Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Bogelbaum here. Japanese samurai movies are a
Speaker 1: century old tradition, and their tropes have been picked up
Speaker 1: in stories all over the world. George Lucas has said
Speaker 1: that one of his inspirations for the original Star Wars
Speaker 1: movie was at eight samurai film called The Hidden Fortress.
Speaker 1: Another classic samurai picture, Jimbo, was loosely adapted into Sergio
Speaker 1: Leone Western a fistful of dollars. Pop culture frames samurai
Speaker 1: as near mythic figures. We're told samurai belonged to an
Speaker 1: elite class of Japanese warriors who always fought fair, loyally
Speaker 1: defended their medieval lords, and hued to a unifying honor
Speaker 1: code known as bushido. Filmmakers sometimes pit them against dark
Speaker 1: robed ninja assassins fearsome mercenary. The classic movie Ninja carries
Speaker 1: razor sharp throwing stars and has mastered a martial art
Speaker 1: called ninjatsu. Many more modern tellings even give one or
Speaker 1: both of these characters supernatural powers like flight or invisibility,
Speaker 1: but magical talents aside. Just how accurate is our modern
Speaker 1: outlook on samurai and ninja. To find out, we interviewed
Speaker 1: three historians. Japanese history is broken down into eras and periods.
Speaker 1: Particularly relevant to our discussion here are the Sengoku period
Speaker 1: of fourteen sixty seven to sixteen o three c and
Speaker 1: the successive Tokugawa period or Edo period that lasted until
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty eight. The ladder Tokugawa period takes its name
Speaker 1: from a shogun family that assumed control of Japan in
Speaker 1: sixteen o three. Shogun were hereditary military dictators who had
Speaker 1: been running the country since eleven ninety two c E.
Speaker 1: On paper, they served Japan's emperors, but in practice these
Speaker 1: figures were far more powerful, and it was they who
Speaker 1: truly called the shots. Earlier centuries had been played by
Speaker 1: constant warfare, but things stayed calm under the Tokugawa regime.
Speaker 1: International trade was tightly regulated, and the shogun took pains
Speaker 1: to discourage political squabbles. This was also a time when
Speaker 1: Japan redefined its relationship with samurai. But we spoke with
Speaker 1: Thomas Conlin, a professor of East Asian history at Princeton University,
Speaker 1: via email. He explained the samurai became an identifiable social
Speaker 1: status only in the fifteen nineties. Before then, all of
Speaker 1: society was militarized and there was no distinction between peasants
Speaker 1: and warriors. Such ambiguity didn't sit well with one game
Speaker 1: changing warlord, General Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He issued a nationwide sword
Speaker 1: hunt edict in eight during these Angoku period. This prohibited
Speaker 1: farmers from owning weapons of any sort. Under these new rules,
Speaker 1: only samurai and samurai alone could bear arms. We also
Speaker 1: spoke with historian Nick Kapoor of Rutgers University via al.
Speaker 1: He said, basically, people who were known to have fought
Speaker 1: in battles recently were considered samurai and were forbidden to
Speaker 1: go back to farming, and people who were known to
Speaker 1: be currently farming land had to surrender their weapons. In
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, it was self reported and people
Speaker 1: basically got to choose. Toyotomi's reforms carried over into the
Speaker 1: Tokugawa period. In effect, they laid the groundwork for a rigid,
Speaker 1: hereditary caste like system that put samurai above artisans, merchants
Speaker 1: and peasants. By then, the feudal wars that defined the
Speaker 1: single Ku period had long passed, with no battles to wage.
Speaker 1: The samurai were given bureaucratic and administrative roles. Hindsight sometimes
Speaker 1: has a way of glamorizing warfare. We also spoke by
Speaker 1: email with Sarah Paul, a historian of early modern and
Speaker 1: modern Japan who teaches at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Speaker 1: She said, during the long piece of the Tokugawa era,
Speaker 1: when samurai came to work more as administrators than as fighters,
Speaker 1: any romanticized the earlier times of war in the twelfth
Speaker 1: to sixteenth centuries, for instance, when samurai actually fought. The
Speaker 1: last showgun was overthrown in eighteen sixty eight, ending the
Speaker 1: Tokugawa period. Afterward, Japan entered its reformative Meiji period, which
Speaker 1: embraced industry and centralized governance. Historically, the samurai had served
Speaker 1: feudal lords and enjoyed special privileges, but all that soon changed.
Speaker 1: Paul explained. The official status of samurai was abolished in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine, and their privileges were voked in the
Speaker 1: early eighteen seventies. With the abolition of their lord's domains,
Speaker 1: many former samurai were out of work, unable to get
Speaker 1: jobs in the new government. In the eighteen nineties, they
Speaker 1: their children, and many Japanese began trying to define a
Speaker 1: way of the samurai. The operated both as a nostalgia
Speaker 1: for the supposedly moral good old days and as a
Speaker 1: critique of the modernizing trends of the time. Enter nicobay Idazo,
Speaker 1: a diplomat and author. He radically transformed the way future
Speaker 1: generations would look at samurai. In eight nine, nat the
Speaker 1: Bay published an influential book called Bushido The Soul of Japan.
Speaker 1: The text presents itself as an introduction to bushido. According
Speaker 1: to nitle Bay, this was the traditional universal code of
Speaker 1: conduct observed by real world samurai, except it wasn't. Kapor
Speaker 1: noted the so called samurai code of Bushido did not
Speaker 1: exist in the single co hey day of samurai warfare. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the word bushido itself wasn't coined until the peaceful Tokugawa period.
Speaker 1: But it is from Bushido the Soul of Japan that
Speaker 1: we get some of the most pervasive myths about samurai
Speaker 1: values and behavior. Thal said Samurai were not all the moral, noble,
Speaker 1: well to do spiritual swordsmen depicted in film. They did
Speaker 1: not have a single coherent moral code that defined how
Speaker 1: they thought and acted, and Kapoor said, just like warrior,
Speaker 1: as anywhere else, samurai raped and looted and pillaged, and
Speaker 1: we're constantly betraying their lords. Speaking of misconceptions, it's time
Speaker 1: to talk Ninja. Supposedly, they were cell swords who performed
Speaker 1: covert operations, gathered intelligence, and assassinated people in the cover
Speaker 1: of darkness. Ega and Coca, two neighboring regions in southeastern Japan,
Speaker 1: are usually cited as the training grounds where Ninja honed
Speaker 1: their deadly skills. Sometimes you'll even hear that Ninja formed
Speaker 1: a hereditary class or cast not unlike the samurai. The
Speaker 1: lore is pervasive in pop culture every year. Some enthusiasts
Speaker 1: even dress up to celebrate Ninja Day on February twenty two.
Speaker 1: Not to rain on anyone's parade, but these storied mercenaries
Speaker 1: are kind of fabricated, Kapoor said, Ninja as we know
Speaker 1: them today did not actually exist. He explained that the
Speaker 1: word ninja comes from two Chinese characters meaning stealth and man,
Speaker 1: which is pronounced shinobi by the way, by most Japanese
Speaker 1: language speakers. Medieval Japan had its share of folks who
Speaker 1: snuck into castles, and embraced undercover warfare. Historical records show
Speaker 1: samurai weren't above such tactics, Kapor said, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of documents about these activities, but they were carried
Speaker 1: out by a variety of people. There was never any
Speaker 1: specialized class of assassins living in hereditary clans and selling
Speaker 1: their services for hire. This is pure myth, which, liked
Speaker 1: the myths about the samurai, was created during the long
Speaker 1: and peaceful Ido period. Despite this, ninja fables are nothing new,
Speaker 1: Paul said. Even by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ninja
Speaker 1: had become a pop culture phenomenon in Japan, so there
Speaker 1: were all sorts of fantastic fictional depictions in art, literature, drama,
Speaker 1: and the light. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other mythical topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Brainstuff is production off I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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