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That new thing. Yeah, we've got it. The Drop by GNC bringing you all the newness that matters. Hand picked by the pros who actually know what's up and what's proven to work. We keep you on top of the trends and dialed into what's next. Whether you're crushing it at the gym, leveling up your game, or thriving every day, the Drop by GNC is where the latest solutions in health and wellness land first non stop innovation and fresh finds daily explore what's new and what's next on the drop by GNC.
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Hello and welcome to a new episode of Legacy. I'm Peter Frankenpern.
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C
I'm Afua Harsh.
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And this is Legacy, the show that explores the lives, the events and the ideas that have shaped our world and asked whether they have the reputations that they truly deserve.
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This is Samurai. The samurai take control.
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B
So we left you at the end of the last episode with the samurai having started to cement their role in Japan's society. And one of the figures that emerges from the wars of Genpei is a man called Minamoto Yoritomo, who is a leading samurai commander who emerges victorious. And in 1192, he becomes the first shogun, which, if you've been watching that incredible series that's come out recently, you'll know exactly what that means. He establishes the Kamakura military government and his rule shifts real power from the imperial court to the samurai. And the shogunate of the Kamakura creates a parallel government that strips everything that's important out of the courts. I mean, what I mean important. I mean executive power while preserving the ritual authority somewhere else. So the emperor is still the source of legitimacy. He's still incredibly important. But governance lies now firmly with the warriors.
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C
This is something that's been happening, Peter, since the 5th century, essentially in drips and drabs. But this is a turning point where it's formalized and it starts to become cemented in the power structure. And the samurai are appointed as jito estate stewards and shugo provincial governors. And this embeds military men into every level of the administration. I suppose it's a bit like when there's a military coup and figures from the military start taking up key bureaucratic positions all throughout the state.
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B
And you get law codes like the Gosube Shikimoku, which focuses on land rights, on contracts, on loyalty. And, you know, it's sometimes easy to underplay the importance of playing basic logistics of being able to frame how things work and how things need to Work and laws and being able to write things down is critical. But what's interesting about this code is it starts to address what the practical concerns are of a warrior society. On top of that, you've got not just Buddhism, but in particular Zen Buddhism started to gain prominence amongst the elites because of the emphasis on discipline, on self control and on the acceptance of death. That's a really important part of samurai culture too. And if you get a chance to go to the British Museum show, which is one of the inspirations for us recording, you can see early Kamakura armor. It's functional, it's articulated, but it's also quite austere. But these are objects that represent a new ruling class. They're practical, they're martial, they're authoritative. And that's a really important part about how the samurai starts to become part of the state. But tell me more, Afwa, about the idea about Zen Buddhism and how important that is for the samurai, because that seems to be so critical in this evolution in the beginning of the 1200s.
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So Zen Buddhism is a new arrival around this era in Japan, coming from China, and it's offering a specific philosophy that's actually very convenient to the samurai ideal because it's emphasizing impermanence. It places a high value on discipline and rewards clarity under pressure. These are all things that naturally fit with the qualities that make the samurai such effective warriors in the first place. And. And it also offers a practical tool, meditation, which cultivates emotional restraint, which helps focus, again, qualities that are super useful in battle and in governance. And again, a lot of. I think the romanticisation of the samurai is this juxtaposition of this incredible capacity for violence combined with this deep restraint and discipline. And I think for people who look up to the warrior ideal, this is an ideal within the ideal. It's not bloodthirsty, it's not kind of wanton killing. It's somebody who has complete control over their use of violence and their ability to remain calm.
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Do you get. Does that rig parallels Afra with other empires and colonialisms elsewhere about the dislocation between good training and the sort of uptight, stiff upper lip on the one hand where you know, but on the other hand, you know, the ability to inflict violence and suffering on others. Is that. Is that something that rings a bell or do you think it's something that's slightly different in this context?
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C
I think if you look at the Ashanti, for example, who have an incredible tradition of warriorship in what's now Ghana, formerly the Gold coast, when it was a British colony, they had this ethos that was to protect the culture, to protect the king. And you can think about where these very disciplined, almost spiritual practices of being warriors meet. This brute force of Europeans arriving with the Maxim gun, which was a huge development and I think often overlooked as a reason why Britain was able to finally cement its force, formal power over Africa. And it's a complete culture clash because these more traditional indigenous warriors have these ideas about life being a harmony, you know, violence serving a purpose that has a spiritual quality versus indiscriminate killing with these weapons of mass destruction that are brought in in this period, that are able to just gun people down without any personal connection. You know, there's no hand to hand combat, there's no sense of the space spirit or the character of the combatant that you're taking on. And I think it's another reason why I think people look up to samurai culture and think some people are almost nostalgic for a time when killing meant something where it wasn't wanton and indiscriminate. And you know, I think it's really problematic to ever glorify killing. But if you're going to do it, I can see why in a way this is a value system that does have some kind of spiritual element to it.
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And we were going to talk about that at the end. When we think about legacies of the samurai and you're absolutely right, the kind of the nobility of the dispassionate warrior, it's quite a selective reading because it allows you to compartmentalize and to look past the things you are less concerned about, like hierarchies, like the role of women, like the ways in which people get treated on a day to day basis. And also that code looks better from the outside in general than it perhaps does on individual cases. But I think it is right that the culture that, that establish itself around samurai is quite thoughtful and quite interesting. So the patronage of Zen monasteries, things like calligraphy and ink pages, where samurai tend to prefer just black and white and quite simple designs rather than over elaborate, there's an idea that it means something to be a samurai. And so art is mirroring values. So simplicity and control and depth beneath restraint and even literature and performance start to reinforce those ideals that he.
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Recitations of the high key remain central to samurai culture and they're often performed by blind biwa players. And it's this ritualistic embedding of samurai values through sound memory, multi sensory stimulation. So honor is now not just about Public perception and reputation. It's being internalized through self discipline, through these cultural practices. And, you know, one thing I think that people find inspiring is this lack of excess. Everything is pared down. You know, you talked about the black and white. If you listen to the sounds or if you look at the calligraphy, it's not flamboyant or excessive. It is minimalist. And I think, again, you know, that mirrors the samurai attitude. It's not excessive killing, it's not violence for the sake of it. It's all pared down to its essential parts. And again, I think it's easy to romanticize that there is still a huge amount of brutality and violence that we find very difficult to reconcile with our modern ideals about human rights and the protection of the individual at the same time can coexist alongside a reality that there really is a value system and it's coherent throughout warriorship, throughout culture, throughout music, calligraphy and religion.
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So interesting, you know, because I've. I've worked on. On the Crusades and the Middle Ages in Europe, you know, that. That idea about knightly piety, about service and about violence and about how you can explain that code where you go from listening to blind players of A B W as a loot by night, and then by day you're out on your horse, you know, looking for. Looking to enforce your superiority and authority over other people. So that. But those things, they have these very interesting echoes in very different parts of the world. Another echo, which you have, by the way, is also in the 1200s, the formation. We did our. Our series on Genghis Khan, the great expansion of the Mongol Empire. And the Mongols, who rise from the plains of Mongolia through Central Asia, galloping westwards towards Europe, also have Japan on their horizons. And twice, in 1274 and 1281, they try to stage major invasions of Japan. Two enormous Yuan Dynasty or Mongol dynasty fleets try to conquer Japan. Samurai forces fight bravely, but victory isn't dependent and contingent on what they do, partly because Japan's navy and naval forces wouldn't normally be able to resist what's coming at them from China. But on the winds that help the samurai to protect Japan, those winds get mythologized as divine winds later on. That was another very famous word for those who work on Japan is kamikaze divine winds, which we'll hear about a bit in the Second World War. But these typhoons were really important. They were real climatic events. You can measure them from all the climate data and materials that we've got rising in the western Pacific in the late 1300s. But they strained the Kamakura system to breaking points. Although the Mongols are kept away, mobilization of samurai and of defenses is really expensive, and so is the fortifications. And the challenge is that all the land has now been parceled out. And you need, if you're an emperor or if you're a shogun, you need people to reward people. And if you can't do that, then it's perhaps not surprising there's going to be challenges to authority and people thinking there's an opportunity. So like all structures, you need to be able to pay people to look after them, make it worth their while. If those incentives dry up, then the system might come under strain.
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By the early 14th century, the Kamakura Shogunate is hollowed out by debt, factionalism, declining loyalty. And then inevitably in 1333, it collapses the time all altogether.
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B
Yes, the Emperor God Daego tries to restore direct imperial rule, invoking ancient authorities and ritual legitimacies. But that doesn't work very well. He doesn't have a loyal military base and all the warriors he depended on, he alienates. So samurai leaders, particularly Ashikaga Takauji, turn against the Emperor and establish a new warrior government. I guess the equivalent today would be something like martial law. And that episode reinforces the samurai central insight, which is that legitimacy doesn't count for anything unless you got force behind it too. So religion, ceremony, lineage are all very well, but they need to be backed by backbone and muscle. And the rise of the samurai is therefore important. So tell me about the Ashikaga Shogunate. Afua.
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C
This is a samurai led military government based in kyoto in the 14th century, right up till 15, 1673, so about a 250 year rule. And it's ruled in the Emperor's name, based in Kyoto, but it's characterized by extraordinarily weak political control at the same time as this flourishing of culture. And Zen is inspiring art to a new extent in this era. You see these incredible ink landscapes, no theater, refined tea practices. So many of these are things that I think are quintessential, essentially associated with Japanese culture today. And many of them have their origins in this era. And it is an era where samurai are in control and they're patronizing the culture, they're shaping those tastes that define the aesthetic. And it's again a period, Peter, of climate stress, because this is where we have this cooling of global temperatures. It's sometimes actually described as the Little Ice Age.
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And that is a constant feature of the History in Japan and in fact in lots of different parts of the world too, from around about 1400 onwards. It's, you know, it's a little bit, it can get overused, these phrases to know exactly what it means, but it's perhaps not surprising. The starting point would be, I guess, on places that are islands, ecosystems are a bit more fragile and economic systems are more fragile. If you rely on imports, if you rely on sea access, then your ability to withstand things, it's not that it's weaker, it just means it has different strains to it too. And so what you have this combination of occasional shocks plus colder periods, unpredictable harvests, rising authority of the samurai. It means that that starts to break down as samurai start to act a bit more independently, prioritizing their own survival over loyalty. And so again you have the unknitting of what the Emperor's role is. But there's a real problem at the end of the 1470s with the Onin War, which destroys Kyoto and ends any of that pretense of central control. There's a fight over the succession, driven by deeper structural weaknesses. But Japan is plunged into a period that's called the Warring States. And that's where essentially the country falls into a state of anarchy.
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C
It does remind me of those sayings that if you have a hammer, every problem's a nail. You have warriors in charge. It maybe isn't that surprising that warriors, we end up in the state that the people most equipped to deal with are warriors. This state of warfare where the samurai are really coming into their own because this is what they're built for, it's the battlefield, it's war. And in a way, this chaos is part of an order. But that's all about to change, Peter, because we are about to get to the era where Europeans first arrive in Japan. If you've watched Shogun, that's the era in which the series is set. Samurai culture is by now so deeply embedded, this, these arts and, and this elite are so entrenched. But then these Europeans with their own prejudices and bigoted ideas about Japanese culture arrive and it creates a new era. And we'll look at that after the break.
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Yeah, we've got it. The Drop by GNC bringing you all the newness that matters. Hand picked by the pros who actually know what's up and what's proven to work. We keep you on top of the trends and dialed into what's next. Whether you're crushing it at the gym, leveling up your game or thriving every day, the Drop by GNC is where the latest solutions in health and wellness land first non stop innovation and fresh finds daily explore what's new and what's next on the drop by gnc.
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B
So you mentioned AFWA about Europeans arriving and I'm not going to pick you up on them. The of the racial problems which we'll come to as well. But the most important contribution that Europeans do is they bring with them the one thing that Europeans are the best at spreading all over the world, which is weapons. And the weapons that are most important are firearms and the military revolution. And again we, we've talked about that before, about why is it that Europe can be so unstable? Why the prioritization to keep improving ballistics, to increase the rate of fire, to increase the distance in which you can fire, the accuracy. So the Portuguese who start to arrive from around about the 1540s, start to bring with them matchlock guns and that starts to transform how people fight and also what it is that people want. So individual martial prowess that the samurai had starts to give way to things that are more recognizable in the European traditions where you have firearms, so you need to drill all the time, you need to think about logistics, you need to develop armor that is going to be simpler, heavier, resistant to bullets. And there are some examples of that at the British Museum exhibition. And it means that the way in which the samurai have seen their role as how they fight, one of their swordsmanship skills. We talked a bit about that. It means that it's now a different story where you can't have a single samurai galloping around the countryside who's respected and installing order. It's also now about how can you organize yourself. And that organizing capacity rather than personal heroic combat starts to change culture, politics, but also the way which the samurai function.
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And nothing accelerates that change more than Christianity, Peter which becomes introduced to Japan at the end of the 16th century and starts to spread rapidly through Japanese culture. And this really is a new set of ideas that's going to upset the existing order, which as you remember, if listening to the series. It's very deeply intertwined between military political power and these religious ideas from Buddhism and then Zen Buddhism. So Christianity now enters the picture.
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Well, we talked about that in the first episode about the rise of Buddhism. You kind of get a challenge because it's not just about the beliefs, it's about competing loyalties. And I guess at a certain point, when communities have enough of a minority or a new minority who've adopted new belief systems, then you've either got to persecute or you've got to incorporate. And that's a constant tension. Again, we see that in different parts of the world, different periods, not just with Christianity, too, but you see that samurai start to convert, or some samurais start to convert alongside peasants and merchants. Merchants are a big vector of Christianity because they travel around and they get used to hearing more languages, they get used to seeing more things. So they're important vectors. And then samurai themselves start to form communities not tied to local temples or to warrior lords, but to priests, to foreign priests, to new texts that come from abroad, to different kinds of networks. And so a warrior class whose powers depended on personal loyalty and control. This is, I mean, unprecedented may not be the most useful word, but it's an evolution that is very destabilizing about what it means to be a samurai. Can you be a samurai and a Christian, or are you now disassociating yourself with some of the key parts of what being a samurai means? And so those processes of negotiating with multiple new influences is a complex one.
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And this culminates in a war at the end of the 16th century and around 1600. That's sometimes described as the end of the Age War, Peter because it marks the culmination of all of these changes. The introduction of weapons, the introduction of Christianity, the changing power structure that's no longer so dependent on warrior rulers and allows these new communities to form. The Segigahara battle ends with a peace that looks different to anything before it in Japan.
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At the center of all of this is Tokugawa Ieyasu. He's a seasoned warlord who spent decades navigating the breakdown of the state over the previous few decades. He's born in 1540s. He's held hostage when he's a youth. He learns how to be patient as well as ruthless, and he builds a coalition of samurai allies. And at Sekigahara, his forces defeat a rival alliance claiming to govern in the name of one of the rulers. But victory makes Ieyasu the dominant military figure in the whole of Japan. And within three years, he's appointed shogun, formalizing his control and why that matters. It's the last time where there's national political authority in Japan being decided by single open battlefield clash. So, I mean, as it happens, at the year 1600, so it's always easy to remember that date. But after 1600, war stops to be a normal mechanism of politics because the country, to all intents and purposes, has been united.
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So now we're in an era of peace. PETER and for a system run by warriors, you can imagine that peace is quite transformative to daily life, because now the warriors have been, in a way, domesticated. They're paid in fixed stipends, often in rice. They live in castle towns rather than in the countryside. And many now are from a generation who've never actually fought a battle. Instead, they're clerks, magistrates, inspectors. And literacy, maybe more than sword fighting skills becomes the essential education. So the samurai are studying Confucian texts, legal codes, calligraphy. Martial training continues. It's so embedded in the samurai identity, but now it's become ritualized rather than a reality of being on the battlefield. And samurai identity and authority is now as much invested in education and rank as it is in lineage and descent.
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I guess what we'd say is that they're all becoming gentlemen, you know, so you come from this proud lineage, so you start to have to adapt to it. And some of the things that are interesting, I think, about the pushback through into Buddhism and Confucianism and how important that becomes for samurai identities. I know that's something you wanted to talk about, those sort of belief systems and how you kind of create the cosmic, alongside the history and the ritual about what samurai mean in this period.
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I just, I'm endlessly fascinated by the intellectual gymnastics of religious texts that, if you look at their origins, are always basically about peace and love. You know, whether you look at Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, they have these, like, very deeply spiritual principles at their heart, but they're used to justify this violence, war, power, consolidation of territory and status, which seem kind of the antithesis of those spiritual principles. And I think every religion has got its narrative that kind of squares that circle. Confucianism is now the samurai version, and I suppose it's actually less of a tangle now that they're not so much engaged, engaged in active warfare. These religious principles and this warrior backstory are merged into this ethical code, which is about honor, it's about restraint, it's about obedience and service. And these really are consistent themes from the origins of the samurai. To these more domesticated samurai. And I think that's one of the reasons that the idea of samurai has both endured and traveled, because those are very universal ideas. And I think a lot of people find the ethics attractive while also dressed up with an aesthetic that's subjectively beautiful. And that's why you see, for example, the British Museum doing this big samurai exhibition. Of course, it's because the history is rich and fascinating, but at the same time, it's because there's some really gorgeous stuff to look at. Let's be real. When you go to a museum, you want to see something immersive and compelling and completely seductive. And that's what samurai culture also offers.
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So when we come back for the break, we're going to look at the Edo period, the long period of peace between 1600 and 1868, the Meiji Restoration, and think about how the samurai evolve. And then we're going to come back and talk about the legacies of how the samurai are seen in later Japanese culture and how they're seen today. So in the long piece of the edo period, from 1600 to 1868, samurai identity increasingly starts to get shaped by stories about the glorious, golden, semi mythical historical past. So you get works, some of which I think are reasonably well known in the west, like the tale of the 47 Ronin, which becomes very popular in the 18th century, celebrates loyalty and sacrifice, even as real samurai are living quite bureaucratic lives, are never going to get that close to those ideals. But then you have those texts that we talked about already, the Tales of Heiky, which are recopied and reread, and they reinforce ideals about honor, about impermanence. And literature starts to play an important role of filling a gap between myth and reality. Because samurai power hadn't endured because they fought, but because their story remains so compelling.
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It's so interesting how objectively true histories get reassimilated into culture as ideals that are tainted with nostalgia for this both real and imagined past, where everything seemed more noble, where men seemed more masculine, and where women war was glorious. It's something that you can, I think, see in every single culture. And it's interesting to think of someone living in 18th century Japan being nostalgic for 15th century samurai, just as in, you know, 2026, you can be watching Shogun being nostalgic for 16th century Japan, you know, and I'm always curious, like, how much of these ideals are real and how much are they the kind of literary, romantic, politicized, nostalgic version? And it can be quite Tricky to unpick because of course, there's a lot of truth in the myth, but there is a lot of myth making as well.
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Nostalgia, like history, can imprison you as well. And in fact, with the samurai, part of the problem is they're trapped with their own status. So they're used to living on fixed stipends that usually paid in rice and so on, like you mentioned. But those don't keep up with inflation, with rising prices. The kind of customs discourage the samurai from being engaged directly in trade because that's sort of beneath them. They think that they are manly, physical warriors who might be needed again, and it's beneath their dignity. That's another one which we see in other parts of the world. Too many then get into very heavy debt with merchants who they're supposed to outrank because the samurai, that being noble means there's a standard of living that you want to project. And so they have to start pawning their armor or their family heirlooms or their swords. And that economic dependency starts to invert the social order. So nobody really wants to become a samurai. And the samurai protect themselves, saying, well, we are from this ancient lineage suit too. So that political order starts to become paralyzed and a source of nostalgia, which on a good day is looking back into the rosy mists of history with a smile. But on a bad day is one that is trapping you with the preoccupations about status without doing what a good hard day's work.
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And then there's more and more myth making to strengthen the ideal that is really becoming increasingly out of step with the modern world. So you get Bushido, which is a modern invention much more than it is an ancient reality. But what we call Bushido is really this supposedly ancient, rigid way of the warrior. It's what you're seeing romanticized in films like the Way of the Samurai. And it's actually a modern invention, because medieval samurai certainly did speak about honor, loyalty and reputation, as we seem. But it wasn't this single fixed ethical code that's neatly packaged in the way that I think we imagine it now. And, gosh, it's been a while since I watched the Way of the Samurai, but as I remember it, there are a certain number of rules. This is the samurai code. The samurai code, it's presented as this kind of neat ideal from time immemorial, but that's actually quite different from the historical reality.
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Where things start to really change is with the arrival in 1853 of Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States. Now many Listeners, people watching us on YouTube will think of Matthew Perry and think of Madame Butterfly and the Puccini opera. In fact, that moment has specific resonance and significance because the squadron of steam powered warships that he's traveling on shows the limits of the technological capabilities that Japan has under invested in at a time of profound change in other parts of the world through new technologies, the Industrial revolution and so on. And that forms demands in Japan for major reform that comes with something called the Meiji Restoration, which perhaps we'll do properly in another series. But one of the consequences of the Meiji Restoration is the abolition dismantling of traditions and of the old ways of doing things. And the samurai are part of that, a part of the casualties that suffer for the process of modernization. So it happens in a few steps. In the 1870s, samurai stipends, which have long been paid in rice, are reduced and then abolished. In 1873, there's introduction of universal conscription as the army gets modernized. In 1876, the final symbolic blow is the government bans the wearing of swords in public, stripping samurai of their most visible marker of status. And this is the time when, as you'll see, maybe know from photographs that you'll have seen, where, where Japanese diplomats start to turn up in tailcoats dressed up like Europeans in order to fit in. Because that's what modernity looks like. And not surprising, there's a bit of a backlash. So some samurai try to show their disaffection. There's a Satsuma rebellion in 1877 that peters out. But by the end of the 19th century, samurai exist really only as a memory. Some adapt and become bureaucrats or soldiers or entrepreneurs, but many just disappear into obscurity. And their abolition doesn't just mark the end of a social class, it marks the profound shift of Japanese society away from where we started the story in the five and six hundreds into of a place ruled by hereditary warriors reinforced by hard power into the governance of a modern state. And there's no place there for samurai too. So when we come back, Afro, we're going to talk about the legacies of a samurai in the 20th and 21st centuries. Because I think there's some really interesting things to say about why that story, why that word, why that name, why that label, why that category has become so well known outside Japan and why it's so important in Japan today too.
- [31:40]
A
That new thing. Yeah, we've got it. The drop by GNC bringing you all the newness that matters, hand picked by the pros who actually know what's up and what's proven to work. We keep you on top of the trends and dialed into what's next. Whether you're crushing it at the gym, leveling up your game or thriving every day, the drop by GNC is where the latest solutions in health and wellness land first non stop innovation and fresh finds daily explore what's new and what's next on the drop by gnc.
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C
This is where to me it gets really interesting, Peter, because it's a story about many of my interests, about identity, about narratives of history, about Westernization. I think it would be over simplistic to say the demise of the samurai is a metaphor for the westernization of Japan because Japan retains so many of its unique cultural ideals and its history is such a part of Japanese identity. But it's definitely true that the kind of phasing out of the samurai is partly a reflection of how it was kind of an incompatible idea with this modern globalized state that needs a theoretically meritocratic bureaucracy army that's recruited from universal conscription. These new classes that don't fit with a warrior class that's essentially on benefits, you know, receiving these like rice stipends from the state. And so I think that might be one reason why there is this nostalgia for samurai if it's seen as something that was sacrificed on the altar of globalization. And I think many cultures are now taking a step back and looking at what happened to them over the last hundred or 150 years and asking how much of their efforts to modernize actually resulted in the loss of precious cultural ideals that were unique to their identity and heritage and that actually are irreplaceable by being successful in the global market economy.
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B
I remember once talking to a Japanese academic colleague of mine about samurai and they said it's a bit like the dinosaurs, just evolution happens and if you can't keep up, it's too bad. And in a funny way, the kind of the breaking of the samurai is the fact that Japan becomes peaceful. So under the Edo, when the governance starts to become, you know, not bad, forget about the industrialization, globalization, the other things that that might, you might want to factor into how does Japan compare to other states? But because things settle down, the role that samurai have had and the value that they add starts to disappear. So they become internalized. And I guess what I'm really interested in about the story of the samurai is that most of the kind of ideas that we have in the west about samurai are in this kind of golden glorified period where samurai does become Connected with the Bushido, which is much more of a modern invention than an ancient code, which is the kind of the so called way of the warrior. And that's, you know, the idea about what it means to be a noble man who fights for good causes and so on. A bit like a crusader. It's real on the one hand, but it's also not real on the other. Because what a crusader needs is a cause. And if you don't have that cause, you can practice your recitations and your calligraphy and be ready to fight at any moment in time. But in a way, samurai a victim of Japan's success rather than the other way around. So when we think about samurai today and that nobility, we sometimes forget, like we said before, some of the things that we maybe should remember that samurai, they don't always behave loyalty. Quite often they change sides in the middle of battles. They negotiate who they're going to work with and who they're going to support. They marry strategically, they use violence ruthlessly. And samurai culture is a very male one too. So I'm really interested about why something that is so abstract, why we want to pick out the good bits rather than the bad ones.
- [35:41]
C
Well, it's a lot to do with how we globally, I think, kind of package cultures for consumption. So in Japan, there are certain tropes that everyone's familiar with and like these ideas, they often do have a basis in fact, but then they get kind of simplified into something more digestible for people who don't know the depths of the cultural background. So Japan, we have the idea of samurai, which was of course famous following the Second World War, this idea that these Japanese soldiers would give their lives out of loyalty and self sacrifice. Death before surrender, the glorification of death over defeat. And this was connected back to the samurai spirit, these kamikaze missions where pilots would crash their planes to hurt the enemy at the cost of their own lives, which I think really both fascinated, intrigued and horrified observers from other cultures. And then of course, you have these modern ideas, the samurai, Bushido, that kind of samurai idea. And then the other elements of Japanese culture, the cherry blossoms, the anime, you know, and it's all. I would actually be so interested if we had a Japanese guest to find out the gap between the outside perception of what Japanese culture is and how a modern Japanese identity holds on to these ideas as well. Because if you look at a country like Britain, for example, I think the idea people outside Britain have of Britain is the monarch, the monarchy, you know, these historic castles and Sites and the kind of afternoon tea and, you know.
- [37:10]
B
What are you saying?
- [37:11]
C
Yeah, these are real, right? They exist, but they're not. I mean, I can't speak for you, Peter, but I don't get up every day and kind of curtsy before a portrait of the queen and then sit down to a kind of long afternoon tea.
- [37:23]
B
We need to talk. We need to talk.
- [37:25]
C
I know. Maybe if we get more subscribers, I will be able to upgrade to that life, ring my bell and have the downstairs bring up my cucumber sandwiches. But, you know, I. Every culture experiences a gap between how they experience their own identity and how others perceive it. And I. I think the case of Japan, it might be extreme because there are these ideas that are so well known and so romanticized, and it's what.
- [37:50]
B
Makes it so interesting, because those nuances, like you said, it is all real. These places do exist, but it's the bit that gets cherry picked. And I guess what's interesting about the samurai is how plastic, how moldable those are. So, like you mentioned, the samurai spirit during the horrors of the Second World War and the kamikaze, those divine winds that have a specific resonance. Now you listen to the podcast about attempted Mongol invasions and the way that Japan got saved. You know, I think that that remodeling of the past to evoke national identities is not something that's unique in Japan. But samurai, for all sorts of reasons, has travel beyond Japan. So we don't think about warriors in China, for example, or Chinese societies. We don't tend to think about the same categories of people. I mean, unless you traveled a lot to India, you know, what kshatriya are and how warriors in particularly different parts of India have played a role in identities. I think that that evocation of the past being very selective, you know, in the case of samurai, what's been interesting is the role that it's played. And again, you mentioned anime, but the role that films like Seven Samurai played on things like Westerns in Hollywood and about the ways in which you have that similar ideas of noble individuals who are kind of lone guns, not responsible to any power, but at the same time are spreading goodness and justice and so on these continents and powers and countries that are miles apart. Those similarities speak to the fact that there's a sort of desire, I think, in the human spirit to look for those characteristics of nobility, of courage, of kindness, of dedication, or putting yourself second and usually actually sacrifice. So I think those things are quite interesting. Well, what about novelists? What about Yukio Mishima, Afua and the role that sort of key Japanese cultural figures have played in linking into Western and Japanese ideas about samurai.
- [39:38]
C
I think that Mashima's novel Runaway Horses has played a huge impact on bringing those samurai deals to life for a different generation and making us ask those questions about action, aesthetics, violence, politics and these cultural ideals. And I think it's interesting to think about the time we live in, you know, where it's such a consumerist, individualist society globally. I mean, there's no part of Earth that is free from this like hyper consumption that we experience. And I think that's driving an even greater nostalgia, this idea of a time when people valued simplicity and restraint and as you said, self sacrifice. It wasn't all about you and what you could get and accumulate, that you were living for some higher ideal. And I think, you know, for the same reason that Buddhism is so popular in Western countries now, with people from New York Times columnists to billionaires to, you know, ordinary people just trying to make sense of life. The values of something that provides a buffer and a defense against the onslaught of constant consumption, desire and individualist accumulation is actually newly attractive. And you know, the social media only magnifies that. You know, the younger generation have never been protected from that. You know, from birth they're basically inundated with these ideas and images. And so I predict that actually these historic ideas are only going to gain more traction. And actually that's why, you know, my 14 year old daughter loves anime. And so many of the story arcs and the characters are modeled on these samurai ideals, these idealized figures who master the almost supernatural art of battle and warfare, but do so for this elevated purpose of saving their village or their community or reclaiming honor for their clan. And ideas which basically have no resonance in actual everyday life in a country like the uk, but seem attractive. And I think it's so natural to gravitate towards that.
- [41:45]
B
It's very interesting in kind of 21st century youth culture in Japan or younger people's culture, what people think about samurai. And I've done a bit of reading around what it is, you know, how people relate to the past because it's very distant, you know, it's obviously very male. The militarism is one thing. And also young people, as your daughter will tell us, don't like to be told what to think and do by grown ups saying you need to be moral, you need to be courageous, you need to be brave, all these things. But they're picking out bits themselves they're interested in so it's highly resonant. I mean, the story about Yukio Mishima and his both as a cultural figure, but also the way which he dies committing ritual suicide in 1970 in a deliberately staged act that's designed to draw on the idealized vision of samurai death. It's understood not as a reflection back to the golden age of the samurais, whenever you want to put that, but as just a political performance and an attempt to be a center of attention, you know, in a pretty gruesome way. So, you know, I think these samurais, what's so interesting as a topic is there are so many different ways in which you can look at it and square it up. And I hope we've given them justice over these two episodes to think about the samurai more widely, about where they came from, how they evolved, what they believed, and how that changed over time. As we said at the beginning, there's a fantastic new exhibition at the British Museum that opens on the 3rd of February that runs until May called Samurai. Please do go and take a chance to look at it. If you can't, you can find it online and see some of the highlight objects that we've talked about. But I wonder whether the history of Japan now is something which we're going to learn more about in the future. I mean, Japan is in the moment of transition for lots of different reasons, because of geopolitics. It was a kind of cultural superpower in the 90s that went quiet for the next 30 years. But I wonder whether there are other topics about Japan that you think we might look at for future series.
- [43:35]
C
I think there's a lot to say about Japan. I mean, massive tourism boom, for one thing. And I know that they've recently had to introduce restrictions on foreign tourists, or at least more expensive entry permits or tourism fees, because they've been so deluge. And I think actually, as people are worried about traveling to places that were once popular, like the United States, they're more interested in exploring Japan. And I think as well, technology is reducing some of those barriers. Where once people were quite intimidated to travel to a country where they can't read or speak the language. Now, obviously you can have your AirPods do live translation for you and your phone translate everything. Japan has a female Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, who's also pretty right leaning. So it's really interesting how Japan is kind of straddling different global trends at the moment. And of course, there's the ongoing conversation about the realignment of the geopolitical order. I mean, you know so much about this, Peter, but Japan is. Is a such an important economy, such an important cultural powerhouse, and such an attractive destination for so many people. And I think it's all linked to this ideal, this idealized understanding of Japan. And again, there's so much truth in it, but it's separating the myth from the fact. There's so much to talk about. So, Peter, I hope we will be back to Japan, figuratively, but also in person would be the dream.
- [44:57]
B
I'd love to do that. And I was just thinking when we were talking, we were thinking about the sort of how to sign off this episode. You know, of course, one of the reasons, of course, why samurai culture has become so important in the 20th and 21st centuries is that there are other darker chapters of Japan's history that are much easier to gloss over. So to move away from Japan in the 1930s-40s, it helps to go back to an age of horsemanship, swordsmanship, the ways in which people were interested in calligraphy, and to keep that 20th century out the way. And there's something quite a parallel, which we maybe do an episode on the Silk Roads one day, where the real impetus for the Silk roads in the 19th and 20th centuries, despite what people might tell you, doesn't come from Europe. It comes from Japan, where the push throughout the course of the 20th century, before the Second World War and very significantly after, is about trying to think about those expansive networks we talked about on in this series and other ones, too, about how Buddhism unites Japan, linking it right the way through to China to Central Asia and to India, the kind of classic Silk Roads, too. So Japan has a lot of these different things that are going on that I think are really interesting to look at. So thank you for joining us for these two episodes on the Samurai. Enjoy the exhibition and thank you for listening to Legacy.
- [46:07]
C
Don't forget to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player. You can also watch all our episodes on YouTube, so make sure you're subscribed there, too.
- [46:15]
B
And of course, we're on all the socials. The links are in the show notes for this episode, or just search for us on Legacy Podcast. And as always, do please go tell one or two people about our podcast so they can enjoy it, too. I'm Peter Frankapan.
- [46:28]
C
I'm Afua Hersh, and we'll see you on the next episode of Legacy. Imagine the merging of trusted intelligence into a unified experience. Imagine collaboration amongst teams and across continents. Imagine an empowered ecosystem designed to deliver actionable insights that inspire growth and sustainability. That's the power of the Connect Industrial Intelligence platform to help you see further innovate faster, accomplish more. That's the Connect effect. Learn more at thatstheconnecteffect. Com.