What Life Was Like as a Samurai In Feudal Japan RESPONSE

this video is brought to you by tokyo treat and sakurako hello noble ones welcome back to my channel this is the method on speaking and today we are responding to a video published by the channel weird history you will find a link in the description below the video is called what life was like as a samurai in feudal japan the video's got currently 2.1 million views and it was posted two years ago as always i'd like to underline this is a friendly response video i'm not attacking the channel nor the creator but there are a few things that were said on this video that i believe need addressing let's get started the samurai warrior of feudal japan has been a pop culture staple for decades brave disciplined skillful and above all honorable samurai have appeared as the heroes of beloved films novels television shows and even comic books but as is often the case the reality is way more complex and way more interesting than the fiction so far i agree with everything the word samurai is derived from the japanese word subaru which means to serve actually no that's the brand of a car let me say this right off the bat i'm not going to correct every single word that he mispronounces because he clearly he doesn't know japanese which is not a crime and besides he's speaking english so even though later on in the video you'll see that he pronounces the japanese rice wine as saki whereas the japanese pronounce it sake it's fine i mean at the end of the day he's speaking english it would be on reverse the same as the japanese saying macdonald when they're trying to say mcdonald's so when it comes to like correcting his pronunciation i'm not gonna correct his pronunciation in this case however i do need to correct him because this is not a matter of he's mispronouncing the word because he's pronouncing it the english way he literally said subaru and it's instead so the classical japanese verb the men to serve no one uses it anymore but that would have been this one both the word and the warrior class that it describes came into being around the 8th century or what's known as japan's heian period for comparison this was roughly the same time nights we're going on crusades over in europe the 8th century is actually a bit too early when talking about crusades in europe because the first official crusade happened in august 1096 and even if we don't consider the first official crusade and we want to talk about the people's crusades so the sort of unofficial crusade that happened before the official one endorsed by the catholic church then we are still in 1096 it just it happened if i recall correctly in april so 8th century definitely too early for talking about the crusades so it's kind of weird that he would that he would say that if you were going to be a samurai you needed to start young how young well one famous spiritual guide from the medieval era recommended encouraging bravery from the time of infancy children who were part of the samurai class could start learning the basics of fencing with wooden swords as early as three years old yeah you heard that right three and while modern society requires you to be 18 to see an r-rated movie medieval samurai kids would be fighting with real lethal blades by the time they were five no they wouldn't be fighting with real-life blades by the time they were five this is clearly sensationalism so basically what happened here is that they read that they started training very young and therefore they said oh they they started fighting by the time they were five absolutely not also because training with live blades doesn't equal to fighting with live blades because fighting with live blades as a form of training is stupid even for adults so never mind children giving a live blade to a child actually still happens today in japan i don't want to say names and i don't want to point out dojo but i do know of a person who is a very high up when it comes to dojo martial arts and he gave a live blade to his son and his son is like super young but definitely is not having him fight with it it's mostly for like qatar for training for test cutting so yes maybe they did do it for test cutting it wouldn't surprise me since people still do it today but saying that they had five-year-olds fight with live blades is literally trying to change the facts in order to surprise your audience and make them go oh my gosh but it is spreading false information now not only i have a problem when it comes to this section with a part where they say that children by the time they were five were already fighting with lethal blades we have debunked that but we also have a problem with the very statement modern society requires you to be 18 to watch an r-rated movie and these people had children fight with lethal blades i think it's very unfair and i will tell you more about it after a word from a sponsor now check this out today we've got boxes from japan one from tokyo tweet and one from sakurako tokyo 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you to be 18 to see an r-rated movie medieval samurai kids would be fighting with real lethal blades by the time they were five this statement i have to say really drives me nuts because it's very hypocritical and disingenuous what he's basically saying is oh look at this feudal medieval as he says japanese people giving live blades to children and yet he forgets that those are not just children those are professional warriors in training but the part that really puts me off is his statement modern society doesn't even allow you to watch an r-rated movie until you're 18 and these people gave blades to children this is the typical superiority complex the modern society needs to have towards medieval society the reason why i say it's hypocritical is because the very same modern society depending on where you're from allows parents to take their kids to a range to teach them how to use guns so if a samurai were to come to a time and we were to tell him oh my gosh you people gave weapons to children or they could say but so do you and besides those are not even warriors in training now regardless of your political view whether you agree or not we have to be honest and not hypocritical when we describe a society of the past without pretending to be better than them particularly when we do very similar things when it came to beverages samurai were allowed to partake in japan's most widely consumed alcoholic beverage the rice wine known as sake hey if you had to lay down your life for your boss without hesitation you might want a stiff drink too yeah probably being a skilled warrior in feudal japan required expert level knowledge of martial arts and weaponry samurai always fought with blades of various types but their arsenal still evolved over time early samurai preferred fighting with spears yes medieval samurai who mostly traveled on horseback were partial to bows and arrows the famous samurai sword called a katana became popular during the kamakura period along with the bow it would remain the samurai's predominant tool well into the 15th century it's not predominant it never was predominant it was always present as i say although in different forms because before the katana or the uchigatana was devised they used touchy as i was saying some longer blades but it never was predominant never was a main weapon the bow and arrow was a main weapon the spear was a main weapon and also as gunpowder arrives then they start using tanegashima matchlock type aqua so that becomes a primary weapon particularly for gunner units but never the sword the sword is never a predominant weapon it's always a backup weapon samurai were powerful and respected but technically they were not nobility under medieval japan's rigid caste system the samurai were part of a special military class that was treated more like merchants this meant they faced many of the same financial challenges as merchants okay so this i have a big problem with because first of all when you say the samurai they were respected by the were non-nobility the meaning of the words nobility slash aristocracy changes so much in the history of japan that it's really really complicated to describe it accurately with very few words it changes during the hay am period it changes during the baku sengoku period major restoration there are changes in 1884 there are changes in 1947 but still even if we decided to paint with a very broad brush saying that because technically there weren't an ability to face challenges that merchants did face is in fact incorrect the video is mostly focusing on the period called bakufu and in this time nobles had zero power everything was in the hands of the military and even though when it comes to the daimyo so the great names to feel the lord yes some did derive or had some connection to the so-called kuget or the actual court nobles others didn't but they still had more power than the actual nobles who were relegated to kyoto including the emperor who at the time of the shogunate had only nominal power it was the shogun that was in power this meant they faced many of the same financial challenges as merchants but honestly they weren't treated as merchants at all i mean when you look at the full pyramid of japanese feudal society you see the merchants are pretty low a peasants technically technically i understand it and a lot of merchants had a lot of money so they probably lived better than didn't care that they were underneath peasants but still technically peasants produce something merchants don't they just sell something that is produced by someone else which is why they are lower but as you can see there is a gap between the bushi the samurai and the merchants so they definitely were not in the same position now given when you say they had the same economical or financial struggles as the merchants that also confuses me because asamara is not selling stuff so somewhat isn't well yeah he's selling his services i guess but as some would i we could even say that a merchant has customers and the samurai has clients maybe you can look at it this way but as somewhat i makes money in a completely different way and somewhere i will go into battle it will be paid for it he will participate to some spoils he will be rewarded depending on what they do it's a completely different system on how to make money and therefore yes you of course had someone else that struggled you had some would either wear wearing armor made of paper because they couldn't afford the iron armor and they were you had someone they didn't have many retainers and you had someone that had a lot of retainers you had somebody owned land you had half samurai there is a lot to say so of course the variables when it comes to how rich or how poor a samuday was would really vary although then again if it's a somewhere they can still wear full armor i'm not sure that i would say that he's really struggling when it comes to money it's probably just struggling compared to richer or more successful somewhere or older somewhere who are veterans but a merchant a merchant struggles when he doesn't sell a merchant struggles when the taxes are raised and merchants struggles when there are blockades on when there is war because of obvious reasons i don't need to go into but they are so different and distinct that it really surprises me but let's see what else he says while zen buddhism didn't arrive until the 12th century japan had known a buddhism in general since the 6th century with heavy restrictions on the cultivation of birds and animals for food the religion led the country to embrace a diet heavy in fruits vegetables and grains especially rice yes but not everyone accepted that and not everyone actually followed these rules also these rules change this is a massive topic in fact i'll have you know food in ancient japan i do have a one video here if you're interested that one is mostly just the entire video just to talk about rice the influence of buddhism into everyday life suffice to say that the government even changed its mind several times sometimes some things were prohibited sometimes other things weren't then there were of course poachers there were people that were still hunting even though they weren't supposed to so it's not as simple as buddhism decided you should be all vegetarians and the government enacted it and then everybody followed it as noted previously samurai often struggled economically this in addition to their strict moral code made them frugal eaters yeah so here they i see that the kanji they're having bushido but bushido in the 12th century wasn't coded it wasn't organized there was nothing i mean yes they had their own laws and regulations they had their own code probably would vary depending on clan to clan but it wasn't as codified as they seem to think while the aristocracy in the military elite died at banquets that served the finest food and drinks the samurai like the peasant relied on husked rice as a staple this rice was supposed to be provided as rations by their respective lords also this idea that rice is a staple meaning that that's basically all people ate is incorrect i'm not saying that that's what he's saying necessarily there is a lot of evidence about the five grain staple instead meaning that yes rice was important and as he says it was used also as a form of payment and definitely would have been very common but it wasn't the only thing that they ate when it comes to carbs in fact they were a total of five different grains as i do speak in details on this video they were as common in in feudal japan they were consumed by the low class as well as the upper class so the only thing that i'm saying is nothing is necessarily wrong or that they aren't necessarily wrong but that they do give this wrong impression that all they had was husked rice and that's not the case going all the way back to the hayen period samurai armor was extremely flexible iron plated with leather or strips of bronze were finally crafted by artisans using advanced tools as technology continued to develop and new resources became available samurai armor evolved with it over time the armor became increasingly more elaborate which had the side effect of increasing its weight one type of armor called the yori or oyori consisted of a multi-part skirt a kuris shoulder pads and a helmet altogether it weighed over 60 pounds those samurai helmets called kabuto were made from iron and steel they covered the head and had flaps that provided for protection of the neck the helmets were carefully sculpted and highly decorated a daimyo warlord for example okay so the yoroi or azi will be later called oyoroi is definitely an example of a very you know the very heavy end of the spectrum so i appreciate that they mentioned that because oftentimes when people talk about samurai arma they always say oh it's so light it's so flexible particularly when compared to very heavy medieval european arm and blah blah blah and we know that that's that's not fair because as you can see as he rightly said some i mean he said he said 60 pounds i would say maybe 50. some examples do excellent examples do reach 60 that's kind of again the heavier end of the spectrum but yes the oyuroi was definitely i wouldn't say flexible in fact yeah anyways it was very heavy uh but also at the same time as the oyoroy was in use that there were other types of samurai armor which were instead very light the idea that samurai armor as it progresses it becomes heavier and heavier is actually correct it's just that the forward in time you go the more options you will have so yes if you want you can wear a full or your oi which is going to be super heavy and it's going to hang on your shoulders but you're going to be mounted anyways and so some people were like yeah i'll do that i want the full-on protection but other some would i either because they couldn't afford an or simply because they didn't like the idea of wearing something so heavy they chose other types like for example the domaru which was an armor that would go all around you it wouldn't have the separate panel like the oyuroi wouldn't be as rigid it would be much much lighter and it would be much preferred for people that fought on foot but most importantly i think one one thing that it didn't say is that even though it does happen that when you look at the development of samurai armor from for example the 8th century uh all the way up to the 12th century and then again he mentions early types of like bronze but in the bronze age there were no somewhat i'd like to underline so that would be better defined as japanese armor japanese warriors are but not samurai armor because it needs to be made for a samurai to be classified as samurai but regardless of that it's true that when you get to the 12th century one of the options is very heavy so you get to this option of having the oyuroi but then as you move forward and enter the sengoku period and even earlier the muromachi period then the armas that's actually shrinking getting smaller getting i would say have a better overall weight distribution such as the set that i have which is a torso and in that case we have a smaller silhouette the weight is not on your shoulders but it's on your waist so where the center of mass is and then therefore i think it would have been important to mention then the weight is then cut and the overall encumbrance of the armor as we reach the 15th century and the 16th century goes down drastically dramatically for example i wear some sort of animal iconography apparently branding has always been important i i appreciate the joke uh i i know that he's saying this as a joke branding so the elaborate very weird kabuto with all sorts of decorations that resemble mythical creatures and animals those are mostly from the other periods of the time of peace given some really elaborate and very big uh kabuto with lots of decorations also existed in previous eras but when you look at stuff like this with lots of different and impressive decorations he jokingly calls branding that's mostly from the time of peace when armor was now becoming something that you want to wear just to show off how important and successful and rich you are it's just that it becomes insane in a good way because i love the kawari kabuto that's what they're called in the edo period because then you know artists it becomes a form of art there you go honor over time the samurai began to develop the famous moral code that would someday become known as bushido or the way of the warrior a samurai's loyalty was to his demio and to the shogun but the code governed his actions bushido required its adherents to be brave and honorable in battle but also in everyday life this code was standardized under the kamakura shogunate in 1232 in a document i don't actually think it was standardized that early at all i think it was standardized again during the period of peace and so the the way we understand bushido now the books that talk about bushido now don't really have much to do with 12th century samurai or 13th century samurai some of the of the ideas like what he said having been brave and having courage in combat absolutely i'm pretty sure that that was something that any professional soldier was expected to do and if you think about it i mean that's something that is expected of you to do from any culture everywhere in the world if you're a soldier a professional soldier you're expected to be professional and to be brave in battle and even in the roman period it was like that so yes i'm sure that some elements have always been there but the codification 12 32 i think it's too early do you think you would have made it as a samurai japan i would have not made it as a summary although i i think i might do h on maggie if i really tried all right number ones but anyways i'd like to say hello to weird history if they do watch this video it's not again an attack on the channel on the channel but there are i think a few things that were perhaps not studied as deeply as they should have been but anyways let me let me know what you think definitely go check them out as always if you liked this video consider becoming a number one and subscribing to my channel for more content from the metatron and don't forget the amazing deal that tokyo treat and sakura core have got ready for you click the link in the description below to check them out thank you very much for watching and remember the metatron let's spread its wings goodbye

Channel: Metatron

Views: 65,016

Keywords: samurai, feudal, japan, japanese, sengoku, kabuto, katana, nodachi, naginata, ninja, shinobi, shinobinomono, history, historical, kyoto, tokyo, edo, heian, temple, shrine, bhuddist, warrior, warlord, daimyo, shogun, weirdhistory, channel, response, debunking, metatron, fun, amazing, lesson, lecture, samuraiarmour, armor, sword, helmet, shield, castle, momoyama, muromachi, tokugawa, takeda, date, clan, accurate, discussion, talk, speak, teacher, professor, nihongo, nihon, giapponese, japonese, wrong, incorrect, debunk

Id: COuW_2D_TlY

Length: 21min 38sec (1298 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 12 2022