Avoiding Orientalist Adventures

So, I lived in Japan 22 years, mastered the language, published research about Japanese culture, and learned to navigate their social rules enough to get a position as a tenured professor teaching Japanese Society & Culture classes.

You can believe me when I say most Japan-themed roleplaying misses the mark in depicting Japan. When I first started this blog over a decade in Japan, I wrote a series of blogposts on this subject called The Weird in Mystic Japan that became a 'hit' on Reddit and garnered me my first monster viewer number, over 5000 for the first installment.

(You can jump to Part One, Two, Three, Four, and Five here).

Although I am proud of those posts, they were ways to adapt Japan to AD&D in a satisfying way (to me). Ultimately, they are still 'D&D in funny hats', so for people wanting to make their Japan based game more authentic on a deeper level, here are a few suggestions.

1 READ THESE

Although it is fun to read Lustbader novels and watch movies with ninjas, the large majority of it is derivative and an exaggerated, fictionalized Japan. The following works will give you a more grounded view of Japan.

The Idea of Japan by Ian Littlewood. No other book peels away the layers of western (mis)conceptions of Japan and identifies all the tropes mapped onto Japan in response to world events (WWII, postwar slump, Bubble economy). This book is the first step in stripping away the western prejudices and Orientalist images you may have picked up from pop culture depictions of Japan.

Musashi's Book of Five Rings: The Definitive Interpretation of Miyamoto Musashi's Classic Book of Strategy translated by Stephen Kaufman. I have read early versions of the Book, but always found them short, almost unfinished. Kaufman's work builds on recent scholarship to provide the most complete text plus a few other of Musashi's lesser known works. He also debunks the samurai as national identity myth that started in the Edo period, was used during the war, and continues to this day. If you want to inject the true spirit of swordsmen into your game, this is essential reading.

Daibosatsu Toge (The Great Buddha Pass) - English versions of the first three books are available on the U Washington server HERE. This is the quintessential fictional representation of Edo samurai, as written by a Japanese watching his country slide into nationalism and militarism. It was serialized in newspapers from 1913 to 1944, and is the bedrock of samurai fiction. The books contain TONS of adaptable material, from sudden murders, to ninja-like thieves, lost children, dishonest merchants, physically strong but good hearted simpletons, etcetera, and you will be nodding your head as you encounter the originals that inspired everything up to Blue Eyed Samurai.

2 WATCH THESE

Although I have some fantasical suggestions such as Dororo a few years back, here are some more nitty gritty depictions of Edo Japan.

Sword of Doom - I am cheating a bit as this is a film version of Daibosatsu Toge above. But Sword of Doom is an electric, violent 1966 film starring Tatsuya Nakadai and Toshiro Mifune. Akira Kurosawa reportedly called The Sword of Doom (1966) the darkest and most psychologically complex samurai film ever made. There were two other serviceable films made from Daibosatsu Toge, but Sword of Doom is a special experience that shows the brutal truth about Japanese swordsmen.

47 Ronin - The story of 47 samurai who sacrifice their lives to get vengeance on the crafty Lord Kira whose taunts caused their beloved master Asano to draw his sword before the Diamyo and be forced to commit seppuku. The 1941 Kenji Mizoguchi is an expansive version (it has been remade many times on stage and screen), and Mizoguchi was filming at the height of Japan's wartime samurai fetish, so it really encapsulates that uniquely Japanese prioritizing of duty over humanity. Over 3 hours long, possibly on YouTube (cough cough).

Ballad of Narayama - 1983 film by Showhei Imamura, detailing the lives of mountain farmers who must make cruel life and death decisions for their village to survive. One of the two films that inspired me to go live in Japan (the other was Tanpopo). A must watch for capturing that desperate sense of being caught in Japan's vertical society and ironclad traditions.

Jidai Geki (Historical dramas) - There are a TON of these out there, from the Golden Age of the 60s in 70s with names like Mito Komon (1969) and Ooka Echizen (1970). The Hissatsu series with its myriad of spinoffs is probably the most useful for RPGs, as it shows a group of Edo citizens from various ranks working together to right a wrong or solve a mystery. Watch it to understand the invisible walls of Japanese social interaction, but also be inspired by 100s of eminently stealable plot points. There is a Jidai Geki channel on YouTube that has many of these. 

3 GET GIRI-NINJO

My game Giri-Ninjou (義理人情 or Duty & Humanity) is a rules light, storytelling game of being Edo period Japanese trapped in a rigid vertical society. Coming out next year.