Opinions on Kara-Tur

[Satinavian]

On this basis, I can only assume that this message board is the only example of social media with which you engage.

No, i am also on three other, smaller forums. One of those is even in English.

[Willie the Duck]

By the by, after going back and reading about a dozen of this guys articles, I can conclusively say he is a selective quoting agenda pusher who is attempting to reframe history into his own narrative.

No, but he is strawmanning a bit. The stuff he debunkes is probably less common misconceptions and more completely outdated ideas and elements of power fantasies hardly anyone actually believes while still employing them in fiction.
It is a bit like reading a text meticulously listing all the plot errors and worldbuilding problems for a pulp magazine or for 40k. Every single argument can be completely correct while still not contributing much of note overall.

I’ve seen his blog linked several times here lately, but his actual academic credentials aren’t that impressive. His publication history is extremely limited, and it looks like he’s still sending out chapters of his dissertation for review.
He has every right to publish an opinionated blog, but I wouldn’t rely on him as an authority.

Full disclosure – I do not have time right now to go through this blog and determine what I think of this individual academic. They might be good, or bad, and my judgement on that will have to wait.

I do agree with the general trend of academic bloggers and posit that what you see in this guy is something I see in many of them (again, cannot comment on how accurate it is for this one) – framing the knowledge they provide as an exclusive true glimpse into how things really work that slavering hordes of lesser minds simply don’t know (and aren’t you superior for having this knowledge?). It’s a really tempting framing device, and one that draws in adherents. Nothing is quite so alluring as being in on a secret (except maybe being outspoken), and nothing quite so easy as finding someone else to point to as the other. Especially easy when you can then find a group of like-minded individuals to agree with how superior one is to be in said group of like minded individuals and toss back and forth individual instances of such and such ridiculous person who doesn’t know what they in the group know.

There certainly are plenty of aspiring intellectual influencers who create such blogs, and they often get something of a dedicated following. Given the ease at which one can create an individual brand, and the dearth of universally trusted sources, it was almost inevitable. It’s the modern equivalent of the proverbial soapbox, and sifting the brilliance from the self-assumed brilliant; the outspoken from the self-declared outspoken; and those fighting against a real mass of misinformed rubes vs. those in love with the sensation of outspokenness; is one of the real challenges of keeping oneself informed.

And again, I have no idea how much this specific blogger falls into those categories.

You'd be very surprised how many people believe whole-heartedly in the myths and misconceptions he's tearing down.

If you have read or interacted with anyone how does one of the below, you've met someone who believes in the overarching pseudohistory.
* tells you the Spartans were a noble warrior culture who saved democracy and had remarkable military success.
* believes in the "universal warrior" / "warrior ethos" garbage -- and that stuff is widespread on reading lists and in training programs for military and police in the US.
* espouses the notion of cyclical history where "hard men create good times, good times create soft men, soft men create hard times, hard times create hard men, repeat endlessly".
* or relevant to RPGs set in pseudo-historical not!Japan, believes that the constructed mythos of the samurai, bushido, etc, is accurate to any real period of Japanese history.
There are some detailed examples I can't get into here, but that are laid out in the articles on the blog in question -- those articles aren't a revelation, they're a good summary of a known and persistent issue.

On this basis, I can only assume that this message board is the only example of social media with which you engage.

The plural of anecdote is not data. Most all of us have met someone (particularly out on the internets in forumlandia) who believes any given thing. Heck, I’m sure I know people who last checked in on their medieval Japanese war/weapons knowledge when they were teens in the 80s and bought into the whole ‘katana is the most epic’ kind of stuff that was so prevalent at those times and haven’t necessarily had an update since then. That does not show that there is a massive and persistent misunderstanding, nor speak to the actual prevalence of such understandings. This hints at a numerator. Without an attempt at a denominator, this is no better than my above-described adherents banding about their cherry-picked cases.

Yeah, that does also affect OA also. Like I know that they are trying to hammer in the world building idea to players, but it kinda felt like any wargamer's fanfic, like the horse archers beating the archers? (*cringes in Ventidius, Corbullo, Trajan, Aetius, and Otto; generals who defeated Horse Archer nomad army*)

Ah, a good example. I personally feel (feel, not know) that there are a lot of people, particularly in gaming circles, who read up on Genghis Khan and got the takeaway that horse archery is a standout exceptional combat type (and not Khan the tactical and strategic leader, the historical context, the state of his opposition at the time, and so forth). I feel like that’s a common misconception – but I don’t have any real evidence of how prevalent that misconception really is.

I can honestly say that i never interacted with anyone doing any of that.

Japan and Sparta are rather common targets of fanboyism in Western media. Perhaps there’s something that would be more prevalent from your other language forums that would be analogous. I do agree with Max and FIATH (oh, hey, never noticed that before! Clever) that one does tend to run into ‘that guy’ if one hangs around forums long enough. I just want to reinforce that that’s not a strong indicator of the existence or non-existence of widespread misconceptions (to which further evidence is required).

[t209]

Ah, a good example. I personally feel (feel, not know) that there are a lot of people, particularly in gaming circles, who read up on Genghis Khan and got the takeaway that horse archery is a standout exceptional combat type (and not Khan the tactical and strategic leader, the historical context, the state of his opposition at the time, and so forth). I feel like that’s a common misconception – but I don’t have any real evidence of how prevalent that misconception really is.

True.
But the way it was written might be confusing who sees Samurai as katana wielder yet the description seems to be lifted out of Kamakura-era Samurai (horse archer), or lumping every East Asian archetype to sound cool (at the time).

[JoeJ]

It always seemed to me that Kozakura, the first of the realms to be shown, was strongly influenced by Clavell's Shogun (although possibly as much or more based on the 1980 TV mini-series as the original novel).

[t209]

It always seemed to me that Kozakura, the first of the realms to be shown, was strongly influenced by Clavell's Shogun (although possibly as much or more based on the 1980 TV mini-series as the original novel).

But from what I read, it's more Kamakura, like "here's Emperor, Shogun, Shogun's regent as an irony on Shogun being real power behind the Emperor, and retired Emperor who actually has power behind the curtains".
I think Swords of the Daimyo's prologue for "foreign characters" is trying to emulate it.
But in my opinion, it is kinda tedious if someone is up for Samurai Adventure but have to go through with a prologue that may include fatality and getting harassed by locals for months--unless they handwave the timeskip, but might not be a good first impression if it was the first session--once you reached there at that, or if DM keeps insisting on running it despite having Kozakura party members, depending on ratios of foreign to native characters.
Instead of staring off at trading outposts despite various ships having made runs through it, depending on if Miyama was too remote from these lanes...but the game seems to insist on going west.

[Max_Killjoy]

Full disclosure – I do not have time right now to go through this blog and determine what I think of this individual academic. They might be good, or bad, and my judgement on that will have to wait.

I do agree with the general trend of academic bloggers and posit that what you see in this guy is something I see in many of them (again, cannot comment on how accurate it is for this one) – framing the knowledge they provide as an exclusive true glimpse into how things really work that slavering hordes of lesser minds simply don’t know (and aren’t you superior for having this knowledge?). It’s a really tempting framing device, and one that draws in adherents. Nothing is quite so alluring as being in on a secret (except maybe being outspoken), and nothing quite so easy as finding someone else to point to as the other. Especially easy when you can then find a group of like-minded individuals to agree with how superior one is to be in said group of like minded individuals and toss back and forth individual instances of such and such ridiculous person who doesn’t know what they in the group know.

There certainly are plenty of aspiring intellectual influencers who create such blogs, and they often get something of a dedicated following. Given the ease at which one can create an individual brand, and the dearth of universally trusted sources, it was almost inevitable. It’s the modern equivalent of the proverbial soapbox, and sifting the brilliance from the self-assumed brilliant; the outspoken from the self-declared outspoken; and those fighting against a real mass of misinformed rubes vs. those in love with the sensation of outspokenness; is one of the real challenges of keeping oneself informed.

And again, I have no idea how much this specific blogger falls into those categories.



The plural of anecdote is not data. Most all of us have met someone (particularly out on the internets in forumlandia) who believes any given thing. Heck, I’m sure I know people who last checked in on their medieval Japanese war/weapons knowledge when they were teens in the 80s and bought into the whole ‘katana is the most epic’ kind of stuff that was so prevalent at those times and haven’t necessarily had an update since then. That does not show that there is a massive and persistent misunderstanding, nor speak to the actual prevalence of such understandings. This hints at a numerator. Without an attempt at a denominator, this is no better than my above-described adherents banding about their cherry-picked cases.

Ah, a good example. I personally feel (feel, not know) that there are a lot of people, particularly in gaming circles, who read up on Genghis Khan and got the takeaway that horse archery is a standout exceptional combat type (and not Khan the tactical and strategic leader, the historical context, the state of his opposition at the time, and so forth). I feel like that’s a common misconception – but I don’t have any real evidence of how prevalent that misconception really is.

Japan and Sparta are rather common targets of fanboyism in Western media. Perhaps there’s something that would be more prevalent from your other language forums that would be analogous. I do agree with Max and FIATH (oh, hey, never noticed that before! Clever) that one does tend to run into ‘that guy’ if one hangs around forums long enough. I just want to reinforce that that’s not a strong indicator of the existence or non-existence of widespread misconceptions (to which further evidence is required).

As evidence that the misconceptions are widespread and influential, I'd point to almost every documentary made about Samurai and Spartans over the last 30 years... and loads of fiction about same...

[Tanarii]

I'm inclined to agree it was a pretty heavy mishmash of American pop-culture version of "Japanese" (especially the classes) plus "Kung fu". That was fine at the time, after all that's exactly what D&D is, a mishmash of pop-culture.

But yeah, if I had campaign nations that are any other asian culture analogue going on, that doesn't really work at all.

As evidence that the misconceptions are widespread and influential, I'd point to almost every documentary made about Samurai and Spartans over the last 30 years... and loads of fiction about same...

Touché. The sheer number of American High School and College sports teams named "The Spartans" is pretty impressive too. There is a reason for that.

[Mechalich]

Pop culture absorbs new historical research slowly if it does so at all.

300's treatment of the Spartans is actually a nice example of how this works. First, 300, isn't historical fiction at all, it's a comic book movie - Zack Synder et al. have been quite clear on this from the start - with the comic book in question being Frank Miller's 300, from 1998. And that work, in turn, was derived primarily from his recollections of the film The 300 Spartans from 1962. That means that the historical references used for a film that hit theaters in 2007 lie all the way back in the early 1960s (a film that was not, itself, intended to convey any sort of historical accuracy, but to make a point relevant to the cultural clash of that period). And while this is a somewhat extreme example, it happens all the time. The MCU is built primarily around characters invented in the 1960s, and the major DC characters are even older (Batman and Superman are both creations of the 1930s).

[Satinavian]

Japan and Sparta are rather common targets of fanboyism in Western media. Perhaps there’s something that would be more prevalent from your other language forums that would be analogous. I do agree with Max and FIATH (oh, hey, never noticed that before! Clever) that one does tend to run into ‘that guy’ if one hangs around forums long enough. I just want to reinforce that that’s not a strong indicator of the existence or non-existence of widespread misconceptions (to which further evidence is required).

I have seen my fare share of Japan fanboys, yes. Never Sparta though, i was aware that there is a silly comic and a silly film based on the comic but not that there actually a relevant number of people idolizing this idea of ancient Sparta.
As for Japan, while i have seen many people idolizing some imagined historical Japan which is full of misconception and results from a rose-tainted view otherwise, it still didn't match Max_Killjoys comments. Japan was not seen as warrior culture, the samurai were not put on a pedestrial and bushido was not perceived as particularly relevant compared to other perceived japanese cultural mores/attitudes.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by JoeJ
It always seemed to me that Kozakura, the first of the realms to be shown, was strongly influenced by Clavell's Shogun (although possibly as much or more based on the 1980 TV mini-series as the original novel).

In his introduction to the 3.0 Oriental Adventures, James Wyatt writes:

“TSR, Inc. published the first Oriental Adventures just a few years after James Clavell’s novel Shogun aired as a TV miniseries. The legend of the samurai shaped much of the D&D gamer’s concept of what fantasy Asia should and could be, and games such as Bushido brought that vision to life alongside Oriental Adventures.”

Originally Posted by Willie the Duck
I personally feel (feel, not know) that there are a lot of people, particularly in gaming circles, who read up on Genghis Khan and got the takeaway that horse archery is a standout exceptional combat type….

I can’t recall horse archery ever being mentioned at any game I’ve played in, certainly not in 3.5 and Pathfinder. There aren’t a lot of good options for that style in 3.5, and while it might be a little more feasible in Pathfinder, I’ve never seen it come up.

Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
As evidence that the misconceptions are widespread and influential, I'd point to almost every documentary made about Samurai and Spartans over the last 30 years... and loads of fiction about same...

What are you considering misconceptions?

And what sources are you drawing on that counter these misconceptions?

[Max_Killjoy]

What are you considering misconceptions?

And what sources are you drawing on that counter these misconceptions?

Sticking to the topic of RPGs in not!Asia.

* The mythology of the katana as a superior weapon.

* The idea that "eastern" martial techniques stood in contrast to Europeans of the comparable time periods supposedly beating each other over the head with sword-shaped clubs.

* The idea that "the Samurai" of the Sengoku period and earlier were "the Samurai" of the deliberate political revisionism conducted by the state in Japan during the Edo and Meiji periods.

https://thegoldeneggs.wordpress.com/


...

For the Spartans, we're surrounded by the mythology of Sparta as a land of stoic heroes of great martial skill and success...

[Satinavian]

I remain unconvinced.

For those not particularly interested, samurai are just the Japanese version of knights. And while there are many differences, that is not particularly far off.

For those that know details, they tend to know better anyway.

[t209]

I can’t recall horse archery ever being mentioned at any game I’ve played in, certainly not in 3.5 and Pathfinder. There aren’t a lot of good options for that style in 3.5, and while it might be a little more feasible in Pathfinder, I’ve never seen it come up.

I mean the ADnD 1E version, page 98 and 99.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
*snip*

Do you have any sources other than a random blog?

Originally Posted by t209
I mean the ADnD 1E version, page 98 and 99.

If you mean the 1E Oriental Adventures, that’s not one I’ve ever used.

Is horse archery a better option in-game for 1E than it is for 3.5? If it is, that may influence the views of 1E players vs. 3.5 players.

[Max_Killjoy]

I remain unconvinced.

For those not particularly interested, samurai are just the Japanese version of knights. And while there are many differences, that is not particularly far off.

For those that know details, they tend to know better anyway.

It is very possible that the fascination with samurai, etc, is country-specific.

In the US, it surges and fades as a big deal, but it's always there. Movies like The Last Samurai, 47 Ronin, the pseudo-not!Japan of Oriental Adventures and Legend of the Five Rings and other settings, etc, don't come out of nowhere.

[Max_Killjoy]

Do you have any sources other than a random blog?

Are you trying to dismiss the fact that belief in the largely mythical history of the samurai, bushido, etc is a largely a product of later deliberate revisionism and fictional distortion -- or are you trying to dismiss the fact that the belief is widespread in modern pop cultural thinking about Japanese history?


I'd love to see a game setting that started from more serious scholarship about historical and ancient Japan, but sadly I doubt it would sell well... between having to fight uphill against "everyone knows" bullcrap (see, Reality is Unrealistic trope), and the fact that many gamers actively want to indulge in the genre and trope and myths established within existing fiction and pop-culture.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
Are you trying to dismiss the fact that belief in the largely mythical history of the samurai, bushido, etc is a largely a product of later deliberate revisionism and fictional distortion -- or are you trying to dismiss the fact that the belief is widespread in modern pop cultural thinking about Japanese history?

Neither. I haven’t made either of those claims, and I’m not trying to dismiss anything.

Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
As evidence that the misconceptions are widespread and influential, I'd point to almost every documentary made about Samurai and Spartans over the last 30 years...

Here you seem to be suggesting that you know better than thirty years of documentaries on samurai. That’s a bold claim. I’d like to know what sources inform this belief.

[Max_Killjoy]

Try:

Bushidō or Bull? A Medieval Historian's Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition
Death, Honor and Loyalty: The Bushido Ideal
Inventing the Way of the Samurai
War and State Building
Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan

If you want an example of how commonplace and ingrained the bunko ideas are in pop-history and fiction, try the current Netflix documentary series... Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan... from what I've read in reviews, it's a dumpster fire.

[t209]

Do you have any sources other than a random blog?



If you mean the 1E Oriental Adventures, that’s not one I’ve ever used.

Is horse archery a better option in-game for 1E than it is for 3.5? If it is, that may influence the views of 1E players vs. 3.5 players.

Well, i am just referring to fluff.
Crunchwise, as I can summarize its idea, it generally have half rate of fire and penalty to aim while requiring horsemanship proficiency to perform horseback archery.

[Willie the Duck]

I remain unconvinced.
For those not particularly interested, samurai are just the Japanese version of knights. And while there are many differences, that is not particularly far off.
For those that know details, they tend to know better anyway.

That’s kind of what my un-backed-up-by-stats take is on the matter. The average Joe Bloe who may or may not think Vikings had horned helmets and can’t remember which of the Native Americans had the feathered headdresses might well think of samurai as ‘the Japanese swordy-fighty guys’ and not really have the details down at all. For anyone further down the done-any-research/has-any-knowledge scale, if there are serious and significant (and widespread) misconceptions, I think I’m confident calling that a claim in need of supporting evidence.

In the US, it surges and fades as a big deal, but it's always there. Movies like The Last Samurai, 47 Ronin, the pseudo-not!Japan of Oriental Adventures and Legend of the Five Rings and other settings, etc, don't come out of nowhere.

My take is that there was a strong injection of fascination with Japan around WWII or just after, as a generation of young men were stationed there just long enough to get a brief taste of the place, without really having a chance (or have the background to) to do scholarly research (plus lots of people willing to sell them ‘the true secrets of Japan’ for exactly as much as they deemed a tourist would willingly pay). There seemed to be another fad of it in the 70s, which road alongside non-Japanese Asian fandom with the kung fu craze. That one encompassed Shogun, and probably influenced the 80s ninja craze. That one seemed to have a resurgence in the late 80s/early 90s when fear that Japan was going to be the next great economic powerhouse also included a fair amount of fascination. Since then, I haven’t really seen a lot of obsession with Samurai or really anything Japan-specific martial, at least in a way that was divorced from general anime obsession.

Are you trying to dismiss the fact that belief in the largely mythical history of the samurai, bushido, etc is a largely a product of later deliberate revisionism and fictional distortion -- or are you trying to dismiss the fact that the belief is widespread in modern pop cultural thinking about Japanese history?

Oy, this is not a good start. Being defensive when asked to provide evidentiary material is not going to make this thread go well.

Try:
Bushidō or Bull? A Medieval Historian's Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition
Death, Honor and Loyalty: The Bushido Ideal
Inventing the Way of the Samurai
War and State Building
Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan
If you want an example of how commonplace and ingrained the bunko ideas are in pop-history and fiction, try the current Netflix documentary series... Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan.

This is a good start. Thank you.

I'd love to see a game setting that started from more serious scholarship about historical and ancient Japan, but sadly I doubt it would sell well..

Okay, there’s definitely some here. Games aiming towards historical accuracy (for many different cultures) never really gained steam. Probably most never saw the light of day, after someone determined that they wouldn’t be able to find a market.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy
Try:

Good to see some Karl Friday in there. Definitely a better source than a random blog.

Originally Posted by t209
Crunchwise, as I can summarize its idea, it generally have half rate of fire and penalty to aim while requiring horsemanship proficiency to perform horseback archery.

Sounds like significant drawbacks in the 1E version as well.

In 3.5, archery and mounted combat are both not very good, and combining them even less so.

Originally Posted by Willie the Duck
My take is that there was a strong injection of fascination with Japan around WWII or just after….

There was also a growing cultural interest in Japan after the war, and a recognition that Japanese culture had a lot more to offer than had been recognized (or could be voiced) before then.

One example is Saburo Sakai’s account of his role in the air war, which wasn’t published in the US until 1957 or thereabouts.

Originally Posted by Willie the Duck
That one encompassed Shogun, and probably influenced the 80s ninja craze. That one seemed to have a resurgence in the late 80s/early 90s....

Also worth mentioning the impact of Wolverine, whose involvement with Japan no doubt influenced countless kids who were also heavily into D&D at the time.

Originally Posted by Willie the Duck
Okay, there’s definitely some here. Games aiming towards historical accuracy (for many different cultures) never really gained steam. Probably most never saw the light of day, after someone determined that they wouldn’t be able to find a market.

Any recommendations?

[Willie the Duck]

Any recommendations?

Not many (and none for Japan). That was kind of our points-they never got published because no one saw a market for them. Wargaming there has been more, which is why we have the mongoose guides (with the massive disparities in scholarliness involved, depending). GURPS of course had more than a few sourcebooks which were at least researched in a scholarly fashion (oftentimes by PHDs or Grad students in said field, although as mentioned above that's no inoculum to it becoming one person's soapbox. AD&D 2nd edition has the greenback historic setting splats which... all I will say is that they are pretty good considering the state TSR was in at the time (and that they were definitely fitting the settings into D&D and not the other way around). Mythras isn't a specific setting, but does a pretty good job of being convincingly bronze age (and the combat is significantly more accurate than most medieval TTRPGs). There is a fan-made Traveller port to classical Mediterranean called Mercator that is pretty bare bones, but does the job. I guess, for me, the most notable situation (other the eternal one that D&D exists and sucks the oxygen out of every conversation) is Pendragon. It is, ACAICT, the most popular TTRPG where you actually focus on the kind of things which would make historical accuracy plausibly useful -- there's a lot more statecraft and loyalty checks and tracking stuff across generations than straight busting heads (and wizards and dragons only if you want them as add-ons). However, this one is decidedly not historic, being as wikipedia says, "a pastiche of actual fifth- and sixth-century British history, high medieval history (10th to 15th centuries), and Arthurian legend." That's definitely a missed opportunity (were demythologizing history to be a design goal, which it wasn't), and I suspect a case of 'the market didn't want'-ism.

[LibraryOgre]

* The idea that "eastern" martial techniques stood in contrast to Europeans of the comparable time periods supposedly beating each other over the head with sword-shaped clubs.

Part of the reason I started setting up OA martial arts for non-!Asian settings.

[Mechalich]

If you want an example of how commonplace and ingrained the bunko ideas are in pop-history and fiction, try the current Netflix documentary series... Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan... from what I've read in reviews, it's a dumpster fire.

I watched the first two episodes. Dumpster fire is perhaps a bit much.

The documentary hews to a modern documentary style of being split into two primary states: historians talking against studio backdrops and 'dramatic recreations.'

The former part is fine. The scholarship isn't exactly in-depth, and they gloss over a few cultural conventions that they probably thought were confusing (like how most many Sengoku Era figures went by different names throughout the course of their lives), but the overview is acceptable and they make salient, if generalist, points. And I wouldn't say the samurai are held up as any sort of virtuous figures at all, if anything they maybe demonize a bit much (but then Nobunaga is the central figure of the the first two episodes so, you know, what can you do).

The problem is the 'reenactments.' They're terrible. Most it's just a small number of guys in samurai and ashigaru getup (not especially accurate getup either) running around slamming weapons at each other. Or actors chosen to represent historical figures gesticulating furiously. The series has nowhere near the budget necessary to actually recreate these sequences with anything even resembling accuracy.

This sort of divide is commonplace in the modern documentary style. The History Channel documentary on Grant from last year had the same problem. It simply isn't possible, on a documentary budget, to invoke anything like the scope of major historical conflicts. Reenactments are maybe appropriate for a documentary trying to sell pivotal emotional moments in small settings like the backroom deals of organized crime or courtroom scenes or internal family events, but they simply don't fit military history at all.

Not many (and none for Japan).

Well, there is the Sengoku RPG. Its accuracy level is actually pretty good, though it does deliberately indulge in some misconceptions because it is ultimately a game and is trying to emulate the feel of old Japanese samurai movies and not actual life in 16th century Japan. But yes, it's a niche project by a tiny publisher that never made much of an impact in the market.

Of course overall historical fantasy, especially that built with any accuracy at all, is significantly less popular than high fantasy. In the latter the modern trend seems to be towards even more stylized and even less historically grounded settings than ever before, and even when someone tries to do 'realistic' the most likely outcome is something like ASOIAF, which misses the mark massively.

[t209]

Well, there is the Sengoku RPG. Its accuracy level is actually pretty good, though it does deliberately indulge in some misconceptions because it is ultimately a game and is trying to emulate the feel of old Japanese samurai movies and not actual life in 16th century Japan. But yes, it's a niche project by a tiny publisher that never made much of an impact in the market.

Of course overall historical fantasy, especially that built with any accuracy at all, is significantly less popular than high fantasy. In the latter the modern trend seems to be towards even more stylized and even less historically grounded settings than ever before, and even when someone tries to do 'realistic' the most likely outcome is something like ASOIAF, which misses the mark massively.

I was asking about that.
From what I heard, at least from RPG.net, people said that it did a better job.

[FrogInATopHat]

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Imagine my relief when I realised that I wasn't preparing an article for peer-reviewed publication.

Fortunately, There has been some writing on some of these attitudes by others:

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/li...n?docID=957104

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42896787

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34005681

https://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classic...p?uun=charding

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...partan_society

https://www.history.org.uk/publicati...-and-realities

https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com...th-vs-reality/

[Tanarii]

Imagine my relief when I realised that I wasn't preparing an article for peer-reviewed publication.

Fortunately, There has been some writing on some of these attitudes by others:

But apparently the plural of anecdote is how fast can I google up some links hahahaha

Seriously though, how long did it take to put that post together? It can't have been quick, even with a wonderful research tool like Google.

(Edit: this wasn't intended to be a big put down, more a joke about google and how handy it is. and I thank you for the fresh reading material!)

[Max_Killjoy]

Imagine my relief when I realised that I wasn't preparing an article for peer-reviewed publication.

Fortunately, There has been some writing on some of these attitudes by others:

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/li...n?docID=957104

https://www.jstor.org/stable/42896787

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34005681

https://www.ed.ac.uk/history-classic...p?uun=charding

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...partan_society

https://www.history.org.uk/publicati...-and-realities

https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com...th-vs-reality/

And going back to the source I originally posted a link to regarding "warrior mythos":

https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collec...partan-school/

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by FrogInATopHat
Fortunately, There has been some writing on some of these attitudes by others:

Can you post the title of the book in the first link? The link is sending me to an Australian government site which I don’t have access to.

As for the others, whenever people proudly proclaim that they're "debunking myths" or promoting a "radical new interpretation," it often means they have an axe to grind. Sometimes that's in the context of good scholarship, sometimes not.

[FrogInATopHat]

Can you post the title of the book in the first link? The link is sending me to an Australian government site which I don’t have access to.

Whoops. That'll be the '.../slq/...' in the url. Not sure why ProQuest can't just link to the book in their holdings and let people sort out their own personal or institutional access.

Have a citation:

Thorsten, M. (2012). Superhuman japan : Knowledge, nation and culture in us-japan relations : knowledge, nation and culture in us-japan relations. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

As for the others, whenever people proudly proclaim that they're "debunking myths" or promoting a "radical new interpretation," it often means they have an axe to grind. Sometimes that's in the context of good scholarship, sometimes not.

Absolutely. I'm not supporting the quality of any of these works under any circumstances. But they are pretty reasonable support for the existence of commonly held misconceptions about various other cultures both Eastern and not. And that's the only point I've even come close to making in this thread.