born, Henry VIII had broken with Rome so that he could get a divorce. Religious views on the sanctity of marriage in England were, ah, evolving rapidly at this point.

> Henry VIII had broken with Rome so that he could get a divorce As far as I know, Henry VIII never divorced any of his wives, they all ended because of annulment or death.

I mean, Henry certainly _claimed_ that it was an annulment, but it was self-granted, on a basis seemingly made up for the occasion, so realistically considering it to be an annulment was a _bit_ of a stretch.

(Not that this was exactly unprecedented; the whole thing kind of came to a head because the Pope wouldn't grant a spurious annulment to cover a divorce to Henry, but various Popes had certainly granted dodgy annulments to various monarchs _before_.)

Re: William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

#54

Post by kaesar14 »

cm2012 wrote: post #17
kaesar14 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve felt like it’s deviated quite a bit, but it’s well made nonetheless

The new show has been made more accurate to the time period, they had historical experts come in. Plus the guy who plays Toranaga is an amateur historian of the time period and helped a lot.

That's all well and good but I'd have preferred they keep some of the story points from the book like the emphasis on Blackthorn learning Japanese, and the theming overall of the book being how Blackthorn perceives the Japanese vs what it is now where it's more of how the Japanese perceive Blackthorn. Still a good show.

Re: William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

#55

Post by the_af »

Aerroon wrote: post #45
the_af wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also ninjas are depicted as super-powerful badasses. Which fits the legend, certainly, but isn't particularly realistic. It's very likely ninja (or "shinobi", if you're meticulous) didn't exist at all. There must have been spies and assassins, which are already present in Chinese culture which was a big influence in Japanese culture, but the ninja as a stealthy infiltrator, wearing black clothes and special weaponr…

The first attack was a secretive Buddhist assassination organization called Amida Tong. Not ninja. Ninjas will appear later in an even more stupid way and I hope they heavily diverge from the book there.

Let's hope!

But... this being a work of fiction, I'd forgive them a bit of thrilling ninja action. As long as everybody understands they are like dragons in Game of Thrones: made up.

Re: William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

#56

Post by the_af »

hoseja wrote: post #50
midnight2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yeah, the racism is really played up quite a lot in that show. I'd be fine with the basic premise (it's completely OK to depict the Japanese as wary of whites and finding some aspects of their foreign culture off-putting, and the main character being especially brought up to hate them) but damn, they really go out of their way to just repeatedly state, literally: "White people are monstrous and disgusting, they will…

It's just a narrative trope to make the main character, Mizu, an "onryo" and an outcast. It's purposefully jarring that she considers herself "monstruous" but we, the spectators, see she is quite nice, actually.

Calling this "anti-white" (as the now flagged comment this) reveals more of the prejudice of the people claiming so.

> White people are monstrous and disgusting [...] it is completely OK to despise them and all prejudice against them is justified

Many Japanese characters in the show are equally monstruous, and the show's subtext is that it is not ok to discriminate Mizu due to her heritage.

Re: William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

#57

Post by riku_iki »

the_af wrote: post #39
riku_iki wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This collection doesn't address those criticisms -- it's more of a literary analysis than a set of fact checks. many things likely can't be fact checked, e.g. what kind of warriors/spies ninjas really were.

True, it's hard to tell fact from fiction, especially because much of what is known about samurai, ninja, the whole "bushido" nonsense, comes from the later Edo period, in many cases by writers who were romanticizing the olden days. I think most mainstream historians believe ninjas (as depicted in pop culture: assassins clad in black, with almost supernatural infiltration abilities, armed with shuriken, "opposed" to…

> the whole "bushido" nonsense, comes from the later Edo period

It doesn't look like bushido is nonsense. There are some works from late Sengoku/early Edo period which describe concepts, so likely they carry some knowledge from period of civil wars.

Re: William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

#58

Post by the_af »

riku_iki wrote: post #57
the_af wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, it's hard to tell fact from fiction, especially because much of what is known about samurai, ninja, the whole "bushido" nonsense, comes from the later Edo period, in many cases by writers who were romanticizing the olden days. I think most mainstream historians believe ninjas (as depicted in pop culture: assassins clad in black, with almost supernatural infiltration abilities, armed with shuriken, "opposed" to…

> the whole "bushido" nonsense, comes from the later Edo period It doesn't look like bushido is nonsense. There are some works from late Sengoku/early Edo period which describe concepts, so likely they carry some knowledge from period of civil wars.

There was basically no "bushido" in the Sengoku period, beyond what would be the regular vassal/lord relationship common to most feudal cultures. Different samurai clans had different ideas of which rituals, behaviors and traditions to follow, so there is no single idea of a "samurai code". Martial skills were probably a common factor.

"Bushido", the word itself, is relatively "new" in Japanese history. As a concept, it was written about mostly during the Edo period (and later), after the samurai were effectively de-militarized and formalized into a fixed caste and basically became bureaucrats, and no longer had major wars to be involved in. This period spawned works such as the Hagakure, which was written by a bureaucrat who longed for the olden days of samurai "virtue", and exaggerated and romanticized a way of life he didn't experience himself. Apparently later Japan bought into this idea of a glorious and honor-bound "samurai" past, but this was mostly made up.

So while there's a core of truth to it -- different samurai clans may or may not have followed different codes of behavior, who weren't called "bushido" back then -- it was heavily romanticized, exaggerated and turned into a mythical virtue of the samurai by later writers who weren't alive when the samurai were actual warriors.

Which, as a shortcut, I called "nonsense".

Re: William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

#59

Post by riku_iki »

the_af wrote: post #58
riku_iki wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the whole "bushido" nonsense, comes from the later Edo period It doesn't look like bushido is nonsense. There are some works from late Sengoku/early Edo period which describe concepts, so likely they carry some knowledge from period of civil wars.

There was basically no "bushido" in the Sengoku period, beyond what would be the regular vassal/lord relationship common to most feudal cultures. Different samurai clans had different ideas of which rituals, behaviors and traditions to follow, so there is no single idea of a "samurai code". Martial skills were probably a common factor. "Bushido", the word itself, is relatively "new" in Japanese history. As a concept,…

> beyond what would be the regular vassal/lord relationship common to most feudal cultures

"vassal/lord relationships" could be very different in very different cultures. If it was common for Sengoku samurais to commit sepuku on order of lord, then this is concept/code of bushido which was not present in say majority of Western feudal cultures.

Re: William Adams: English Advisor to the Shogun

#60

Post by the_af »

riku_iki wrote: post #59
the_af wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was basically no "bushido" in the Sengoku period, beyond what would be the regular vassal/lord relationship common to most feudal cultures. Different samurai clans had different ideas of which rituals, behaviors and traditions to follow, so there is no single idea of a "samurai code". Martial skills were probably a common factor. "Bushido", the word itself, is relatively "new" in Japanese history. As a concept,…

> beyond what would be the regular vassal/lord relationship common to most feudal cultures "vassal/lord relationships" could be very different in very different cultures. If it was common for Sengoku samurais to commit sepuku on order of lord, then this is concept/code of bushido which was not present in say majority of Western feudal cultures.

It wasn't very common for samurai to commit seppuku voluntarily. More frequently it was "you do this or else...". There are some examples where it happened, but not enough to consider it standard practice or "code".

Putting enemies to the sword, one way or the other, was also common in Europe. The difference is that Christianity frowned upon suicide (either voluntary or forced).

Samurai defeated in battle ran away to fight another day, like most humans.

"Bushido" is supposed to be more than seppuku anyway. This notion of the samurai as someone extremely loyal and honor-bound to follow his lord or commit suicide otherwise is a fiction.

Like I said, Japan did some nation-building on top of this myth, but it was mostly a development of writers who lived past the Sengoku, when samurai were no longer warriors.

Think of bushido as Arthurian lore: it's fiction, and people of several times updated it and added to it, and built a mythos around it. Even the katana as the "soul of the samurai" is a later day fiction; samurai during the Sengoku prized katanas (or their predecesors, actually) but they didn't particularly use them except as sidearms; it was the spear and the bow that were the "true" samurai weapons; the daisho was only codified as the "samurai symbol" once the warring period had mostly ended. It's also an invention...

Meanwhile, the real samurai were warriors and did what warriors of every culture did: war among each other, kill things, and amass fortune when they could.

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