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Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

tokyoweekender.com

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Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#51

Post by lubujackson »

WildRyc wrote: post #2

The writing style has me in stiches, it feels at odds with the layout and imagery, but completely fits the character of the story in question. I wonder how well a Real Housewives-style show would work set in the Sengoku-era.

Not exactly the same vibe, but I highly, highly recommend Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa. It follows Hideyoshi's weird rise to power and has a lot of the same focus of him doing counter-intuitive things and being weirdly convincing while navigating an era of warfare. Plus it is a great read - along with Musashi, by the same author.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#52

Post by Ray20 »

bloomingeek wrote: post #19
kybernetikos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a dumb saying. Good times are created by weak people working together to defeat strong people. Most hard times are created by "Strong Men" fighting each other. Just take a look around the world - is it countries under the sway of warlords that have the best times? Or is it countries where the institutions are stronger than the individuals, where rulers have been limited or deposed by groups of individual…

Just finished a book about the Hundred Years War, before that, one on the Thirty Years War. Both have a glaring similarity, the "weak people" were consistently plundered, raped and killed by the "strong" people. When will the working class people understand that the elite are just a few bad decisions away from their total destruction? (Here in the US we seem to be on some kind of precipice.)

>Here in the US we seem to be on some kind of precipice.

Aren't working class people in the US just recently choose the most anti-elite candidate possible just because (and fuck the consequences, let it all burn in hell)?

Working class people are understanding that the elite are just a few bad decisions away from their total destruction. And now they WILL make THE OTHERS to understand this.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#53

Post by Ray20 »

kybernetikos wrote: post #40
jmuguy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way of reading the saying is that the weak men are weak mentally, they're cruel and inept. So maybe outwardly "strong"... but not really.

It's a nice reading, and I do think that the ability to take the wider view, to be prepared to suffer and fight for principles rather than immediate personal gain, to band together with others even at personal cost is an enormous strength. I just don't think it's what people using this phrase mean.

>to be prepared to suffer and fight for principles rather than immediate personal gain, to band together with others even at personal cost is an enormous strength.

The more I think about it, the more I come to realization that all of this just fairy tales for children.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#54

Post by astrange »

divbzero wrote: post #43
pupppet wrote: post #9

With the quotes in the article title I was thinking dang how have I never heard of that anime.

That’s an anime that should be made.

Write the web novel and you can be that anime('s original source material).

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#55

Post by astrange »

Ray20 wrote: post #52
bloomingeek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just finished a book about the Hundred Years War, before that, one on the Thirty Years War. Both have a glaring similarity, the "weak people" were consistently plundered, raped and killed by the "strong" people. When will the working class people understand that the elite are just a few bad decisions away from their total destruction? (Here in the US we seem to be on some kind of precipice.)

>Here in the US we seem to be on some kind of precipice. Aren't working class people in the US just recently choose the most anti-elite candidate possible just because (and fuck the consequences, let it all burn in hell)? Working class people are understanding that the elite are just a few bad decisions away from their total destruction. And now they WILL make THE OTHERS to understand this.

The people you mentioned aren't working class, they're wealthy but blue-collar, ie petit-bourgeois or local gentry.

Though Americans don't have class consciousness anyway, or if they do it's based on style of consuming and not working.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#56

Post by vkou »

> Ujiharu ruled the strategically important Hitachi Province from the massive Oda Castle, whose entire complex was 4.6 times larger than Tokyo Dome.

Okay, that's very helpful, but what was the furnished and unfurnished, and unroofed square footage of it, measured in postage stamps?

This is such a disappointingly low-quality, high-fluff piece. And the fluff isn't even very engaging.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#57

Post by astrange »

Kon5ole wrote: post #50
kybernetikos wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really struggling to match your definitions of weak and strong here to anything like normal usage. I think you're saying that it's strong to be employed? I'm not really sure how that matches up to being against the things you mention in connection with "weak". Incidentally, I don't know if you intended this, but building roads and sewers and policing are, in most countries, socially funded programs.

It's a metaphor, "strong" and "weak" refers to the ability to overcome the "hard times", whatever that may be. Basically if you experienced the direct consequences of a "hard time" (a demagogue, a famine, a recession or financial crisis, SCRUM, or whatever) you will be more aware and resilient to allowing the things that caused that to happen than if you never experienced it. That's "strength". It is of course true,…

> This being Ycombinator one can consider the example of how any crazy idea gets funding during good times but during hard times the ideas that actually have legs remain. ;-)

Remember economics isn't a morality play where bad things are secretly good. The general principle is that a bad economy only has bad results and there's no reason to want one.

https://eml.berkeley.edu/~enakamura/papers/plucking.pdf

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#58

Post by mantas »

kybernetikos wrote: post #37
mantas wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ability to band together is a strength.

I agree, the ability to lend your strength to benefit others is a moral strength and it's key to human flourishing and achievement. Where I might disagree though is if you think that this is the kind of strength that most users of the phrase in question are thinking of.

TBH all the time I saw this phrase was about strong people in the broadest possible way. And always as a positive.

It’s very strange to see people defining strong in very narrow bigot way and then trying to spin the whole phrase into a negative. This thread is probably the first time I saw people take such turn.

It’s also very strange that people try to portray being weak as a positive. Sure, strong may have very different definitions from different people. Even borderline opposite. But turning the whole word into a negative… that reminds me of 1984. Weaknesses is strength, strength is weakness.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#59

Post by kybernetikos »

Ray20 wrote: post #53
kybernetikos wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nice reading, and I do think that the ability to take the wider view, to be prepared to suffer and fight for principles rather than immediate personal gain, to band together with others even at personal cost is an enormous strength. I just don't think it's what people using this phrase mean.

>to be prepared to suffer and fight for principles rather than immediate personal gain, to band together with others even at personal cost is an enormous strength. The more I think about it, the more I come to realization that all of this just fairy tales for children.

Of course! Fairy tales for children are how we communicate some of our best understandings of what it means to live a good life.

Many important things in life are fictions or rely on fictions - money, nations, property, family, art, justice, legitimacy, banks. All of them are fairytales. And like a fairy in Peter Pan, belief can make them real, powerful facts of our world while lack of belief can destroy them.

It works too - I know lots of real people who make the world a better place because of the fairy tales they choose to believe.

Re: Oda Ujiharu: Why the ‘weakest Samurai warlord’ is admired

#60

Post by Kon5ole »

astrange wrote: post #57
Kon5ole wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a metaphor, "strong" and "weak" refers to the ability to overcome the "hard times", whatever that may be. Basically if you experienced the direct consequences of a "hard time" (a demagogue, a famine, a recession or financial crisis, SCRUM, or whatever) you will be more aware and resilient to allowing the things that caused that to happen than if you never experienced it. That's "strength". It is of course true,…

> This being Ycombinator one can consider the example of how any crazy idea gets funding during good times but during hard times the ideas that actually have legs remain. ;-) Remember economics isn't a morality play where bad things are secretly good. The general principle is that a bad economy only has bad results and there's no reason to want one. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~enakamura/papers/plucking.pdf

Bad times are named "bad" for a reason of course, but there are many sayings - sayings being based on human observations throughout history - along the lines of "every cloud has a silver lining".

One that conceptually rhymes with the "bad times lead to good people" saying is "bad manners lead to good laws".

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