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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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chapotraphouse
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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 definitely needs to be more media featuring the Ikko-Ikki. So many fascinating stories to tell.
Always fun to play as in total war
Even when you fight Nobunaga in media you're usually doing it as the stooge of some other warlord
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.
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!
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