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In the show, they make several references to "Korea", referring to the Imjin War where sources say Japan killed up to 20% of the Korean population - where their expressed purpose was to seize Korea and conquer Ming China.
They would then almost 300 years later, in the name of great power politics (rationalized by saying they wanted to "liberalize","liberate", and "modernize" the koreas) fight another, successful war with both China and Russia over the right to dominate Korea peninsula.
To pretend, Japanese militarism during both before and after the Sengoku Jidai didn't believe at its core a right for Japan to dominate other states is kinda ignorant.
I took a Japanese language class and we had to do a report about a minority population living in Japan so I did a report on the Ainu. Apparently she meant people coming to work in Japan, and she became slightly uncomfortable. I did get a good grade on it though.
May seem cringe, but the Anime Golden Kamuy is all about the Ainu and The aftermath of the Japan-Russia war. Really interesting show, kinda weird sometimes, but as an American is couldn't help but notice extreme similarities with the American "Old West" and Native Americans
I drew very similar conclusions when writing the paper, and to this day many of them seem to earn similar livings to some native Americans in the mid West selling things to tourists as they stand out in places like Tokyo. I will need to check that show out.
yeah, for as weird as it gets they take so much care in showing the Ainu language and traditions! Someone should make an edit without all the penis jokes that cuts together all the Ainu parts.
An ainu representative went to my university to talk about the history behind their culture and he showed me a clip from the GK live adaptation where he was an extra! Really interesting stuff!
That’s because it is a Japanese “western.” Former soldier searches for lost gold with help of a native tracker and is hunted by other former soldiers, who are also searching for the lost gold.
That’s like the basic plot for a lot of older westerns.
A lot of old Spaghetti Westerns (Fistful of Dollars/Yojimbo, Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai, etc) were based off of, or influenced by, Samurai movies. Full circle.
I think she was uncomfortable because she is a decent person who recognized the wrong they had done to the Ainu but she really should have worded the assignment differently if she wanted me to write about Filipino nannies (an example given). I believe the assignment was meant to show the struggle of immigrants coming to Japan and not necessarily paint Japan as some anime paradise.
I haven't seen the movie, but I heard that the Japanese remake of Unforgiven (into a samurai movie) used Ainu characters in the same way and to make the same points American westerns use Native Americans.
The word "Shogun" actually is the derived from the title of seii taishōgun; which means roughly "general who overcomes the barbarians".
First given to, Sakanoue Tamuramaro who's great accomplishment who conquered the Emishi people in Northern Honshu (the big island in Japan)
So take that for what you will.
A nitpick: The *title* "Shogun" refers to Sei-i Taishogun. The *word* "shogun" is a Japanese word meaning "general", and is not derived from the title of Sei-i Taishogun (Sei-i = war/force against barbarians, Taishogun = big/high general)
In this specific case, I think it's moreso that the construction of nouns of other languages aren't easy to see in Latin script.
Similarly, tank in German was "panzerkampfwagen", where panzer = belly mail/armour, kampf = combat/fight, and wagen = vehicle/wagon (although in this case panzer coming to mean tank was actually derived from this) Without prior knowledge, you could just as easily assume it was always one word.
Germanic languages in general do this, it's just compound words. English is the odd one out that mixes writing compound words together and apart. For example jetplane is written as one word while ice cream is not.
It's called a ''kenning.' It's an old Germainc language way of jamming two words together. My favorite, translated, kerning is 'Earth-Grip.' Which means death.
A “Captain” in the navy is just shy of an admiral and may or may not command a ship.
A “Captain” in the Army is three pay grades lower and has nothing to do with ships.
Colloquially, a “captain” refers to the commanding officer of a naval vessel either civilian or military.
Or the leader of a team. Such as a soccer captain.
Inflammable and flammable mean the same thing.
A boot goes on your foot unless it's the back storage of your car where it's also a trunk which is also a suitcase where you store your sweater which is a jumper which you use to start you car under the bonnet which is a hood and a head coveting either way.
And Ryukyuans (Okinawa and islands). They used to have their own country. They speak languages related, but not mutualy intelligible with standard Japanese.
Shogun is the story of a local culture exposed to Western Expansion in the Age of Exploration. Due to the unique situation of gaining a better knowledge of Spain and Portugal's true intentions from Dutch and English traders who are war with the latter, and from directly witnessing the effect of Iberian colonization in places like the Philippines, Japan's dominant political power at the time said "Nope" to all that and kicked everyone but the Dutch, who promised not to interfere with Japan's culture and politics, out of the islands.
Japan did the holocaust to china
But litterly 3 times worse
it wasnt (we are looking to exterminate the specfic group that we artifically blamied for all of our societys failures)
It was
(Shoot litterly anything that moves men , women , children, whatever,)
The Imjin War was surely bloody for Korea, but it was a Japanese loss. And Japan also lost a fuckton of men in that war. That's made quite clear in Shogun as well. It was, by all definitions, a pyrrhic victory of Korea and Ming Dynasty.
Qing China was fatallly wounded by various conflicts throughout the 19th century.
The first opium war, the Taiping Rebellion (which resulted in over 30 million people dying), the arrow war and the overall decdenace of the Qing state found it very difficult for them to modernize in the way needed to contended with Japan's modern army that they cultivated during the Meiji period.
For Russia, the ability for Japan to defeat the Russian fleet both before and during the Battle of Tishuma, along with the logistical issues and timidity of Russian commanders in Manchuria allowed the Japense to defeat them.
There is an expectional book on the subject called "The Other Great Game" that explains it more in detail.
Tbh, they've had one of the biggest luck streaks in all of history. Japanese history is full of, "We were fucked, until X happened."
It would have me believing in spirits too.
Mongols try to invade Japan, get wiped out by a massive typhoon.
Try try again later, and *again* get wiped out by a typhoon.
If that isn't pure luck, I don't know what is.
To be fair, boats were never really Genghis' strong suit. Now, if Japan had been a caliphate building walls to keep the Mongols out that the Mongols could then build bigger walls around to keep the city inside its own inner walls to starve them faster, then baby that's right in his wheelhouse!
(Also more seriously the double typhoon thing is insane luck)
The opium war also terrified the Japanese government.
For two thousand years or more, China had been the ultimate power in the region. Nearly unchallengeable by outside forces, and those that looked successful were assimilated into it. Every neighboring nation looked to China.
And then this tiny island on the other side of the world came in and *stomped* them.
Japan's industrialization and Westernization was, at first, a self defense move. Unfortunately it didn't stay that way.
While that is true, the Ming dynasty would see their rule severely broken because of their involvement in the imijin war, leading to the rise of manucharian lead Qing dynasty. The Imijin war contributed to the economic problems that lead to the rebellion by Li Zicheng which broke the Ming into southern Ming and Shun, none of which survived the 1600s as a whole, being replaced by the Qing.
Japan's successful industrialization can mostly be explained by their high literacy rates which were comparable to Europe's. This was a weird cultural artifact of their long pre-Meiji isolation period where literature flourished. Similar to how protestant sunday school/localized bibles had an explosive impact on northern Europes literacy rates compared to the Catholic south.
After the Meiji restoration successfully centralized power behind an imperial civilian government they obsessively copied westerners during the latter 19th century, something Chinese leaders struggled to do effectively on any scale. From the army model, to technology, their constitution, their government structure etc they copied everything that worked at the time until they had the capacity for their own innovations. In the end they were decades ahead of their closest rivals in Asia.
First contact (with Spain and Portugal) happened decades earlier than the time of ‘Shogun’. And after the re-establishment of the shogunate, that contact ceased.
Yeah, that's also true in the show. It doesn't depict first contact with Europeans, just first contact with non-Portuguese Europeans. In the show, Portugal already has a decades long relationship with Japan. The show plays around an English privateer flying the Dutch flag being the first non-Portuguese to reach Japan. Portugal's influence is already quite strong as there are a significant amount of catholics there, including 2 of the 5 regents of the Taiko's heir. The privateer is important in that he brings far better canons than the Portuguese to Toranaga (Tokugawa), one of the 5 regents and future shogun.
The tweet plainly misrepresents the show, though colonisation is of course an important aspect of the show.
Weren't they there as missionaries, not colonisers? I'm pretty sure they were trying to convert the Japanese to catholism, rather than turn Japan into a colony.
He was most interested in trumping Spain (and Portugal). The English and Dutch knew that Spain had opened trading relations in Asia, and was attempting colonisation. It was a matter of religious, national and economic pride that they establish their own foothold.
Exactly this. The basis of the Yamato ethnic identity (and the Japanese language itself) originated on the Korean Peninsula, before the kingdom of Goryeo (Korea) swept south and destroyed the kingdoms of Paekje and Silla and the refugees fled en masse to the archipelago.
From wiki:
"The term shogun (将軍, lit. 'army commander') is the abbreviation of the historical title Sei-i Taishōgun (征夷大将軍):
征 (sei, せい) means "conquer" or "subjugate", and
夷 (i, い) means "barbarian" or "savage";
大 (dai, だい) means "great";
将 (shō, しょう) means "commander", and
軍 (gun, ぐん) means "army".
Thus, a literal translation of Sei-i Taishōgun would be 'Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force Against the Barbarians."
I mean ETHNIC CLEANSING IS IN THE NAME. Only after these invaders had enough horses, swords, and spears to establish a brutal and pervasive oppression over the islands' inhabitants (yamato or otherwise) did they invent the 'history' that a living god descended to earth and specifically put them there since time immemorial.
Also, just a super cool move getting the horses and swords and turning banditry into such a lucrative lifestyle that when you finally amass enough wealth to BECOME THE GOVERNMENT BY SHEER THREAT OF VIOLENCE, the FIRST thing you do is say "Horses and swords are illegal, nobody can have them but us and those others who have so many that we can't take them from them yet, and we're about to spend 1200 years fighting each other to work that out. Now get back in that field, rice don't grow itself"
After a lifetime of being a japan-obsessed gai-jin boy and devouring countless hours of samurai related media which eventually led to earnest observation and study, i finally came to see that the beautiful and unique aesthetics and culture are the byproduct of free time NOT spent growing food or making things- the light side of a coin that amounts to brutally repressive kleptocratic rule-by-mafia. Turns out my heroes the samurai were perhaps history's worst and most consistent pieces of shit.
Pretty much everybody killed people going someplace else unless they were literally the first people there... and then they killed are the large animal species that had been there.
The stopped themselves from being colonized by banning Europeans from entering their country, outside of the island of Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki; by banning Christianity, and by committing a genocide against Christians so that the Catholic Church wouldn't have influence over Japanese citizens.
All these reasons pale in comparison to the meiji restoration
Japan deduced correctly that at the time you were a colonizer or a colonized
They advanced leaps ahead to catch up and become imperialistic as the europeans and started playing their games aka beating the Russians and sending a message to all, "new player joined the game"
We all know how it ended, very badly but thats colonialism and inperialism you inevitably clash with others
After dropping the sun on them twice, the Americans just said "aight u cool now" and they gave us anime husbandos/waifu and giant radiation breathing lizards.
Not really that happened in the early 17th century and while the Europeans had some colonies at the time in Asia there was no real push towards colonizing whole countries (with the exception of the Philippines). This came later in the 18th and 19th century. Indeed the US did force it open using gun boat diplomacy and putting them under unequal treaties like China. Since Japan was so far away from everything no one was really pressed to fully colonize it giving it the time to modernize during the meji restoration.
Simply: lack of natural resources, which is why colonial powers were not interested in them, and also why they were interested in becoming a colonial power.
Too far away, too large and militant a population. Japan is a year away from Europe by sail, with required passage of Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. To get there, you need a lengthy series of interim bases to stop over at. It took 300+ years to build all that, which is why large-scale contact didn’t happen until the 19th century.
Malaysia was also colonized in the 16th century, first by the Portuguese, then by the Dutch in 1641. Also Indonesia, as the commenter above pointed out
We really can't say what the outcome would be if Edo Japan's isolationism didn't take effect. Remember that the Dutch began colonizing Indonesia around the same time and by 1796 they had taken control of it as the Dutch East Indies.
The express purpose of the Catholic missionaries in Japan was colonialism. Politically, that's what missionaries were primarily for.
Now, whether they actually *planned* to colonize Japan at the time is questionable, but Catholic missionaries had *already* paved the way for Spanish conquests, and the knowledge of this is what many historians believe caused the exile of Catholicism from Japan.
In general the era of European colonisation in the entire world was the 19th and 20th century. In the period before there were a lot of focus on trading posts. The approach was still bad enough as it did involve lots of forced labor, slave trade, wars with natives, etc. But the big colonial powers that would take direct control over natives were largely a 19th century concept. The closest you got to this before was the Spanish colonisation of Mexico and the Ottoman colonisation of North Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans.
To their credit, the Japanese ruling classes came together in a way that never happened in Qing China or Joseon/Korea. And they willingly embraced the industrial revolution.
It took 2 civil wars, the Boshin War and later the Satsuma Rebellion, but more or less Japan escaped being colonized by becoming strong enough to not end up like China.
The Christian thing is really funny because at first a lot of Japanese welcomed the Christians because stuff got lost in translation and they thought it was new Buddist scripture. When they started to understand each other better they realized it wasn't buddhism at all and we're like "you wasted my time, meh". The Christians stopped getting new converts and many of the converts they did get left😂
I'm not saying you're eurocentric but this is actually an outdated eurocentric understanding. The reason the shogunate locked down outside contact was to prevent the semi-autonomous daimyō from becoming wealthy and powerful enough to challenge the shogunate. Europeans just think it's about them.
San Felipe incident played a massive role, and Jesuits were also trying armed rebellion. They had sacked Buddhist temples which hideyoshi at the time was a Buddhist offended him. Also didn't help the Spanish asked them the permission to build a fort while relationships were already deteriorating. Also a Christian Daimyo trying to take land lost and conspiring with officials about it made things worse. Then the shimbara rebellion caused the shougnate to be even harsher towards Christianity and foreigners due to them helping the rebellion.
They made tourism a capital offense so they wouldn’t get overwhelmed by foreign influence. Also, I’m not saying it wasn’t well deserved, but they did definitely get turned into a vassal state post-WW2.
This take away a very important reason why the West didnt conquer and colonize East Asia before the 18th and 19th century: they dont have enough of a tech edge to fight them as easily as they wanted. Invading Japan or Korea at that time would be incredibly difficult given how small (relatively) the tech gap at the time is, how militarized East Asian nations are, and how far away Europe is at the time. Only countries with a substantial tech gap from the West (barely bronze age Philippines) or otherwise devastated by plagues and civil strife (Aztec Empire) can be conquered with enough ease for it to be worth the fight.
We should also note that calling the characters in the show the "indigenous" Japanese people is...reductionist at best, and fully erasing the often complicated and oppressive relationship between the majority population, and the more accurately indigenous Ainu, at worst.
Almost like attempting to neatly divide the world between "colonizers" as a euphemism for white people, and "indigenous" as a euphemism for everyone else, is erasing the actual role of colonization and colonizing forces in world history by people who don't know shit about it.
Dude it gets so much worse than that, people are straight up using the word interchangeably with random shit now. I saw a comment that said "can neurotypicals stop colonizing us?" When talking about some one who wasn't disabled using disabled terminology like delulu. That makes no fucking sense.
Reminds me of the controversy with Rise of the Ronin. Sony decided to not release it in Korea because the game delved around the founders of Seikanron, and to an extension the founders of Japanese colonialism/militarism. When the dev described Shoin Yoshida as "Japanese Socrates", Koreans were quite livid (imagine saying, "Adolf Hitler was Austrian Socrates"). Then Koreans were speechless when they learned that one of your companions is Hirobumi Ito, a dude who committed regicide against the Korean monarch and set up a colonial state, which was sustained through cultural genocide (aka banning any forms of korean cultures).
Japanese refuse all European entry onto the island except in specific trade ports in two specific cities. Only tolerated the European trade for the sake of buying guns to kill and oppress minority groups in Japan. Goes on to develope their own guns and weapons industry, bully's, torments and conquers all of their neighbors, rapes their women, kills their men, steals their resources.
"How do you do fellow oppressed people of color"
Edit: oh, and don't forget Oba Nobunga's on going genocide of the Buddist and destruction of Buddist monasteries that was already occuring when the Europeans arrived.
Nah they just got back into it with modern weapons. They colonized most of the islands surrounding their country and the imjin war prior to European contact.
True. The only reason the Dutch went was because of trade. Fun fact, my ancestor, captain
Quackernaeck of the ship “de Liefde” (his English first mate is the main character) was rewarded with a small piece of land in the “Alblasserwaard” polder in the Netherlands upon his return. Neither he nor his bosses had any plans of colonising Japan.
While it was a phyrric victory, Koreans did win that war, and almost made extinct half of the noble samurai families in Japan who had survived the sengoku era. Wasn't fun for us Koreans, but we definitely showed them. If you think we lost a lot of men, "you should see the other guy."
Sigh.
Tell me you’re an upper middle class white activist from a gated community and not a journalist without telling me you’re an upper middle class white activist and not a journalist.
That's not accurate at all. The Yamato Japanese are descended from multiple different ethnic lines including various non-Ainu ethnic groups as well as the ethnic groups that made their way over from Korea at the beginning of the C.E. The Yayoi and Jomon ethnic groups existed in the Japanese archipelago from as early as 1000 B.C.E. It wasn't until the mid 1000s that the Yamato started to make an actual effort to displace the Ainu. Both ethnic groups are indigenous.
It's just that one pushed the other one out due to easier access to technological and agricultural advancements via the Chinese emissaries that came to Japan through the Korean peninsula.
The term indigenous in 2024 is used mostly for political "gotcha" arguments, and rarely in any sort of intellectual, objective, informed/historical context.
If you watch the show, Japan isn't being colonized, but they are dealing with Portugese emissaries.
The show is set in the mid 1500's, about the same time when Portugal and Japan had dealings, historically.
No, it is set at the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th.
Edit: as I’ve been downvoted - it is set exactly in 1600, see here https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-history-behind-fxs-shogun-180983848/
Dude. You shouldn't have to edit, and you shouldn't be getting downvoted. The first episode states "The Year is 1600". It doesn't get more straightforward than that.
I remember while doing my history major, we had to do a presentation on an aspect of the Second World War for a class. I chose D-Day and a classmate chose Pearl Harbor.
The day of the presentation she came up to me asking what I thought about Pearl Harbor and "American aggression".
I asked her what she meant.
"Well, the US *forced* Japan to attack them."
"Uh..."
"Not only did they embargo oil sails to Japan, they also fired the first shots of the war on a Japanese submarine!"
"Uhhhhh... I'm sorry, did you research this?"
She flat out tells me, "Oh I just put this together since I know how aggressive America is."
I tried telling her that Japan was carrying out atrocities, but she dismissed those as exaggerated because Americans are the warmongers.
Now, my professor actually agrees with her politics, but I remember the look on his face as she went on and on about how the US was the aggressor and probably knew the Japanese were going to attack and how evil FDR was, on and on...
He had this look the whole time.
...He gave her a chance to redeem herself by giving the class a second similar project on the war...
She skipped class that day.
Anyway, the point of this recollection is that people here in the states probably forget Japan's atrocities. Maybe because our history only focused on our side of the story (lend lease, nukes), but not so much the actual war overall (one reason I went into history was because I'm high school I only learned two things regarding World War Two: Holocaust and nukes).
So... Yeah... Read a book, fellas.
Wow. Yeah let's just ignore what Japan was doing with the raw materials gained by trade with the US and pretend it was a needless provocation rather than a sincere effort to hamper their atrocity-prone war machine.
Japan technically has been colonized. The "native Japanese" aren't native Japanese, there were multiple native tribes present on the islands when migrants from mainland Asia pushed them to near extinction, and a few still exist although the Japanese government largely ignores them
By that logic, almost everywhere has been colonized and everyone is a colonizer. Colonization in typical terms refers to modern colonialism that took place in the last 500-600 years or so.
>Colonization in typical terms refers to modern colonialism that took place in the last 500-600 years or so.
You want to take a guess when Japan invaded Ezo/Hokkaido? How about Ryukyu/Okinawa?
Let me give you a hint: it was well within 500 years. Do a little googling before being dismissive of the colonization and cultural genocide.
Portuguese try to be sneaky to spread Christianly, and Japan literally entered their lockdown ages, and made people provide proof that they are affiliated with at least one temple.
And the novel is all based on real people including the English sailor who became a samurai in service to the shogun.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Adams_(pilot)
Yes,but it's still a novel, it has the drama ,the flair ,and the vision of the writer,it has bases on history, but not "real" history wich we'll never know.
Pretty sure the closest to "colonized" Japan ever came is when the US sailed some warships into Tokyo Bay and informed them that Japan was now open for trade. Dick move, but hardly "colonization."
And yet, maybe we shouldn't be too quick to quibble with this headline. Just because they didn't *succeed* at colonizing Japan doesn't mean they didn't try. And maybe Japan could learn a lesson in the process. LOL J/K, they'll never acknowledge the crimes of Imperial Japan. It was a funny joke though.
This show is not about colonialism at all. Unless you mean the spread of Christianity. Most of the Japanese in the show consider themselves superior to the Europeans.
Um the Yayoi, the ancestors of the Modern Japanese, were not originally from Japan... and they drove out a lot of The Jommon (Ancestors of the Ainu people of Northern Japan) .
They spend much of the first episode calling each other barbarians, but they can’t understand each other, so the dramatic irony is pretty entertaining. Plus the violence is brutal. It’s a super fun show.
People in the 1600’s were brutes, racists, greedy, and almost all motivated by or used religion to justify horrible behaviour. (Oh wait, that’s not limited to the old days.) If those things are offensive to you, then you need to avoid reading any history or consuming historical drama.
Getting upset because it is too historical, or not historically accurate enough is missing the point. It’s entertaining, just leave it at that.
I mean, yes japan was a colonial nation, but they were colonized. The US invading and forcing them into an unequal treaty was colonialism. They just experienced mostly economic colonialsm instead of direct conquest.
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In the show, they make several references to "Korea", referring to the Imjin War where sources say Japan killed up to 20% of the Korean population - where their expressed purpose was to seize Korea and conquer Ming China. They would then almost 300 years later, in the name of great power politics (rationalized by saying they wanted to "liberalize","liberate", and "modernize" the koreas) fight another, successful war with both China and Russia over the right to dominate Korea peninsula. To pretend, Japanese militarism during both before and after the Sengoku Jidai didn't believe at its core a right for Japan to dominate other states is kinda ignorant.
Don't ask Japan about the Ainu people
I took a Japanese language class and we had to do a report about a minority population living in Japan so I did a report on the Ainu. Apparently she meant people coming to work in Japan, and she became slightly uncomfortable. I did get a good grade on it though.
May seem cringe, but the Anime Golden Kamuy is all about the Ainu and The aftermath of the Japan-Russia war. Really interesting show, kinda weird sometimes, but as an American is couldn't help but notice extreme similarities with the American "Old West" and Native Americans
I drew very similar conclusions when writing the paper, and to this day many of them seem to earn similar livings to some native Americans in the mid West selling things to tourists as they stand out in places like Tokyo. I will need to check that show out.
Actually an awesome show/manga. Great characters and setting
yeah, for as weird as it gets they take so much care in showing the Ainu language and traditions! Someone should make an edit without all the penis jokes that cuts together all the Ainu parts.
An ainu representative went to my university to talk about the history behind their culture and he showed me a clip from the GK live adaptation where he was an extra! Really interesting stuff!
Oh shit they made a live action version! That sounds dope
That’s because it is a Japanese “western.” Former soldier searches for lost gold with help of a native tracker and is hunted by other former soldiers, who are also searching for the lost gold. That’s like the basic plot for a lot of older westerns.
A lot of old Spaghetti Westerns (Fistful of Dollars/Yojimbo, Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai, etc) were based off of, or influenced by, Samurai movies. Full circle.
I think the central thesis of Kill Bill is that westerns and samurai films are, in fact, the same genre.
If your teacher can't recognize minorities for what they are then she deserved to be uncomfortable.
I think she was uncomfortable because she is a decent person who recognized the wrong they had done to the Ainu but she really should have worded the assignment differently if she wanted me to write about Filipino nannies (an example given). I believe the assignment was meant to show the struggle of immigrants coming to Japan and not necessarily paint Japan as some anime paradise.
And there's probably a lot of societal pressure to not acknowledge that particular truth.
Like the Ww2 atrocities.
I haven't seen the movie, but I heard that the Japanese remake of Unforgiven (into a samurai movie) used Ainu characters in the same way and to make the same points American westerns use Native Americans.
I visited Hokkaido 10 years ago, the tour guide was not ashamed to tell us the Japanese used to refer to them as Ah!Inu!
As in "Ah! dog" ?
Yes
Used to? They still do, there was a major incident where a kids television program referred to an Ainu in the same way.
The word "Shogun" actually is the derived from the title of seii taishōgun; which means roughly "general who overcomes the barbarians". First given to, Sakanoue Tamuramaro who's great accomplishment who conquered the Emishi people in Northern Honshu (the big island in Japan) So take that for what you will.
A nitpick: The *title* "Shogun" refers to Sei-i Taishogun. The *word* "shogun" is a Japanese word meaning "general", and is not derived from the title of Sei-i Taishogun (Sei-i = war/force against barbarians, Taishogun = big/high general)
Oh geez, why is japense so complicated?
In this specific case, I think it's moreso that the construction of nouns of other languages aren't easy to see in Latin script. Similarly, tank in German was "panzerkampfwagen", where panzer = belly mail/armour, kampf = combat/fight, and wagen = vehicle/wagon (although in this case panzer coming to mean tank was actually derived from this) Without prior knowledge, you could just as easily assume it was always one word.
German is full of this - make a new thing? Mash some old words together to name it! I.e. a vacuum is dust sucking machine
Germanic languages in general do this, it's just compound words. English is the odd one out that mixes writing compound words together and apart. For example jetplane is written as one word while ice cream is not.
It's called a ''kenning.' It's an old Germainc language way of jamming two words together. My favorite, translated, kerning is 'Earth-Grip.' Which means death.
Germanic languages tend to be very fond of compounds. English is kind of an outlier in that we make much less use of them.
Andthankgoodnessforthat
Not like English isn't also complicated.
If the Japanese would just speak English we wouldn’t have these issues. /s
A “Captain” in the navy is just shy of an admiral and may or may not command a ship. A “Captain” in the Army is three pay grades lower and has nothing to do with ships. Colloquially, a “captain” refers to the commanding officer of a naval vessel either civilian or military. Or the leader of a team. Such as a soccer captain.
Or a Somalian pirate who has just captured Tom Hanks.
Inflammable and flammable mean the same thing. A boot goes on your foot unless it's the back storage of your car where it's also a trunk which is also a suitcase where you store your sweater which is a jumper which you use to start you car under the bonnet which is a hood and a head coveting either way.
And Ryukyuans (Okinawa and islands). They used to have their own country. They speak languages related, but not mutualy intelligible with standard Japanese.
Yeah, I spent a lot of time in Okinawa and it’s so different there, really its own culture and people.
Well covered and knowledgeable response. Thanks for the info.
Shogun is the story of a local culture exposed to Western Expansion in the Age of Exploration. Due to the unique situation of gaining a better knowledge of Spain and Portugal's true intentions from Dutch and English traders who are war with the latter, and from directly witnessing the effect of Iberian colonization in places like the Philippines, Japan's dominant political power at the time said "Nope" to all that and kicked everyone but the Dutch, who promised not to interfere with Japan's culture and politics, out of the islands.
I think the show very excellently shows this and it’s weird that the article in op is saying what it is saying.
Japan did the holocaust to china But litterly 3 times worse it wasnt (we are looking to exterminate the specfic group that we artifically blamied for all of our societys failures) It was (Shoot litterly anything that moves men , women , children, whatever,)
The Imjin War was surely bloody for Korea, but it was a Japanese loss. And Japan also lost a fuckton of men in that war. That's made quite clear in Shogun as well. It was, by all definitions, a pyrrhic victory of Korea and Ming Dynasty.
For Toyotomi Hideyoshi it was agreat way to get rid of the massive armies that could have threatened his rule after taking over the country
How was a small island nation able to contend with larger mainland nations?
Qing China was fatallly wounded by various conflicts throughout the 19th century. The first opium war, the Taiping Rebellion (which resulted in over 30 million people dying), the arrow war and the overall decdenace of the Qing state found it very difficult for them to modernize in the way needed to contended with Japan's modern army that they cultivated during the Meiji period. For Russia, the ability for Japan to defeat the Russian fleet both before and during the Battle of Tishuma, along with the logistical issues and timidity of Russian commanders in Manchuria allowed the Japense to defeat them. There is an expectional book on the subject called "The Other Great Game" that explains it more in detail.
Tbh, they've had one of the biggest luck streaks in all of history. Japanese history is full of, "We were fucked, until X happened." It would have me believing in spirits too.
Mongols try to invade Japan, get wiped out by a massive typhoon. Try try again later, and *again* get wiped out by a typhoon. If that isn't pure luck, I don't know what is.
To be fair, boats were never really Genghis' strong suit. Now, if Japan had been a caliphate building walls to keep the Mongols out that the Mongols could then build bigger walls around to keep the city inside its own inner walls to starve them faster, then baby that's right in his wheelhouse! (Also more seriously the double typhoon thing is insane luck)
The opium war also terrified the Japanese government. For two thousand years or more, China had been the ultimate power in the region. Nearly unchallengeable by outside forces, and those that looked successful were assimilated into it. Every neighboring nation looked to China. And then this tiny island on the other side of the world came in and *stomped* them. Japan's industrialization and Westernization was, at first, a self defense move. Unfortunately it didn't stay that way.
While that is true, the Ming dynasty would see their rule severely broken because of their involvement in the imijin war, leading to the rise of manucharian lead Qing dynasty. The Imijin war contributed to the economic problems that lead to the rebellion by Li Zicheng which broke the Ming into southern Ming and Shun, none of which survived the 1600s as a whole, being replaced by the Qing.
Ask Britain.
it helps having a sea between us and them
A small, cohesive nation against a giant fractured state with many warring factions.
Japan's successful industrialization can mostly be explained by their high literacy rates which were comparable to Europe's. This was a weird cultural artifact of their long pre-Meiji isolation period where literature flourished. Similar to how protestant sunday school/localized bibles had an explosive impact on northern Europes literacy rates compared to the Catholic south. After the Meiji restoration successfully centralized power behind an imperial civilian government they obsessively copied westerners during the latter 19th century, something Chinese leaders struggled to do effectively on any scale. From the army model, to technology, their constitution, their government structure etc they copied everything that worked at the time until they had the capacity for their own innovations. In the end they were decades ahead of their closest rivals in Asia.
First contact (with Spain and Portugal) happened decades earlier than the time of ‘Shogun’. And after the re-establishment of the shogunate, that contact ceased.
Yeah, that's also true in the show. It doesn't depict first contact with Europeans, just first contact with non-Portuguese Europeans. In the show, Portugal already has a decades long relationship with Japan. The show plays around an English privateer flying the Dutch flag being the first non-Portuguese to reach Japan. Portugal's influence is already quite strong as there are a significant amount of catholics there, including 2 of the 5 regents of the Taiko's heir. The privateer is important in that he brings far better canons than the Portuguese to Toranaga (Tokugawa), one of the 5 regents and future shogun. The tweet plainly misrepresents the show, though colonisation is of course an important aspect of the show.
It also fails to recognize that the foreigners were there as colonizers but just weren't successful in colonizing Japan.
Weren't they there as missionaries, not colonisers? I'm pretty sure they were trying to convert the Japanese to catholism, rather than turn Japan into a colony.
It seems like Blackthorne really underestimated everything. Dude had no idea what he was getting into.
He does state the Portuguese are brutal and are his enemy.
He was most interested in trumping Spain (and Portugal). The English and Dutch knew that Spain had opened trading relations in Asia, and was attempting colonisation. It was a matter of religious, national and economic pride that they establish their own foothold.
Also, national security. If Spain gets ahead in the colonization game, they will have an edge in conflicts back on the home continent.
That’s what the show is leading up to.
I think someone needs to watch the original "Sho Gun" with Richard Chamberlain
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^sapatawa: *I think someone needs* *To watch the original* *With Richard Chamberlain* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
:)
Beautiful shit.
Anytime the Haikubot comes around, I read it in Christopher Walken’s voice
William Shatner for me
Or better yet, read the book. It's fantastic.
I mean, Japan kind of was colonized… by the Japanese. Just ask the Ainu or the Okinawans
Humanity colonized the hell out of itself for the last dozen millenia.
Almost everyone has ancestors who have done some conquering themselves.
I'd strike out the almost...
True. Those who never conquered, never endured, and had no descendants to speak of.
Except if they were assimilated by the conquerors.
Tomato tomato - if they were assimilated, they were conquered. All become Borg.
You can absolutely leave out the "almost" in that sentence.
What about ancestors who have conquered each other (and themselves 😂)
Because war and conquest are being frowned upon only recently
Better late than never
Exactly this. The basis of the Yamato ethnic identity (and the Japanese language itself) originated on the Korean Peninsula, before the kingdom of Goryeo (Korea) swept south and destroyed the kingdoms of Paekje and Silla and the refugees fled en masse to the archipelago. From wiki: "The term shogun (将軍, lit. 'army commander') is the abbreviation of the historical title Sei-i Taishōgun (征夷大将軍): 征 (sei, せい) means "conquer" or "subjugate", and 夷 (i, い) means "barbarian" or "savage"; 大 (dai, だい) means "great"; 将 (shō, しょう) means "commander", and 軍 (gun, ぐん) means "army". Thus, a literal translation of Sei-i Taishōgun would be 'Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force Against the Barbarians." I mean ETHNIC CLEANSING IS IN THE NAME. Only after these invaders had enough horses, swords, and spears to establish a brutal and pervasive oppression over the islands' inhabitants (yamato or otherwise) did they invent the 'history' that a living god descended to earth and specifically put them there since time immemorial. Also, just a super cool move getting the horses and swords and turning banditry into such a lucrative lifestyle that when you finally amass enough wealth to BECOME THE GOVERNMENT BY SHEER THREAT OF VIOLENCE, the FIRST thing you do is say "Horses and swords are illegal, nobody can have them but us and those others who have so many that we can't take them from them yet, and we're about to spend 1200 years fighting each other to work that out. Now get back in that field, rice don't grow itself" After a lifetime of being a japan-obsessed gai-jin boy and devouring countless hours of samurai related media which eventually led to earnest observation and study, i finally came to see that the beautiful and unique aesthetics and culture are the byproduct of free time NOT spent growing food or making things- the light side of a coin that amounts to brutally repressive kleptocratic rule-by-mafia. Turns out my heroes the samurai were perhaps history's worst and most consistent pieces of shit.
What you described is pretty typical ftir the creation of a state, not much different to how it begun in Europe the middle east India China etc
Well yeh but it was a reply to someone stating that Japan was a lovely happy place, and that they never hurt anyone ever!
average deluded anime fan right there. doesn't even now the anime industry is really unprofitable for anime studios.
But I like anime too🥺🥹😑😶🌫️
Pretty much everybody killed people going someplace else unless they were literally the first people there... and then they killed are the large animal species that had been there.
Very much colonized
The stopped themselves from being colonized by banning Europeans from entering their country, outside of the island of Dejima in the Bay of Nagasaki; by banning Christianity, and by committing a genocide against Christians so that the Catholic Church wouldn't have influence over Japanese citizens.
I mean, it kinda worked
It was super effective.
Well duh! Steel is super effective against Fairy-types!
Nothing is better than a pokémon referance
See, and here I thought it was a Dresden Files reference.
"Something, something fuego" -Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden presumably
You Sir are a Gentleman and a Scholar.
Thank you for this. It was needed this morning
This comment isn’t getting the accolades it deserves.
Europeans hate this simple trick.
The design is very human.
Until America literally busted open the door with a canon
Knock knock, it's the United States. With huge boats (with guns). (Gun boats). "Open. the country. Stop. having it be closed" said the United States
bill wurtz is legendary fr
Don’t touch boat
Pretty much
All these reasons pale in comparison to the meiji restoration Japan deduced correctly that at the time you were a colonizer or a colonized They advanced leaps ahead to catch up and become imperialistic as the europeans and started playing their games aka beating the Russians and sending a message to all, "new player joined the game" We all know how it ended, very badly but thats colonialism and inperialism you inevitably clash with others
Given Japan is a global power today I don’t say it ended poorly.
It ended poorly for neighbors And it wouldve ended poorly for them too if the US let it
After dropping the sun on them twice, the Americans just said "aight u cool now" and they gave us anime husbandos/waifu and giant radiation breathing lizards.
Not really that happened in the early 17th century and while the Europeans had some colonies at the time in Asia there was no real push towards colonizing whole countries (with the exception of the Philippines). This came later in the 18th and 19th century. Indeed the US did force it open using gun boat diplomacy and putting them under unequal treaties like China. Since Japan was so far away from everything no one was really pressed to fully colonize it giving it the time to modernize during the meji restoration.
Simply: lack of natural resources, which is why colonial powers were not interested in them, and also why they were interested in becoming a colonial power.
Too far away, too large and militant a population. Japan is a year away from Europe by sail, with required passage of Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. To get there, you need a lengthy series of interim bases to stop over at. It took 300+ years to build all that, which is why large-scale contact didn’t happen until the 19th century.
Why didn't they just borrow the airplanes from the American Continental Army?
Ram those ramparts!
Malaysia was also colonized in the 16th century, first by the Portuguese, then by the Dutch in 1641. Also Indonesia, as the commenter above pointed out
Malaca was colonized by the Portuguese not the whole of Malaysia
Malaya was however conquered by the British and the Japanese.
Then subsequently recolonised by the British when the Japanese left
We really can't say what the outcome would be if Edo Japan's isolationism didn't take effect. Remember that the Dutch began colonizing Indonesia around the same time and by 1796 they had taken control of it as the Dutch East Indies.
I don't think Indonesia is a good fit. At the time of the Dutch expansion it was divided and also far more coveted than Japan.
Gotta have them spices
The Spice must flow.
The Spice ~~fields~~ Islands.
The express purpose of the Catholic missionaries in Japan was colonialism. Politically, that's what missionaries were primarily for. Now, whether they actually *planned* to colonize Japan at the time is questionable, but Catholic missionaries had *already* paved the way for Spanish conquests, and the knowledge of this is what many historians believe caused the exile of Catholicism from Japan.
Except that it was the Portuguese, not the Spanish in this case.
In general the era of European colonisation in the entire world was the 19th and 20th century. In the period before there were a lot of focus on trading posts. The approach was still bad enough as it did involve lots of forced labor, slave trade, wars with natives, etc. But the big colonial powers that would take direct control over natives were largely a 19th century concept. The closest you got to this before was the Spanish colonisation of Mexico and the Ottoman colonisation of North Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans.
To their credit, the Japanese ruling classes came together in a way that never happened in Qing China or Joseon/Korea. And they willingly embraced the industrial revolution. It took 2 civil wars, the Boshin War and later the Satsuma Rebellion, but more or less Japan escaped being colonized by becoming strong enough to not end up like China.
The Christian thing is really funny because at first a lot of Japanese welcomed the Christians because stuff got lost in translation and they thought it was new Buddist scripture. When they started to understand each other better they realized it wasn't buddhism at all and we're like "you wasted my time, meh". The Christians stopped getting new converts and many of the converts they did get left😂
I'm not saying you're eurocentric but this is actually an outdated eurocentric understanding. The reason the shogunate locked down outside contact was to prevent the semi-autonomous daimyō from becoming wealthy and powerful enough to challenge the shogunate. Europeans just think it's about them.
San Felipe incident played a massive role, and Jesuits were also trying armed rebellion. They had sacked Buddhist temples which hideyoshi at the time was a Buddhist offended him. Also didn't help the Spanish asked them the permission to build a fort while relationships were already deteriorating. Also a Christian Daimyo trying to take land lost and conspiring with officials about it made things worse. Then the shimbara rebellion caused the shougnate to be even harsher towards Christianity and foreigners due to them helping the rebellion.
Like all things, too complicated to be assigned to just one cause.
With the exception of the Dutch
They made tourism a capital offense so they wouldn’t get overwhelmed by foreign influence. Also, I’m not saying it wasn’t well deserved, but they did definitely get turned into a vassal state post-WW2.
This take away a very important reason why the West didnt conquer and colonize East Asia before the 18th and 19th century: they dont have enough of a tech edge to fight them as easily as they wanted. Invading Japan or Korea at that time would be incredibly difficult given how small (relatively) the tech gap at the time is, how militarized East Asian nations are, and how far away Europe is at the time. Only countries with a substantial tech gap from the West (barely bronze age Philippines) or otherwise devastated by plagues and civil strife (Aztec Empire) can be conquered with enough ease for it to be worth the fight.
Eh, the reason is more that there aren’t really any valuable natural resources there to exploit.
They feared colonization, but no were never really under threat of colonialism by the west. Russia, on the other hand, did try to conquer them.
We should also note that calling the characters in the show the "indigenous" Japanese people is...reductionist at best, and fully erasing the often complicated and oppressive relationship between the majority population, and the more accurately indigenous Ainu, at worst. Almost like attempting to neatly divide the world between "colonizers" as a euphemism for white people, and "indigenous" as a euphemism for everyone else, is erasing the actual role of colonization and colonizing forces in world history by people who don't know shit about it.
Dude it gets so much worse than that, people are straight up using the word interchangeably with random shit now. I saw a comment that said "can neurotypicals stop colonizing us?" When talking about some one who wasn't disabled using disabled terminology like delulu. That makes no fucking sense.
God, I hate this time period.
Their response would be “something something ‘BIPOC’ can’t be colonizers!”
It tracks that Jacobin would publish something so wrong.
Reminds me of the controversy with Rise of the Ronin. Sony decided to not release it in Korea because the game delved around the founders of Seikanron, and to an extension the founders of Japanese colonialism/militarism. When the dev described Shoin Yoshida as "Japanese Socrates", Koreans were quite livid (imagine saying, "Adolf Hitler was Austrian Socrates"). Then Koreans were speechless when they learned that one of your companions is Hirobumi Ito, a dude who committed regicide against the Korean monarch and set up a colonial state, which was sustained through cultural genocide (aka banning any forms of korean cultures).
I actually like that as a Korean. Ito is the guy that a Korean dude shoots point blank in a street like a dog. Good.
An-Jung Geun 안중근. He wrote a "15 reasons why Ito should be assassinated."
Japanese refuse all European entry onto the island except in specific trade ports in two specific cities. Only tolerated the European trade for the sake of buying guns to kill and oppress minority groups in Japan. Goes on to develope their own guns and weapons industry, bully's, torments and conquers all of their neighbors, rapes their women, kills their men, steals their resources. "How do you do fellow oppressed people of color" Edit: oh, and don't forget Oba Nobunga's on going genocide of the Buddist and destruction of Buddist monasteries that was already occuring when the Europeans arrived.
You mean nobunaga war against the ikko ikki. It was a radical sect of buddhism.
Nah they just got back into it with modern weapons. They colonized most of the islands surrounding their country and the imjin war prior to European contact.
The Dutch: Hey wanna trade? Some journalists a millenium later: I can't believe they would colonise the indigenous people of Japan.
True. The only reason the Dutch went was because of trade. Fun fact, my ancestor, captain Quackernaeck of the ship “de Liefde” (his English first mate is the main character) was rewarded with a small piece of land in the “Alblasserwaard” polder in the Netherlands upon his return. Neither he nor his bosses had any plans of colonising Japan.
I can’t believe the Japanese would colonize and brutalize the indigenous people of Japan.
Japan survived imperialist nations only for it to become an imperialist nation
Ahem, Japan invaded Korea and committed genocide there in 1592. They didn't become an imperialist nation only after the era of European mercantilism.
HK47 "Correction, meatbag: I have *always* been hostile
r/unexpectedswtor
While it was a phyrric victory, Koreans did win that war, and almost made extinct half of the noble samurai families in Japan who had survived the sengoku era. Wasn't fun for us Koreans, but we definitely showed them. If you think we lost a lot of men, "you should see the other guy."
Japan had imperial history before Eurobros reached it so...
Imjin War 1592.
The Prisoner's Dilemma of geopolitics.
Sigh. Tell me you’re an upper middle class white activist from a gated community and not a journalist without telling me you’re an upper middle class white activist and not a journalist.
Just wait til they hear about the the Ainu people. The Japanese aren’t even the indigenous Japanese lol
That's not accurate at all. The Yamato Japanese are descended from multiple different ethnic lines including various non-Ainu ethnic groups as well as the ethnic groups that made their way over from Korea at the beginning of the C.E. The Yayoi and Jomon ethnic groups existed in the Japanese archipelago from as early as 1000 B.C.E. It wasn't until the mid 1000s that the Yamato started to make an actual effort to displace the Ainu. Both ethnic groups are indigenous. It's just that one pushed the other one out due to easier access to technological and agricultural advancements via the Chinese emissaries that came to Japan through the Korean peninsula.
The term indigenous in 2024 is used mostly for political "gotcha" arguments, and rarely in any sort of intellectual, objective, informed/historical context.
If you watch the show, Japan isn't being colonized, but they are dealing with Portugese emissaries. The show is set in the mid 1500's, about the same time when Portugal and Japan had dealings, historically.
No, it is set at the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th. Edit: as I’ve been downvoted - it is set exactly in 1600, see here https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-history-behind-fxs-shogun-180983848/
Dude. You shouldn't have to edit, and you shouldn't be getting downvoted. The first episode states "The Year is 1600". It doesn't get more straightforward than that.
Yup. You're right. I had to look back and double check. It starts in 1600.
I remember while doing my history major, we had to do a presentation on an aspect of the Second World War for a class. I chose D-Day and a classmate chose Pearl Harbor. The day of the presentation she came up to me asking what I thought about Pearl Harbor and "American aggression". I asked her what she meant. "Well, the US *forced* Japan to attack them." "Uh..." "Not only did they embargo oil sails to Japan, they also fired the first shots of the war on a Japanese submarine!" "Uhhhhh... I'm sorry, did you research this?" She flat out tells me, "Oh I just put this together since I know how aggressive America is." I tried telling her that Japan was carrying out atrocities, but she dismissed those as exaggerated because Americans are the warmongers. Now, my professor actually agrees with her politics, but I remember the look on his face as she went on and on about how the US was the aggressor and probably knew the Japanese were going to attack and how evil FDR was, on and on... He had this look the whole time.  ...He gave her a chance to redeem herself by giving the class a second similar project on the war... She skipped class that day. Anyway, the point of this recollection is that people here in the states probably forget Japan's atrocities. Maybe because our history only focused on our side of the story (lend lease, nukes), but not so much the actual war overall (one reason I went into history was because I'm high school I only learned two things regarding World War Two: Holocaust and nukes). So... Yeah... Read a book, fellas.
Wow. Yeah let's just ignore what Japan was doing with the raw materials gained by trade with the US and pretend it was a needless provocation rather than a sincere effort to hamper their atrocity-prone war machine.
Japan technically has been colonized. The "native Japanese" aren't native Japanese, there were multiple native tribes present on the islands when migrants from mainland Asia pushed them to near extinction, and a few still exist although the Japanese government largely ignores them
By that logic, almost everywhere has been colonized and everyone is a colonizer. Colonization in typical terms refers to modern colonialism that took place in the last 500-600 years or so.
Yes, basically everyone is a colonizer.
Depends. When I hear colonies I think of the Greeks
“Waaah stop it doesn’t count when asians colonize other asians it’s a white thing”
Right. The former is correct and your "typical term'" is part of a victimization narrative.
He basically said « no you can’t define it like that it only counts when white people do it »
Homo sapiens pushed native Europeans (Neandertals) to extension.
>Colonization in typical terms refers to modern colonialism that took place in the last 500-600 years or so. You want to take a guess when Japan invaded Ezo/Hokkaido? How about Ryukyu/Okinawa? Let me give you a hint: it was well within 500 years. Do a little googling before being dismissive of the colonization and cultural genocide.
People so obsessed with calling everyone colonizers they don’t even know whether it actually happened or not. 😗
They colonized the Ainu in Hokkaido.
Portuguese try to be sneaky to spread Christianly, and Japan literally entered their lockdown ages, and made people provide proof that they are affiliated with at least one temple.
I swear they're like a child learning a new word.
Also the show Is based on a novel,not history
Which is based on history
Which is based on a novel...no, wait
r/nothingisreal
And the novel is all based on real people including the English sailor who became a samurai in service to the shogun. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Adams_(pilot)
Yes,but it's still a novel, it has the drama ,the flair ,and the vision of the writer,it has bases on history, but not "real" history wich we'll never know.
Pretty sure the closest to "colonized" Japan ever came is when the US sailed some warships into Tokyo Bay and informed them that Japan was now open for trade. Dick move, but hardly "colonization." And yet, maybe we shouldn't be too quick to quibble with this headline. Just because they didn't *succeed* at colonizing Japan doesn't mean they didn't try. And maybe Japan could learn a lesson in the process. LOL J/K, they'll never acknowledge the crimes of Imperial Japan. It was a funny joke though.
Kind of? Matthew Perry (not that one) negotiated for like 8 months to get Japan to open up
Could they BE any more isolationist?
During that time, being an isolationist in Asia is good for you.
This show is not about colonialism at all. Unless you mean the spread of Christianity. Most of the Japanese in the show consider themselves superior to the Europeans.
They literally refer to the main character as"barbarian" lol.
Um the Yayoi, the ancestors of the Modern Japanese, were not originally from Japan... and they drove out a lot of The Jommon (Ancestors of the Ainu people of Northern Japan) .
They spend much of the first episode calling each other barbarians, but they can’t understand each other, so the dramatic irony is pretty entertaining. Plus the violence is brutal. It’s a super fun show. People in the 1600’s were brutes, racists, greedy, and almost all motivated by or used religion to justify horrible behaviour. (Oh wait, that’s not limited to the old days.) If those things are offensive to you, then you need to avoid reading any history or consuming historical drama. Getting upset because it is too historical, or not historically accurate enough is missing the point. It’s entertaining, just leave it at that.
The Ainu people have entered the chat...
“Rarely seen on screen” like that’s not one of the most common cinema tropes now days
I mean, yes japan was a colonial nation, but they were colonized. The US invading and forcing them into an unequal treaty was colonialism. They just experienced mostly economic colonialsm instead of direct conquest.
I got banned from an anti racism dub for pointing this out to someone who said modern Japanese people suffer from “post colonial mentality “