In Wikipedia, both are iconic figures of the Japanese samurai, but lived in different eras. Takeda Shingen (1521-1573) lived in Japan during the Warring States period and was a famous lord of the warring states, while Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645) was a famous swordsman during the Tokugawa Shogunate, Edo period.
So what exactly is a samurai? In fact, samurai is not a profession, but a class of nobles who were educated in civil and martial arts and were responsible for civil administration or warfare, but later it was also extended to refer to Japanese swordsmen who were skilled in swordplay and wore swords without leaving their bodies.
Takeda Shingen was a daimyo, a lord, while Miyamoto Musashi was a ronin, a wandering swordsman. The true narrow sense of the samurai class is actually more like the picture below.
The samurai is arguably the most successful image of Japan’s recent cultural export, and like the ninja has become a symbol of traditional Japanese culture, and is often compared to the Western culture of chivalry because of its similar nature.
Akira Kurosawa’s film “Seven Samurai
After World War II, Japan produced a large number of films and literary works to tell the story of the samurai class, such as the famous Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece “Seven Samurai”, in which the actor who played Kikuchiyo, Toshiro Mifune, can be said to be a professional samurai with worldwide popularity.
From my personal point of view, the first contact should be as a child to watch the anime “smart Ichigo” in the samurai new Yuemon, as the first male supporting role of the new Yuemon is not as smart and clever as Ichigo, but also impressive.
Later, with the prevalence of video games, samurai image and culture has gradually moved to the game above.
Samurai culture in video games
HD remake of Takeshi Kaneshiro’s “Ghost Warrior
In 2001, the game “Onimusha” produced by Japanese game maker Capcom was released on PS2, and the biggest feature of the game was that the image of the protagonist, Akechi Zomasuke, was based on the famous Japanese actor Takeshi Kaneshiro, and he was also voiced by Takeshi himself.
Onimusha’s era is set in the 1560’s Azuchi Momoyama era, and the integration of magical overhead settings, the protagonist is the nephew of Akechi Mitsuhide, can be said to be the 80 generation of early access to the samurai class games.
Fighting games also often have the figure of samurai. The word “samurai” is directly represented in most languages by the Japanese kanji “侍”, except for a few countries where the Chinese language is influential.
Then here you can think of a famous fighting game history “Squire Soul”, many people as a child can not remember whether it is Squire Soul or to be soul, now you should understand that in fact this is the meaning of the soul of the samurai. So the “Soul of a Servant” protagonist Bawang Maru is a samurai naturally and rightfully so.
The seven-faced samurai in only wolf
Although the main character is a ninja (but not the typical ninja image), most of the bosses encountered during the game are samurai settings.
Speaking of “Only Wolf”, another game “King of Ren” must also be mentioned, the game producer Hidetaka Miyazaki’s “Dark Souls” series can be said to be the most popular type of game in recent years, from “Dark Souls” trilogy to “Curse of Blood” to “Only Wolf”, the imitators are endless, and “King of Ren” is one of the highest quality games on the market to “Souls” series model grasp.
King of Ren 2
Unlike the distinctive knight setting of Dark Souls and the mysterious Cthulhu core of Curse of Bloodborne, Kouei Tecmo, who made In-King, chose their best Warring States era setting and added their best demon and monster setting, and the game naturally comes with a lot of samurai elements.
Specializing in the Three Kingdoms and Warring States themes, Kouei Tecuma can be credited with spreading samurai culture, itself is about the Warring States period, “Warring States period” series, not to mention the Three Kingdoms period of China as a round “True Three Kingdoms”, the modeling settings of the characters also contain a lot of Japanese cultural shadows.
Xiahou Yuan of “True Three Kingdoms Muyo Six
Look at this “True Three Kingdoms Muyo Six” Xiahou Yuan, at a glance looks like Tokugawa Ieyasu’s men, and in “True Three Kingdoms Muyo Seven” although the same character modeling, but the shape has become much better.
Of course, the character modeling of the True Three Kingdoms series would have been very loose, Xiahou Dun perennial “kill horse” issue, Cao Cao and the next door “Warring States” Oda Nobunaga look like brothers, etc..
The player plays the role of the character itself is called “samurai”, you can see that Glorious is also true love of the samurai.
More original samurai elements than the above seem to be the game “Souls of Tsushima”, announced at the Paris Game Show in France in 2017, which has a stunning and beautiful art style, with the player playing the role of a samurai from the Kamakura Shogunate period to defend against foreign invaders.
The developer of Souls of Tsushima, Sucker Punch, although a first-party studio owned by Sony, is actually an American studio that has previously released works such as Infamous: Second Son and Cunning Fox Adventure, all of which are American-style games.
It is worth mentioning that the French gaming giant Ubisoft has also launched a game called “Souls of Glory”, in which the four camps are knights, samurai, Vikings and martial arts.
In addition, even in Japanese games that are not set in the samurai era, games with samurai armor and samurai swords are by no means uncommon, as long as there are elements of equipment or costume collection.
For example, completely to the fantasy world view set the “Dragon Quest” series (referred to as DQ), although there is no samurai-shaped protagonist, but the collection of elements inevitably have samurai armor defense and samurai sword weapons, in a while ago when playing DQ11S, personal favorite set of defense can change the appearance of the samurai armor style wolf dragon set.
Even Nintendo such all-ages games for young and old with samurai elements. In “Super Mario: Odyssey” in the cool bully castle is a typical Japanese castle, which also includes such iconic design as the Skywatcher. In addition, although there is no samurai sword, but there is still samurai armor in the clothing collection.
Samurai culture and samurai swords
Why the Japanese love samurai culture so much, even in the world, the samurai are quite successful as a cultural symbol.
As mentioned earlier, the creation of literary works has played a crucial role in promoting Japanese culture. In addition to Akira Kurosawa, the famous Japanese Showa-era director Hiroshi Inagaki has also repeatedly made samurai culture films such as “Miyamoto Musashi” and “Sasaki Kojiro”.
The Legend of Armor
Not only movies, many classic anime also have no shortage of samurai elements, such as the “armor biography” (mainland translation: magic altar fighter), which is often confused with the saints as a child. Later, the “Ranger Kenshin”, “Infinity no Sumiren”, “Alien: No Emperor’s Blade Tan”, and last year’s hit “The Blade of Demise”, all have a lot of samurai elements.
On the other hand, it may stem from the fact that we still have a special fondness for cold weapons, which is a completely different feeling from hot weapons, and the samurai sword is the most culturally rich cold weapon in Japanese culture throughout the centuries.
The public usually refers to the Japanese sword as the samurai sword, but in fact, there are different categories of samurai swords, for example, the most common samurai sword is actually called “fighting sword”. This is also reflected in the Japanese anime “Bleach”, the prototype of the zanpakuto is “beaten knife”, no soul of the zanpakuto is called “shallow beaten”, while the original name of “Bankai” is called “true beaten”.
Often confused with the “beaten knife” is the “taijutsu”, people who have not known the difference between the two may not be able to quickly distinguish the difference, but in fact, there is a big difference between the two popular periods.
The tachi sword is older than the beaten sword, and was popular in the Heian period (between about the 7th and 12th centuries AD), when it was mainly used in horse battles, and the tachi sword was mainly used for cavalry, and was usually hung at the waist.
The fighting sword, on the other hand, was popular from the Muromachi period to the Edo period (about the 13th century to the 18th century), and because it was mainly used in ground battles during this period, it was generally slightly shorter than the tachi and was worn at the waist. The smaller short swords were called “riksha” and were used to pierce into the gaps of armor and for close combat.
A simple way to tell the difference between a sword and a taijutsu is to look at the direction of the blade when it is placed, the one with the blade up is a sword and the one with the blade down is a taijutsu.
The spirit of Bushido has different interpretations at different times, but the samurai sword is the most important item of the samurai in any period, and can even be said to be the soul of the samurai, no one can be called a samurai without a sword.
Sakamoto Ryoma
From the Heian Period to the Meiji Period, the samurai rose in popularity until 1868, when the Edo Shogunate returned power to the emperor, after which the samurai were downgraded to the rank of shogun. The year before 1868, the samurai Sakamoto Ryoma, an aspirant of the Meiji Restoration, was assassinated. During the Meiji period, the samurai class declined rapidly.
In 1871, the Meiji government issued the “Decree on the Abolition of the Sword,” which prohibited not only ordinary people from carrying swords, but also samurai, and with the subsequent Southwest War, the samurai class was wiped out.
With the advent of the Meiji Restoration and the emergence of powerful ships and cannons, the samurai class disappeared and the artisans who made samurai swords gradually declined until the outbreak of World War II created the need for white-knuckle combat, so the Japanese government improved the traditional samurai sword and made the industrial-made mass-produced samurai swords commonly used by the Japanese army.
Today, samurai swords and samurai armor have become a collector’s item, and a mass-produced WWII-era samurai sword can be purchased for a few thousand dollars in places where knife control is not strict, but if you want to buy a traditional samurai sword forged by a craftsman, it usually starts at six figures, and a famous sword will cost another single figure.
Unlike these collectibles for the rich, the public’s exposure to samurai culture has mostly come from literature and art, and the improvement in game production in recent years has given samurai culture a more suitable vehicle.
Just as we have a love affair with the martial arts genre like “Legend of the Immortal Sword”, the Japanese have a samurai love affair that they can’t let go of. Fortunately, Japan’s game production industry is developed enough that their culture and history reaches players’ consoles and computers all over the world through one game after another.
