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- [00:03]
Tom Holland
This episode is brought to you by TikTok. The online world moves fast.
- [00:08]
Dominic Sandbrook
That's why TikTok approaches teen safety with families in mind from the start. On TikTok, teens get over 50 built in protections right when they join their
- [00:20]
Tom Holland
accounts start private by default. For those under 16, direct messages are turned off and only friends can comment on their videos. So safety is built in from day one.
- [00:31]
Dominic Sandbrook
And you know, know when safety comes first, discovery and creativity can follow. Learn more@TikTok.com GuardiansGuide I sold my car
- [00:43]
Carvana Customer
in Carvana last night.
- [00:44]
Tom Holland
Well, that's cool.
- [00:45]
Carvana Customer
No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
- [00:51]
Carvana Representative
So what's the problem?
- [00:53]
Carvana Customer
That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.
- [00:56]
Carvana Representative
Maybe there's no catch.
- [00:57]
Carvana Customer
That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
- [01:00]
Carvana Representative
Wow. You need to relax.
- [01:01]
Carvana Customer
I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?
- [01:04]
Carvana Representative
I think it's laminate.
- [01:05]
Carvana Customer
Okay.
- [01:05]
Tom Holland
Yeah, that's good.
- [01:06]
Carvana Customer
That's close enough.
- [01:06]
Carvana Representative
Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on car pickup fees. May apply.
- [01:13]
American Express Advertiser
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- [01:54]
Ghost of Tsushima Narrator
The Mongol Empire is invading our home. They are brutal, relentless, unstoppable. We are 80 samurai against an army fighting to slow the invasion. Today I die for my people. There must be thousands of the enemy. We will face death and defend our home. Tradition, courage, honor. They are what make us. We are the warriors of Tsushima. We are samurai.
- [02:38]
Dominic Sandbrook
Konnichiwa, everybody. So that is the opening to the excellent video game Ghost of Tsushima, which was developed by an American company, Sucker Punch Productions, for Sony in 2020. And as anyone who's played the game will know, we're in the 13th century in 1274. So the antagonists are the Mongols, who are ruling a mighty empire stretching all the way from the Danube to the peninsula of Korea. And their next target is Japan. And a huge Mongol armada is on the way. And the first stop in its sights is Tsushima, which is the island that lies midway between Korea and and western Japan. And in the game, you are playing as Jin Sakai. So you are. Your task is to resist the Mongol assault. And you are a young nobleman of Tsushima, and you've been instructed in the way of the samurai by your uncle, Lord Shimura, who is the person speaking in that prologue. And in fact, one of the things you have to do in the game is to slightly ignore Shimura's advice, because you're playing as a ghost, a kind of assassin. Because Shimura says to you at the
- [03:48]
Ghost of Tsushima Narrator
beginning, jin, when we fight, we face our enemy head on. And when we take their life, we look them in the eye with courage and respect. This is what makes us samurai.
- [04:00]
Dominic Sandbrook
But whether Jin heeds that advice or whether he goes his own way is what the game is about, isn't it? Tom, you're such a big video games fan, I'm amazed you started this with such a long discussion about Ghost of Tsushima. I mean, it's an excellent choice, but I'm guessing you've never played it.
- [04:16]
Tom Holland
I looked at this on YouTube, thought it looked quite good, quite exciting, and I wanted to do that partly because the samurai are such a part of kind of video game culture. Am I right in saying that? I think I am, yeah.
- [04:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
I mean, there's lots of samurai video
- [04:30]
Tom Holland
games, but it's also because that opening that you gave, it's expressive of a very distinctive take, a very distinctive understanding of the samurai, the actual reality, the historical context, you know, what actually happened when the Mongols landed at Tsushima. They then go on to attack mainland Japan. We will be coming to that later in this year. We're not going to be doing that in this series because in this series we're going back to look at the. The beginnings of the samurai, the origins of this extraordinary warrior cast. And it's a story that will be taking us to the heart of medieval Japan. So we'll be going to the. The 10th, the 11th centuries, when this very distinctive class of warrior starts to emerge on the Japanese archipelago. We'll be looking particularly at the eruption in the late 12th century of. Of this massive civil war between rival samurai clans. And this is a conflict that inspired the great epic of medieval Japan, the kind of the Iliad of Japan, which is a work called the Tale of the Heike. And we will also be exploring the way in which the rise of military rule, the rise of this warrior caste, results in the eclipse of the traditional court life focused in Kyoto, the great imperial capital. So it's a series about a cast of warriors who rank, I would say, as perhaps the most glamorous and mythologized warriors of all time.
- [06:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, Lots of our listeners will have a vague impression of the samurai. I would imagine they'll imagine the. The sort of the drawn swords and the tremendous armor and stuff, but I'm guessing a lot of people have only the very flimsiest idea of exactly when they were around and where they came from.
- [06:18]
Tom Holland
Right. And I think because they are so mythologized, it's probably worthwhile. Before we actually start the chronological sweep of this series, go back to the beginnings of. Of how and why the samurai emerge. I think it's. It's worth giving listeners a sense of the broad sweep of their history so that we can put their emergence in a kind of. In an overall context. So, as you say, if you shut your eyes, if you imagine a samurai, I think the image likely to be that of a warrior vaguely situated in the Middle Ages. So actually someone like Jin Sakai in Ghost of Tsushima. But the thing about the samurai, and this is what makes them different, say, from other very mythologized classes of warrior, like Vikings, say, or the knights of medieval Christendom. These are medieval warriors who actually outlast the Middle Ages. And I think that this is why in the west, as well as I would guess in Japan, they're aesthetic. The sense of them as having kind of moral codes, their vibe, if you want to put it like that, can actually seem much more attuned to contemporary culture than, say, those of Harald Hardrada, the great Viking warrior, or the Black Prince, the flower of medieval chivalry. And I think that this in turn underlies a further paradox about the standing of the samurai in the imagination, which is that on the one hand, they are indelibly Japanese. They are up there with. With geisha and with tea ceremonies and sumo and all that kind of thing, as absolutely kind of a list markers of Japanese culture. A samurai is Japan, but at the same time, they have also become global icons. They are objects of a universal fascination. So when you did that opening to the ghost of Tsushima, your accent was a kind of American Japanese fusion, which is kind of what the samurai has become.
- [08:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. And there's something also slightly, not exactly timeless, but the samurai have been detached from their epoch, so that they can often seen something very science fiction about the samurai. So the samurai's influence on Star wars, for example, is a case in point, which is something you'll be discussing.
- [08:30]
Tom Holland
This is brilliantly illustrated in a show that's on at the British Museum at the moment about the samurai and you walk into this show and the very first exhibit, beautifully lit, is this incredibly eerie suit of armor. So you have a helmet. It's complete with a kind of face mask. It's got a dragon's head over the. Over the brows. And coming from the back of the helmet, there are these golden leaves that look very sinister. They're like kind of blades. There's an iron cuirass. There are thigh guards to laced with silk. There are sleeves and shin guards that are lined with silk. And the various parts of this outfit come from the. The 16th and 17th centuries. And so this is the look of the samurai on the cusp of the great transformation in Japan's history. And this is its redemption from what had been almost 200 years of internecine civil war fighting between warrior clans that had spanned the whole of the 15th and 16th centuries and is known as the Age of the Warring States. After a similar period of war war in Chinese history. And then in 1603, a single warlord finally manages to establish his supremacy over the whole of Japan. He defeats all his kind of the rival warlords. And this is a man called Tokugawa Yeyasu. And he. For those who have seen Shogun, the wonderfully good Disney series set in the. In the year 1600, this is the model for Lord Toranaga, who will, likewise, in Shogun, emerge as the Shogun and the title Shogun.
- [10:06]
Dominic Sandbrook
So Shogun is an ancient title, isn't it? Or at least in its full version, it's an ancient title, and it's basically a great general or warlord who subdues barbarians, isn't that right?
- [10:17]
Tom Holland
Yes. So it's actually, it's a little bit like imperator, the word that Scipio Africanus was given. So it's a victorious general who's triumphed over kind of barbarians, as you say in Japanese. This word shogun has a very classy pedigree. It goes right the way back to the earliest days of the Japanese state, which is a period when. So the geography of Japan is going to be quite important in this story. So if you think of the main island of Japan, the central island, Honshu, there's a great kind of block of mountains right running through the middle of it. And about 75% of Japan is mountainous. And on the western side of that, it's all civilized. This is where the Japanese imperial state is centered in the early Middle Ages and north of this great block of mountains. So in northeastern Honshu, this, in the early Middle Ages, is full of what are called by the Japanese barbarians. And so generals get sent from Kyoto, the great imperial court, to go and fight these barbarians in the kind of the northern wilds. And Tokugawa Ieyasu, by taking this title of shogun, is deliberately legitimizing his regime by drawing on these kind of ancient traditions. You know, it's a very familiar story. A radical, revolutionary new form of government dignifies and disguises its radicalism beneath a show of tradition. So effectively Tokugawa is now the head of government. You know, he runs the state, but legally and like the generals back in the early middle ages, he is ranking as a servant of the Emperor. That is the kind of the, the legal situation and the regime that Tokugawa establishes and which is run by his descendants endures for, for two and a half centuries. So right the way up until the middle of the 19th century and throughout that entire period, Japan remains at peace. So you've had 200 years of kind of savage war, warlords tearing chunks out of each other, and then you have two and a half centuries of stability and order. But the mad thing is, or maybe it's not mad, I mean, maybe it's reflective of the settlement that Tokugawa has arrived at. Throughout this period of peace, the samurai are effectively functioning as bureaucrats, as civilians, but they never give up their military status. The shogunate is always casting itself as a military regime. So the samurai, the warriors, are less than 10% of the population in all, but they rank as the kind of the upper class, the kind of the most prestigious caste, if you want to put it that way, because it's almost impossible to become a samurai except by birth. And even though they are basically spending their time, you know, organizing, I don't know, corve or, or roads or whatever, they're functioning as civilians. They are obliged to maintain a kind of nominal state of military readiness. And the grander you are as a samurai, the better your birth, the more you are expected to kind of cosplay as a lord from the era of the warring states.
- [13:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
So there is an element of dressing up and role playing about this, isn't there? A deliberate self conscious role playing almost?
- [13:33]
Tom Holland
Yeah. I mean, it's as though in the Victorian House of Lords, lords, the lords had to come dressed in armor.
- [13:39]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
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Tom Holland
It's important to the image of the samurai that they are ready in case, you know, a repeat of the Mongol attack happens or something like that.
- [13:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right.
- [13:49]
Tom Holland
So samurai lords are brought up to ride a horse, to shoot arrows from horseback. Of course, the swordsmanship, the katana, the famous Japanese sword with its curved Blade. And you know, you have the hilt that you hold with two hands and you wear it blade up at the waist. You know, the armor originates in the period of the Warring States. So the breastplates, the shin guards, the metal masks, the helmets. And these helmets are adorned with really spectacular markers of identity. Crescent moons, wings, animal heads. So this is basically the armor that you see at the opening of the British Museum Show. Yeah, and as you say, they are playing the part of medieval warriors with all this stuff. And at the same time as they are dressing up in their spectacular helmets and practicing their horsemanship and learning to fire bow and arrow in the outside world, and particularly the Western world, life goes on. And certainly in Europe, people are pretty oblivious to Japan. And this is because Japan has shut itself off. So there is one isolated factory that is on an island off Nagasaki in, in the southwest of Japan, and this is run by the Dutch. And the Dutch are the only Europeans who are allowed to have a presence on Japanese soil. So by the 19th century, Europeans have effectively been banned from Japan for over 200 years. And then in 1853, it all changes because a US Commodore called Matthew Perry sails into what become to be called Tokyo Bay at the head of four menacing ships, as it seems to the Japanese. Four black ships, they're called.
- [15:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, the Black ships.
- [15:41]
Tom Holland
And the Americans, you know, they've got their guns and their cannon and everything, so they are able to force a hearing from the shogunate. And they land in Edo, as it's called, the Great City, and they find something that seems to them completely wild, which is this fantastical land where history seems to have been put on hold. You know, it seems like the Middle Ages are still kind of running. I mean, this isn't entirely the case. So it's often said that the shogunate banned firearms, for instance. This isn't true. What they do is to regulate the use of firearms very, very strictly. So it often seemed to European visitors that there weren't firearms. There were. But it's undoubtedly the case that Japan compared, say, to the industrializing states of Europe or the United States in the middle of the 19th century. I mean, it does seem really, really weird. This land ruled by a kind of medieval order of warriors in the age of the steam train and the telegraph and battleships and all of that. But now that Commodore Perry has arrived in Tokyo Bay and kind of opened Japan up to the world, this is very bad news for the rule of the samurai, because they're going to force Japan to open up. And this is not Good news for, you know, ancient medieval warriors.
- [17:03]
Dominic Sandbrook
No, no. And there's a good. There's a nice book on. People are interested. A sort of short history of Japan by Christopher Harding, isn't it, who's been on this show when, during the World Cup. And he has a story about a load of samurai are going to America, which perfectly captures the kind of culture clash, doesn't it? Is that 1860?
- [17:20]
Tom Holland
Yeah. So it's the first embassy that goes from Japan to a Western country and it's taken on an American ship across the Pacific. They land in San Francisco and they find everything about America bewildering. So there's. There's a tremendous account of the samurai having their first American food. And it's like a Frenchman arriving in England. So the samurai hit the head of the samurai, says the hardship cannot adequately be described by bread. I imagine all these kind of burgers and stuff.
- [17:49]
Dominic Sandbrook
That terrible bacon that Americans have. And the cheese, the cheese, mad cheese. Like, when you've got so many agricultural resources, why would your cheese be so pitiful? And don't text us about Wisconsin cheddar, like, because you just barely can get that.
- [18:01]
Tom Holland
An enduring mystery which the samurai puzzled over as well. And then they get on a train and they cross the United States and they arrive in the American capital and they're told about George Washington, first American president, and they're completely bewildered that the heirs of Washington are not in power. So in Japan, obviously, the descendants of Tokugawa are still in power. So why aren't the heirs of George Washington, why aren't they president? And as for the US army, the samurai are bewildered because the US army recruits people. So people in America are hired, not, not born to fight. And this seems to the samurai very, very poor, very, very shameful. But of course, the attitudes that the samurai have, these medieval attitudes, if you want to frame it like that, you know, the 19th century is coming very, very hard for them. So in the early 1860s, the shogunate tries to fight back. They try and assert their dignity in the face of the American intrusion. I suppose a bit like the Aztecs or the Incas trying to assert their dignity in the face of the Spanish. And as in south america in the 16th century, so in Japan in the 19th century, the. The samurai are repeatedly humiliated. And of course, for a military cast to be publicly humiliated is terrible for its standing and its prestige. So in 1866, samurai from the south of Japan repudiate the authority of the. The shogunate of the Tokugawa clan and they demand the restoration of Full sovereignty to the Emperor. They, they want the Emperor to step up to the plate and stop being a kind of cipher. And the following year, the, the reigning Shogun resigns. And then in January 1868, in the Imperial palace in Kyoto, the ancient capital, the restoration of rule by the Emperor is officially proclaimed. So the House of Tokugawa, at last, after 250 years, has fallen. But with the fall of the Takugawa, you also have the fall of the samurai.
- [20:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
So that's the Meiji Restoration, isn't it? Which is seen as the sort of the transformative moment in the history of modern Japan, because it's the moment that Japan, you know, it doesn't renounce the past, but it renounces maybe to some degree the cult of, the stultifying cult of the past and throws itself into the pursuit of modernity.
- [20:21]
Tom Holland
Yeah, so, so there's a manifesto, pledge is proclaimed in the Imperial palace in April 1868, and it goes, evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the just laws of nature. And actually what this means in practice, it is a kind of headlong rush to modernize. And the faster that Japan starts to Westernize, obviously, the more anachronistic this kind of hereditary cast of warriors comes to seem. And of course, Japan modernizes incredibly effectively. I mean, more effectively probably than any other country that comes into contact with the industrial West. And by the end of 1876, pretty much everything that had made the samurai distinctive for centuries and centuries and centuries has gone. So their elevated kind of position in a formal hierarchy, you know, their standing as the top caste is abolished, the stipends they'd been receiving from the government that they've gone, their monopoly on military service, that's gone. Anyone now can join the armed services, the right to wear a sword in public, the katana, that's gone as well. And even their distinctive hairstyle, which anyone who has seen shogun will immediately recognise, kind of the shaved front with a top knot, that's gone as well. So it's not just the Tokugawa Shogunate that's been abolished. So too has this entire tradition of military rule in Japan that, as we will find out, stretches way, way, way back into the Middle Ages.
- [21:49]
Dominic Sandbrook
I mean, obviously there are people in Japan who are very sad, I suppose, who mourn the death of tradition that comes with the Meiji Restoration. And oddly, Westerners have very ambiguous attitude too, because on the one hand, people who like Japanese culture love it as a kind of crucible of modernity, but we are constantly fascinated by the, the Sort of the tradition and the. The reverence for the past and all of that kind of thing. Which is why when you go to Japan, as, I mean, we've both done, you know, the samurai are everywhere. Katanas are everywhere. I mean, I have to say, Sambrook Jr. Returned with an excellent sword and all kinds of samurai gear from Japan.
- [22:26]
Tom Holland
There are definitely people in the west who mourn the collapse of the samurai, even though, of course, you know, it's the west that has precipitated their downfall. And I think what they particularly admire and regret is a kind of aesthetic. It's. It's the look that the samurai have. And so, for instance, you know, these suits of armor that will be familiar in the west that you get in museums, say British Museum or wherever, these are sold by ex samurai because, you know, every samurai had to have a suit of armor. They don't need them anymore. They're a bit short of money now. They're not getting their stipends, so they flog them off. And so they go around the world and they kind of broadcast the look of the samurai across the West. And helmets in particular, become kind of icons of what in France is known as a japonisme, which is kind of the craze for Japanese art, Japanese fashion, Japanese vibes that completely sweeps Western Europe in the 19th century. And they remain absolutely iconic to this day. And they're instant signifiers of medieval Japan, even though often, of course, they come from, you know, the 16th or 17th centuries. And you talked about a very, very celebrated marker of that influence which endures into the present day. And it's there in the British Museum show because you begin with this, you know, this stunning suit of armor which I described. And you go around the show, and then at the end, you have an outfit that deliberately echoed the suit of armor that you got at the beginning. And this is the costume and worn by Darth Vader and George Lucas's suggestion to the costume designer when, you know, they were prepping for Star wars, he said, I want some kind of big helmet, like a Japanese warrior. And it's not a precise instruction, but everyone immediately, you know, you immediately know what that signifies. The designer obviously knew, and that's partly
- [24:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
because Star wars is based on Kurosawa films. The Kurosawa films are the. Are the model for Star wars in some ways. The Hidden Fortress, I believe.
- [24:24]
Tom Holland
Yes, absolutely. Because it's not just the look of the samurai that people feel in the west feel that they know. It's also something more than that. It's this idea of there being a code of the samurai which, you know, in the. In the. In Star wars, becomes the kind of the. The Jedi and all that kind of stuff. And this code is. It's given the name of Bushido. Bushi is warrior, so the way of the warrior. And. And I had always assumed, I would imagine that most people listening to this show would assume that this was a kind of authentic code going right the way back to the beginnings of the samurai. So it's there in. In. In. In Ghost of Tsushima, for instance. You know, this is the way of the samurai, and obviously it's there in. In. In Star Wars. So Yoda is very Bushido. This, you know, this great teacher passing on the way of the warrior. And George Lucas, when he was picking up on this idea of Bushido as a kind of model for the Jedi in Star wars, he was part of a kind of a continuum which reached back decades. So in 1908, this is what Baden Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, had to say about Bushido. He's writing in Scouting for Boys. The Japanese have their Bushido, or laws of the old samurai warriors, just as we have chivalry or. Or rules of the knights of the Middle Ages. And Baden Powell is not wrong to recognize something of chivalry, you know, the. The medieval code from Latin Christendom, in Bushido, because actually, that was one of the ingredients of Bushido, because actually, far from drawing on a moral code that reached back to the Middle Ages, Bushido was pretty much a modern invention, a post Meiji Restoration invention. And it was a fusion of authentic Japanese traditions that was seasoned by admiration, I'm very proud to say, for the model of the English gentleman. So there's a little bit of the English gentleman in Bushido and also the chivalric traditions of Europe, because the Japanese looked at these traditions and said, oh, we'll feed them in and try and, you know, make something that's simultaneously Japanese and Western.
- [26:35]
Dominic Sandbrook
So you're saying the cult of the samurai is to some extent a modern invention informed by English gentlemen of the late 19th century. That would be immensely pleasing if it were true.
- [26:46]
Tom Holland
Yes, obviously, most of it comes from authentic Japanese traditions, but there is a seasoning of the English gentleman, and there is definitely a touch of the kind of the medieval night. And it kind of bubbles up in the late 19th century into the 20th century. And then in the 20th century, it becomes one of, you know, the great cultural influences, of course, on Japanese culture, but also on global culture. So in the early decades of the 20th century. It's appropriated by the Japanese military and perverted to their own uses. And it takes Japan to some really very dark places because Bushido becomes a kind of ideological justification for what the Japanese army is doing in Korea, in China, in the second World War. And when the Americans occupy Japan, they feel that much of what Japan had done, the war crimes and so on, is to be blamed on this notion of Bushido, which they see as a kind of ancient expression of Japanese militarism. And so they, they ban it. And they come down hard on cultural representations of samurai. And when the. The American occupation ends, the Japanese are ready to kind of re appropriate this tradition. So the ideal of Bushido, as it turns out, you know, it has been perfect for Japanese military before the war, and it proves perfect for the Japanese entertainment industry after the war. So it helps the samurai to become kind of, you know, a great theme in Japanese film, tv, manga. And sometimes the samurai are portrayed as kind of role models, models of courage and loyalty and honor. And the code of the samurai is taken seriously, but sometimes they are more morally complex, more ambivalent figures. And this also has become part of what has made the samurai Japan's great cultural export throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. So, you know, we've talked about how it's there in Ghost of Tsushima and Star wars, but it's also the morally ambivalent model of the samurai is there in spaghetti westerns. It's there in the films of Quentin Tarantino. You know, he loves, he loves a katana.
- [28:58]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
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Tom Holland
And people are interested in this. We will be exploring it further. We'll be looking at Star wars, spaghetti westerns and so on. In a special bonus with Oleg Benech, who wrote a fabulous book, Inventing the Way of the Samurai, which very much does what it says on the tin. It's kind of the definitive study of Bushido as a. An invented tradition.
- [29:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
But just because samurai are mythologized, just because they feature in all kinds of popular culture and whatnot, doesn't mean that they. There's not a historical reality behind it. And let's get back to the historical reality. So there definitely are samurai in the distant medieval past, and they do endure for hundreds of years, and they do have amazing armor and swords, and they've got their traditions and they've got their code and all that. Right.
- [29:40]
Tom Holland
There isn't a code of the samurai, which is kind of followed for centuries and centuries and centuries, but they do have moral codes, they do have traditions they do act in obedience to very demanding ideals of shame and honor. And I think above all, and maybe this is, you know, the key to understanding why they have been figures of such enduring glamour for so long throughout Japanese history and then more recently into global history, is the fact that right from the very beginning, the samurai were masterly at the art of creating their own myths. And this was a very urgent task for them. And this is because unlike, say, in the Frankish worlds in medieval Europe or the Viking worlds, warriors in medieval Japan initially did not stand at the apex of society. They are outsiders. They're out in the provinces in the wilds, and the aristocrats who are at the center in the imperial court look down on them. They. They regard them with contempt. And the word for warrior, bushy, you know, it's. It's a bit of a dirty word. And the word samurai is even more so. It's even more low rent. Because literally, a samurai does not mean a warrior. It means a vassal, a subordinate, a person who is in service to a great lord. And so it's not enough for the samurai. We're talking about the rise of the samurai. They're upwardly mobile. That's not enough, because they are parvenus. And like parvenus, throughout history, they have to cope with the snobbery of those whom they are displacing. And so they can do this partly by kind of affecting the manners of the court, by behaving as. As. As courtiers do. But I think it's more satisfying for them in the long run to start establishing their own standards, their own own morals, their own myths. And so this, over the course of the Middle Ages, is what they came to do. And it's these myths which do originate in the Middle Ages, which touch the samurai class with this incredible glamour, which is, you know, there to the. The present day, and which it, you know, fascinates people in the west as much as in Japan. And so to trace the way in which this myth evolves, you know, we need to go back and look at the. The kind of. The reality right at the beginning and ask, you know, who are the first samurai? How on earth had the Japanese court managed to survive for so long without having a cast of warriors? I mean, it's very unusual, kind of, you know, if you think about Europe in the Middle Ages, it's odd for us, I think, to imagine that the ruling class weren't warriors at all, despised warriors. And then what happens to make that change? How is it that the court collapses and this class of warriors emerges.
- [32:36]
Ghost of Tsushima Narrator
Right.
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Dominic Sandbrook
So we should be asking and answering those questions. And we should be heading to Kyoto in the year940. And we'll be kicking off with the display of a particularly gruesome and implausibly talkative trophy. And we'll be doing all that after the break.
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McDonald's Advertiser
K Pop Demon Hunters Saja Boys Breakfast Meal and Hunt Trick's meal have just dropped at McDonald's.
- [33:00]
Tom Holland
They're calling this a battle for the fans.
- [33:02]
McDonald's Advertiser
What do you say to that, Rumi?
- [33:04]
Carvana Representative
It's not a battle. So glad the Saja Boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.
- [33:09]
American Express Advertiser
It is an honor to share.
- [33:11]
Carvana Representative
No, it's our honor.
- [33:13]
American Express Advertiser
It is our larger honor.
- [33:14]
Tom Holland
No, really, stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle.
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- [33:52]
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- [34:12]
Dominic Sandbrook
Welcome back to the Rest is History. We are at the beginning of April, 940, and we're in the imperial capital of Japan, Heian Kyo, the city of peace and tranquility known today as Kyoto. And a load of horsemen have just ridden from Kanto, which is the great plain on which Tokyo, modern day Tokyo, stands. They have crossed the mountains and they have brought with them a gift for the Emperor. Tom, what's the gift?
- [34:40]
Tom Holland
Well, the gift is the severed head of the most notorious warlord in Japan. And this warlord is called Taira no Masakado. And he is a. A remarkable man of whom remarkable things are reported. So, first of all, he's an absolute unit. He is seven foot tall and the Japanese are not at all people. So he really stands out. In his left eye, he has two pupils, which, again, unusual.
- [35:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
That is unusual and date unheard of.
- [35:13]
Tom Holland
But perhaps the most striking thing about him is he is completely invulnerable to weapons. And this is thanks to his mother, who was A giant snake. And I gather it's the custom for giant snakes to lick their. Their offspring. And so this his mother, the giant snake, had licked Masicado all over, with the exception of his forehead. And her saliva had the magical power of making him invulnerable to weapons. So there's a slight hint there of Achilles.
- [35:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
Two pupils. That's weird. Anyway, what happens to the head? What do they do with it?
- [35:44]
Tom Holland
So the head is exhibited in the marketplace of Kyoto. So there's a spike. They put the head on the spike and they lift the pole up so that the head is gazing out over the marketplace. And the moment the pole has been levered into position, the eyes open, complete with the left eye with its two pupils, and they glare around angrily. And the head demands to know where the rest of the body is, so very annoyed that the body parts have gone missing. And it stays there for several months. And all this time it doesn't rot in the slightest. It, you know, it's silent for periods. And then it has another massive rant demanding its, you know, its legs back and its arms and so on. And then after several months, it suddenly starts to glow and then it shoots up off the spike and it goes bombing off across Kyoto in search of its decapitated corpse. And it heads eastwards across this great mountain range which separates Kyoto from Kanto, which is the great plain to the east. And as it's flying over Kanto, this head is brought down either because it gets shot by. Down by a God. That's according to one account, or because it crash lands for reasons that aren't explained. But whatever, the head crash lands hands and locals go and pick it up and they wash it and they bury it and they raise a mound over it. And of course, this is regarded as a very sacred place. And people who go to Tokyo today, you can still see it, this, this mound, the tomb of Mascado's head, because it stands right in the middle of Tokyo's business district, you know, I mean, among the most valuable real estate in the entire world. So you would, you would think, well, surely this has been cleared. Surely they built some skyscraper or something. But they haven't, because every attempt to build on it has resulted in disaster. So, you know, they might lift up a crane and the crane comes crashing down, or the head of the company that is trying to develop it kind of gets run over by a car or something. And so the Japanese in Tokyo have drawn the lesson that you shouldn't try and erase the last resting place of Masakado's head. And so this, his tomb stands there to this day.
- [37:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
This is because he's the first samurai, Right? So you can't mess with the first samurai. And he's the guy who. He's the founding father of this tradition that we're talking about in this series.
- [38:02]
Tom Holland
Correct. So Masakado is essentially. He's kind of fated as the first samurai, and that is absolutely why he. Why he has this kind of resonance, this mythic status. So obviously there's. There's quite a lot to pick here. So, again, because geography is really important in the story, let's just look at how the geography of Japan maps onto the kind of the politics of the empire in the mid 10th century. Because this is essentially what this story is illustrating, the political geography of Japan. So Masakado's head has been brought from the plane of Kanto, which literally means east of the, kind of the mountain range, east of the barrier. And it's been brought to Kyoto because Kyoto is. It's not just the great center of power, it's the only center of power in the Japanese archipelago in this period. And it had been founded in 794. It's the seat of the Japanese emperor, and the emperor rules as a lineal descendant of the Sun Goddess, and then a succession of 15 emperors who between them were supposed to have ruled for centuries and centuries and centuries. So they're a bit like the kind of the biblical prophets. They have, you know, improbable lifespans. So that's a story that's told. The reality is rather different. What becomes the Japanese imperial dynasty had originally been just one of a number of competing kind of aristocratic families. And it's only at the end of the seventh century that it succeeds in establishing its overall supremacy and with it, its imperial status. And then, having established this supremacy, of course, it faces the challenge of maintaining it. How are they going to do that? And initially, they do this in a kind of classic way by establishing a monopoly of violence. That's what imperial regimes invariably do. So the emperor requires all the other lords to hand over their military equipment, their crossbows and so on, and these are confiscated and put in regional depots that are dotted around the empire so that they can be drawn on in case of emergency. This is a period when the Japanese are sedulously imitating China, which is the great model for them. And in China, the army consists of a great mass of conscripted peasants. And so the Japanese emperor does the same. This is going to provide him with his manpower. But it doesn't really work in the Japanese context. And that's partly because there are far fewer peasants in Japan than there are in China. So peasants don't really provide the emperor with the kind of military mass that he needs. It's also because there is a massive fiscal crisis, and it becomes too expensive for the emperor to run his own army. And also, peasants just make terrible soldiers. You know, they're hopeless. They're always kind of running away and stuff.
- [40:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
But just what do they need the soldiers for? Because who are they fighting? They're not going to be attacked by external enemies, are they? China, Korea or whoever. So what do they. Is it internal threats?
- [41:07]
Tom Holland
By this point, the southwestern half of Japan has basically been pacified. So that would include Kushu, which is the kind of southwestern island. And then you have the main island, Honshu, up to this kind of great range of mountains east of Kyoto. All of these have been pacified. And so you don't really need an army in that kind of southwestern half of Japan, because effectively, it's fine to have civilian government there. And all the regional aristocracy by now are obsessed by hanging out in. In Kyoto in this great capital. And they go there and they kind of write poetry and they practice calligraphy and they mix incense. And this is how you prove your status, not by going out and. And fighting. And actually, it's quite like versailles in the 18th century. Lords do not want to stay in the provinces. They want to go to the court, they want to show off there. They want to adopt the arts of peace. And so warriors, as the centuries pass, come to seem to the court, they're uncouth, they're murderous. Basically, they're scum. They're kind of literally described as dogs. War has become something that is vulgar, it's become something declasse. It's something that no one with any standing or status would dream of doing.
- [42:22]
Dominic Sandbrook
And yet you might say that any regime that has a contempt or disregard for military muscle is living on borrowed time, because that's what power is all about. So presumably they don't ignore military muscle completely.
- [42:34]
Tom Holland
Well, no, because we've said the northeastern reaches of Honshu, this main island of Japan, that remains unpacified. And so the provinces beyond the mountains east of Kyoto have this kind of real march of feel. You know, they are kind of frontier zone. And here the imperial government has no option but to reverse its previous policy and to encourage the governors, the lords who live in these northeastern provinces, to levy their own troops, because they need them to keep order there. And so who are these troops? Well, these lords are still kind of emulating the Chinese model and recruiting peasants who serve them as infantry. But there's the same problem. The peasants are rubbish. They're always running away and throwing away their weapons and things. And so the key figures, the key players, as in medieval Europe, are horsemen. And these are called suamono, and these are warriors who are trained from childhood to shoot arrows from the saddle. So in that sense, they are like the kind of the classical horsemen of the steppes, you know, the Mongols included. And the great obsession of these horsemen in northeastern Japan is honor, and the great fear is disgrace. Which isn't to say that they're not also very, very obsessed by financial rewards and other rewards as well, because they are. And it's this kind of fusion of obsessional interest in. In their own honour and an obsessional interest in getting on in life that makes them, you know, that if you want a samurai code, that is the samurai code, they are called samurai because they are the retainers who are recruited by the local lords to serve him as his muscle, you know, as his
- [44:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
kind of backup, you might say. So as an. As a layman, I might say that's very risky, because basically, if local magnates are recruiting their own troops to fight off, you know, the barbarians or whatever, then, you know, the lesson of late Roman history is when there are, you know, it won't be long before one of them declares himself emperor and marches on the capital.
- [44:41]
Tom Holland
No, in the long run, as we will see, you are not wrong. And this is obviously going to be a problem, but not immediately. And this is for various reasons. And the first is that these provincial governors to the northeast of the great mountain range that. That separates Kyoto from, From the northeast of Honshu, they all hate each other, right? So it's very, very unlikely that they're going to gang up and kind of march on Kyoto. And if there is a rebellion, then it's very easy for the imperial government to find someone on the scene who's going to crush it, because Kyoto is the source of all patronage. And so all you have to do is say, well, you know, I'll send you a nice calligraphy kit, go and beat up this guy and the guy, he'll do it. And again, there's this whole Versailles thing, because even provincial governors out in the sticks, you know, they buy into the notion of what is fashionable, of what gives them status, which is the kind of the ideals of a centralized court running everything. And Kyoto provides the only standard by which even people out in, you know, the northeast of Honshu want to be judged. And it's the only source of the lifestyle that ultimately matters, the lifestyle that gives you status. And Carl Friday, great scholar of early medieval Japan, he compares these governors, these warlords in the northeast of Honshu with CEOs today. And so to quote Friday, who tend to identify More closely with CEOs in other lines of business than with the work as engineers or middle managers in their own. So it's like, you know, tech CEOs, industrial CEOs, financial CEOs going to Davos. They have more in common with, with, with each other than they do with the kind of, the minions far below them in their kind of various corporate structures. So in other words, you know, in the Japanese context, just because you employ mercenaries doesn't mean that you want to be mercenary yourself. You know, you want to keep them at a kind of distance.
- [46:36]
Dominic Sandbrook
And they are related to the emperors by and large, aren't they? On the, they're from the imperial family, most of these governors.
- [46:42]
Tom Holland
Yeah. So that's a third factor that is kind of reining in displays of, of, of military bracadio that are not sanctioned by the court. So regular listeners to the rest of history may recall that this is not the first series that we've done on Imperial Japan because last year we did a couple of episodes on the great female writers at the Imperial Japanese court around the year 1000. And the the first of these episodes was on the Tale of Genji and which is an enormous 1100 page novel written around the year 1000 by Murasaki Shikibu, Lady Murasaki, and set in the imperial court. And the hero of that novel was the son of an emperor by one of his concubines. And because he's the son of a concubine, he has no prospect of inheriting the throne. And so his father, the emperor, is keen for this boy, who he recognizes as being very talented, to have a career of public service rather than kind of hanging around in the palace being a drone, doing nothing. And so he takes this very drastic step. He removes the boy from the imperial family by giving him what no emperor ever has, namely a surname. So this young prince, it's not seen as, you know, he's not being disgraced. It's not because he's misbehaved. It's actually the opposite. It's because his father recognizes in him great talents and doesn't want the them to atrophy, doesn't want them to go to Waste. He wants them to, you know, he wants this boy to go out and kind of, you know, make something of his life. And so as you said, the surname this boy is given is Genji. And as a Genji, he belongs to two realms. He belongs to the realm of his father, the realm of the, you know, the imperial family, but also the realm of the nobility, of the great kind of public figures who serve the palace. And Lady Murasaki, when she was writing the tale of Genji in the year 1000, was writing it as a historical novel. So she is casting Genji, her hero, as the first prince to be de princed, if you like, you know, to lose his kind of princely standing. But as she well knew, Genji was not the only one, because this is a process that carries on throughout the 10th century. And this is because emperors in Kyoto have multitudes of wives and concubines, and as a result they have kind of vast progenies. And Even by the 9th century, there are simply too many princes in the imperial system to handle. So even, you know, even with, with our own beloved royal family, this is an issue. You start, you know, you accumulate princely clutter and you have to get rid of them.
- [49:20]
Dominic Sandbrook
I mean, we've discovered that two is too many, basically.
- [49:23]
Tom Holland
Basically, pretty much. And in kyoto in the 9th and 10th century, this is even more of a problem. And you know, these princes clutter up the place and they're very expensive, so you've got to get rid of them. And so the solution is to cut them loose from the imperial family by giving them this special surname. And one of these, as in Lady Murasaki's novel, is Genji, or as the clan name is more generally known, Minamoto, which is, it means origin. So Genji and Minamoto are basically the same word. The other dynasty is the Heike, or as it's more generally known, the Taira, which means peace. So by the 10th century, these two clans of ex princes, the Minamoto and the Taira, have emerged to become two of the greatest dynasties in the empire. And the field of their operations tends to lie in the provinces, and particularly the northeastern provinces in Kanto and beyond Kanto. And here, you know, they are very, very glamorous figures because they come trailing clouds of, of imperial glamour. And they bring with them all kinds of benefits that people out in the wilds can, you know, immediately want. So they can offer kind of high ranking governorships and military commands. They can offer the local aristocracies marriage into what is a kind of, you know, it Gives them a kind of imperial link. And so lots of these regional dynasties are very, very happy to take on the name of minamoto or taira, because they're much more glamorous than their own. And so the minamoto and the taira become larger and larger as kind of dynastic organizations, and they provide people out in the provinces with this sense that they have a real kind of a very glamorous link to what is going on in Kyoto, what is going on in the capital. So all of this is looking great. It's all. All seems fine. It's all taking along. But as you, as you implied, Dominic, there is a kind of potential problem here, because what if a minamoto or a taira out in the provinces should start to feel that, you know, his nose is being put out of joint, perhaps by the court in Kyoto, perhaps by another member of his clan, perhaps by both. You know, they have warriors at their back. What is to stop them going a little bit rogue? And this in the 930s, is precisely how Taira no Masakado. So he is the first samurai, the guy whose head goes flying off after it's been decapitated. This is how he comes to feel
- [52:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
because he is a taira, right? He's from the Taira clan.
- [52:05]
Tom Holland
Yes, he is. And so he is of imperial descent, but he is very bitterly conscious of being kind of downwardly mobile. Things are not going well for him. So he had been born in the northern reaches of Kanto, this kind of great plain beyond the. The mountains that separate it from. From Kyoto. And he has grown up a very formidable warrior. And as we said, he's absolute, absolute unit, absolutely huge. He's got his two eyeballs in his left eye. And he has made himself a master of what is described by the samurai as the way of the bow and the horse in. Otherwise, he's a great horse, horseman and he can fire a bow sitting in the saddle. It's not enough for Minamoto just to be a warrior, because that would mean that he. He really has kind of gone down socially. He's kind of lost his. His status.
- [52:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
He wants to be doing his calligraphy and his poetry and stuff as well, doesn't he?
- [52:56]
Tom Holland
Kind of. I think by this point, I think he's less interested in that, but he wants the kind of the. The stamp of authority and glamour that only the imperial court ultimately can provide. And so he applies for a government post, a post that will say to everyone around him, yes, I have imperial favour. And he gets turned down and Then he is snubbed by his own uncle, a guy called Taira Yoshikane. And what Masakado has done is to ask Yoshikane, his uncle, for his daughter, so his. His cousin, to be his wife. And Yoshikane says, no, I'm not interested in you. You're just a samurai. You know, you. You. You don't really rank as a member of my family anymore. And Masakado is incredibly insulted by this and goes absolutely berserk. So one minute he is quarrelling with Yoshikane about his wedding plan, saying that he, you know, demanding to marry his. His cousin, and the next, he's been refused by Yoshikane, goes completely ballistic and starts torching entire villages simply because. Because these villages are dependencies of one of. One of Yoshikane's allies. And we have a near contemporaneous account. So this isn't kind of written up decades later. This is kind of from around the time that day. The voice of the flames contended with the thunder as it echoed that hour. The color of the smoke battled with the clouds as it covered the sky. People's homes were turned to ashes and scattered before the winds. Provincial officials and peasants alike beheld it all in anguish. And so Yoshikane obviously is infuriated by this. I mean, insulted. You know, he has to have vengeance. And so he raises an enormous army, which Masakado, at the head of only a hundred horsemen, spectacularly routes. It's an incredible victory tribute to Masicado's charisma and to his mastery of the arts of warfare. And so now things really are kicking off. Masakado has taken his cousin, married her. Yoshikane kidnaps her back. According to the kind of the romantic version of this story. Masakado then sneaks behind enemy lines to meet her and does so with the connivance of his wife's brothers, so his also his cousins. So there's a sense there of a kind of, you know, real kind of dynastic snarl, romance and hatreds and rivalries and all of that. And this is intensified by the fact that Masakado's cousin, a very sinister man called Sadomori, has signed up to Masakado's side and then promptly stabbed him in the back, betrayed him, acted as the agent of Yoshikane, and even worse. Sadomori then rushes off to Kyoto, basically to tell tales on Masakado. And as a reward for this, Sadomori is given the northern command that had been held by Masakado's father, and which Masakado himself obviously had been hoping to get. So again, it's an incredible insult to Masicado and makes him even more determined to have his vengeance. And this is a very fateful step because essentially what had begun as a kind of family feud is now starting to embroil the whole of Japan.
- [56:05]
Dominic Sandbrook
Masakado goes even further, doesn't he? Doubles down you. Because this is the point at which he can basically keep gambling or stop. And he decides to keep gambling, and he makes an extraordinary decision that he is going to declare himself Emperor. So this basically takes us to that point I made earlier about, you know, why isn't it like the late Roman Empire, where provincial governors are declaring themselves Emperor? Well, now it is because this is what he's done.
- [56:30]
Tom Holland
I mean, he doesn't declare himself the Emperor of. Of Kyoto. So the southwestern half of Japan, he's specifically of Kanto, which is this kind of this. This great plain. And Masakado is the first, and he will not be the last to recognize that Kanto is actually a much larger lowland region than Kansai, which is the plane on which Kyoto stands. And just to emphasize, Japan is 3/4 mountain. So wherever, you know, the plains are absolutely crucial. If you control a large fertile plain, then you, you know, you're really motoring. And because Kanto is larger than Kansai, the plane on which Kyoto stands, then it means that potentially Kanto is a much richer and more powerful region. And even though Kyoto will remain the official capital of Japan for another a thousand years, in the long run, it is Masakado who will enjoy the last laugh. Because today, you know, it's not Kansai, but Kanto, which boasts Japan's, and indeed perhaps the world's largest city. And that is the city that comes to be known as Tokyo, the eastern capital. So Masakado, by declaring himself the Emperor of Kanto, you know, he is kind of looking to the future, but it is a very distant future.
- [57:49]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. Not his own future, unfortunately for him.
- [57:52]
Tom Holland
No. Because by doing this, by declaring himself Emperor of Kanto, effectively, he signed his own death warrant because the imperial authorities are not going to recognize his rule. It's, you know, it's just unthinkable. And so what they do is, you know, the classic course, they employ rival lords to bring Masicado down. And these rival lords, who include Sadomori, his cousin, are sponsored to turn on Masicado, and they're given funds that enable them to fight through the winter. And this is something that Masicado doesn't have. And so he is unable to sustain his. His. His own forces through the offseason. And he's cornered. He's shot through the forehead, which is the one bit that his mother, the giant snake, hadn't been able to lick. So it splits his skull, and then he is decapitated. And his head, of course, is then brought to Kyoto, put on the marketplace, and it probably doesn't go flying off. His fate does serve the lords of Japan and the samurai class more generally as a salutary warning. And so his career, to that extent, you know, it's the exception that proves the rule. And, you know, several decades after the death of masakado, the year 1000, this is the period when Lady Murasaki is writing the Tale of genji. So it's 1100 pages long, and warfare in it is barely mentioned, and it never intrudes directly.
- [59:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
It's the same with the pillow book, isn't it, that we also did Shea Shonigan book. I mean, there's basically no fighting, no hint of battles, nothing. No sense of sort of disorder out there in the. You know, everything is incredibly ordered and perfect and elegant and all of this kind of thing. And we. When we did that series on those two writers, we talked about how extraordinary this is in the context of what's going on in Western Europe in the same period. You know, it's Vikings, it's ether at the unready, it's massacres, it's people. Bishops being hit over the head with hammers. It's. It's just completely different.
- [59:51]
Tom Holland
Yeah. Whereas in the Tale of Genji, it's not just that people aren't talking about war. They're not even talking about warriors. There are no warriors. They just don't feature. For people living in the court, this is, you know, a kind of paradisal age of peace and tranquility. And they are so secluded from the violence and the vulgarity of the provinces that they can enjoy the fruits of this brilliant civilization without having to worry about war. It's a world of beauty, of poetry, of love, of exquisite calligraphy, beautiful perfumes. You know, if you're into that kind of thing, it's tremendous. However, you know, history does not come to an end. We see that for ourselves. And so it is for the. The courtiers in Heian Kyo in Kyoto, because beyond the mountains which ring the capital, the samurai are still very much there, and they are still learning the way of the bow and the horse, and they're still being hired by governors of distant provinces as private mercenaries and being enrolled as their own retainers as samurai, and still very much on the scene, and in fact, more powerful, more ambitious, more restless than ever are these two great dynasties direct arrived from the imperial house, the Taira and the Minamoto and Dominic. It may not have been evident to the to the silken aristocrats cloistered in Kyoto, but the storm clouds of war were building and the war that will come. This is a war that is going to end forever the dominance of the imperial court and establish in its place a dramatically new order. Because the age of the courtier is coming to an end. The age of the samurai is dawning.
- [61:57]
Dominic Sandbrook
What a cliffhanger. So we'll be returning to this brewing rivalry between the Tyra and the Minamoto in the next episode in which the age of the samurai dawns in earnest. Now, if you want to hear that next episode, literally right now, you can, if you're a member of the Rest Is History Club, because you've got it already. In fact, you don't just have to listen to that episode. The next two episodes in this series are available to members of the Rest Is History Club as well. If you want to join that particular samurai warband and hear those episodes, then head to therestishistory.com and you get all kinds of unbelievable benefits as well, including our exciting super soraway new newsletter, which has all kinds of extra content about the samurai and their age. So on that bombshell, Tom, aragatu gozaimasu and sayonara, everybody.
- [62:48]
Tom Holland
Matane.