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Samurai City

worksinprogress.co

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Re: Samurai City

#31

Post by justanotherjoe »

sixo wrote: post #4
Morromist wrote: post #3

One thing that I find interesting about this is that "samurai lived in dignified but extreme poverty" but never really did anything to threaten the state and take its riches for themselves for hundreds of years, despite all of them being crammed together with lots of opportunity to organize an enormous rebellion right in the city where the king lived. Perhaps they didn't think of it as poverty. Anyway, great read.

I suspect that, in reality, it is the indignity of poverty which motivates people to take up arms against each other. So long as dignity is retained, poverty may be emotionally bearable (perhaps to the point of actual starvation, when dignity becomes unsustainable).

Pain without suffering vs suffering without pain. Now everyone have smartphones but dignity feels like it's getting lower.

Re: Samurai City

#33

Post by rawoke083600 »

Great article.. NGL, in about the first paragraph and visual intro, I already was hoping and wanting a real Samurai city MMO/RPG with a true vibrant city and interresting characters to explore..

Me (char) climbing the ranks and politics while hiding my secret ninja origin from the nobles trying to get closer to the shogun.. Sometimes doing side-quest in my Samurai outfit-and-skillset... and sometimes doing missions in my ninja-outfit-and-skillset..

But good article :) It's Friday and I'm feeling creative

Re: Samurai City

#34

Post by xg15 »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #10

> In a way, the Tokugawa system was a success. Japan experienced near-total peace between 1600 and the late nineteenth century, a remarkable achievement for a premodern society and a dramatic contrast to Europe or China, where tens of millions of people died in wars. > Tokugawa Edo stands as a monument to the power of rent-seekers, producing little and demanding immense resources as a condition of civil peace. The tw…

Ah, don't we love trolley problems. Because there are absolutely no other options...

Re: Samurai City

#35

Post by 578_Observer »

Banker in rural Japan here. I lend to small family businesses, so I read this from an odd angle.

The piece frames Edo as a gilded prison that produced little. True for the samurai half. But the merchant class it created in the Low City didn't just give us ukiyo-e and kabuki. It gave us companies that are still open.

Part of my job is assessing old family firms for credit, and a number of them trace their founding to this period. Soy sauce brewers, inns, sake makers, metalworking shops, the kind of suppliers who fed and equipped that captive elite. The forced consumption the author calls parasitic was, from the shop's side, three centuries of stable demand. You don't need to bet on a boom when the daimyo is legally required to come back every year and spend.

What strikes me now, screening these businesses, is that the survivors optimized for the opposite of what we usually praise. Not growth. Continuity. A shop that has kept the same name and the same customers for 200 years is doing something the prison framing misses. The prison was also a hothouse.

I don't know how much this generalizes. But the parasite and the thing that outlived the host turned out to be the same city.

Re: Samurai City

#36

Post by aquariusDue »

Morromist wrote: post #5
sixo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that, in reality, it is the indignity of poverty which motivates people to take up arms against each other. So long as dignity is retained, poverty may be emotionally bearable (perhaps to the point of actual starvation, when dignity becomes unsustainable).

That's pretty wise. I never considered that. During the very late part of the edo period China had the Taiping Rebellion, the deadliest religious civil war in human history by some meansures. I've read that it was caused by a very complicated mix of things, one of which was resentment of the northern Manchu ethnic group which ruled China, combined with terrible floods and famine. Perhaps that's a case where lack of d…

Don't leave us hanging! Please mention the book's name and author so others like myself can mean to read it too.

I'm just half joking, I suffer from a large historical blindspot for that part of the world and I'm trying to collect a list of books to read over the next two years to address this perceived (by myself only) issue.

Re: Samurai City

#38

Post by amunozo »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #10

> In a way, the Tokugawa system was a success. Japan experienced near-total peace between 1600 and the late nineteenth century, a remarkable achievement for a premodern society and a dramatic contrast to Europe or China, where tens of millions of people died in wars. > Tokugawa Edo stands as a monument to the power of rent-seekers, producing little and demanding immense resources as a condition of civil peace. The tw…

You can have Russia, a rigid stable social system based around millions of rent seeking parasitic landlords and frequent social upheaval and conflict and open warfare.

Re: Samurai City

#39

Post by froh »

nvader wrote: post #22

Loved it. This is some necessary background that helps me contextualize a few other oddities of the time period that I have had floating in my short term memory - Miyamoto Musashi (d. 1645) - Tsujigiri, random slashing of bystanders - the Great wave off Kanagawa, painted towards the end of the Edo period - Shinobi evolving from mercenaries into secret police

the great wave is a woodblock print.

I wonder: how historically accurate is the animated feature film "Miss Hokusai"

it gives a great glimpse at the time and life of the artist.

Re: Samurai City

#40

Post by watwut »

Morromist wrote: post #3

One thing that I find interesting about this is that "samurai lived in dignified but extreme poverty" but never really did anything to threaten the state and take its riches for themselves for hundreds of years, despite all of them being crammed together with lots of opportunity to organize an enormous rebellion right in the city where the king lived. Perhaps they didn't think of it as poverty. Anyway, great read.

My interpretation of the revolutions is that they happen only when the government as such becomes weak and is unable to perform the constant suppression. They do not happen just because the conditions are bad.

Bad condition themselves are not enough, revolution requires people to think at least some of them can actually gain something.

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