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.
There is a thesis that one of the main reason Hideyoshi ordered invasion of Korea was to actually get rid of the dregs of Sengoku period, if they succeeded it would be a bonus But they failed on both fronts what ensued was three biggest and bloodiest civil wars campaigns in feudal Japan history, only then they settled up and became one of the most useless parasitic classes in history of mankind. And eventually they got outparasited by usurers and become prime source of imperialist lackeys.
There’s fun (and actually non bloody or horrible for once) example of the real Samurai ethos i read in book. I think it was in XVIII century, when a small and pretty isolated garrison of 200 men in mountains of central Japan got denounced to bakufu, and inspection turned out that basically nobody there was doing any samurai things, most of them even sold their swords and entire garrison just said “fuck this” and they were working in nearby pottery. Normally this would be horrible scandal ending up in the mass suicide order (bakufu did such things), but this particular pottery was famous for producing very high quality tea sets for arsitocrats so entire case was hushed.
“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.
No, ikko-ikki were the local self-defence groups made of petty samurai, armed monks and peasantry in the Sengoku era, they were reaction to feudal warlords doing usual warlordy things.
Ninjas, more properly called shinobi, were just medieval kind of intelligence operatives working on behalf of usual feudal lords. They mainly did spying and occasional assassination or sabotage, and didn’t dressed funny.
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.
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 is a thesis that one of the main reason Hideyoshi ordered invasion of Korea was to actually get rid of the dregs of Sengoku period, if they succeeded it would be a bonus But they failed on both fronts what ensued was three biggest and bloodiest civil wars campaigns in feudal Japan history, only then they settled up and became one of the most useless parasitic classes in history of mankind. And eventually they got outparasited by usurers and become prime source of imperialist lackeys.
There’s fun (and actually non bloody or horrible for once) example of the real Samurai ethos i read in book. I think it was in XVIII century, when a small and pretty isolated garrison of 200 men in mountains of central Japan got denounced to bakufu, and inspection turned out that basically nobody there was doing any samurai things, most of them even sold their swords and entire garrison just said “fuck this” and they were working in nearby pottery. Normally this would be horrible scandal ending up in the mass suicide order (bakufu did such things), but this particular pottery was famous for producing very high quality tea sets for arsitocrats so entire case was hushed.
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.
No, ikko-ikki were the local self-defence groups made of petty samurai, armed monks and peasantry in the Sengoku era, they were reaction to feudal warlords doing usual warlordy things.
Ninjas, more properly called shinobi, were just medieval kind of intelligence operatives working on behalf of usual feudal lords. They mainly did spying and occasional assassination or sabotage, and didn’t dressed funny.
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.