The Atomic Bombs and Japan's Surrender in World War II

Amazingly, some people claim that the dropping of the two atomic bombs did not contribute to Japan's surrender in World War II, and that it was only the USSR's declaration of war that got them to give up.

One even proclaimed that "Despite all of that anti-American propaganda they produced, they still surrendered to us, specifically and unconditionally, and they would have done so without Little Boy or Fat Man getting loaded onto a bomber. You might say thats hindsight 20/20, but there is no argument against the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared during the firebombing campaigns that ravaged virtually every Japanese city, and they just so happened to he the most nukeable cities from a devastation/observation standpoint. That level of premeditation isnt military strategy, its showmanship." (this person also claimed that the invasion of the main Japanese islands would not have been bloody; the Battle of Okinawa only saw so many deaths because of the geography of the island, ignoring the fact that Japanese civilians were training to resist the upcoming invasion; and that the Kyūjō incident was not unique and happened because people did not want to lose power)

All this seems to be motivated by anti-American sentiment - if one can reframe the dropping of the atomic bombs as just a way to intimidate the Soviet Union, rather than a way to end the war sooner, the US can be painted as evil.

While historians might disagree over the relative importance of both factors, the overwhelming majority seem to agree that the atomic bomb played at least some role:

"There is no doubt that the double shock of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria were both very important in prompting Japan to surrender...

Robert Butow... argued in 1954 that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war created “that unusual atmosphere in which the theretofore static factor of the Emperor could be made active in such an extraordinary way as to work what was virtually a political miracle.”... [Sadao] Asada emphasizes the shock of the atomic bombs on the military’s confidence...

In the end, the reasons for Japan’s failure to respond the Potsdam Proclamation were twofold: first, because Stalin had not signed the Allied ultimatum, Foreign Minister Togo wanted to ascertain the Soviet response to Tokyo’s request for mediation before Japan replied; and second, the overwhelming majority of Japanese military officers, especially in the army, were still in favor of fighting to the bitter end, and the Suzuki cabinet was unable to prevail over their resistance.

Therefore, in the opinion of Emperor Hirohito, Kido, and the peace faction, there was no doubt that the combination of two catastrophic events —the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9; and the Soviet declaration of war against Japan on August 9— provided the final impetus for Japan’s decision to end the war...

With regard to the question of which had more effect on Japan’s surrender decision, the atomic bombs or Soviet entry into the war, Kido’s postwar statements were fairly consistent. When the investigative team from the US Strategic Bombing Survey asked Kido this very question on November 10, 1945, Kido answered that it was hard to tell exactly which had more impact. During his interview with Japanese historian Oi Atsushi at Sugamo Prison in April 1950, Kido stated...

'I think that the atomic bombs alone could have allowed us to terminate the war.'...

Kawabe [Torashiro] wrote in his memoir, “I felt the atomic bomb struck me hard on one cheek, and immediately afterwards the Soviet declaration of war hit me with full force on the other cheek.” Perhaps, historians will never be able to agree on the exact weight to assign to these two extraordinary events. The recollections of Japanese eyewitnesses suggest that the bombings and Soviet declaration of war happened so close together that it was humanly impossible to separate their psychological impacts...

According to Togo’s memoir, during the morning of August 8, Togo met with the emperor and reported that an atomic bomb had been used against Hiroshima. Togo proposed, “This should be used as an opportunity to decide for the earliest possible termination of the war.” The emperor agreed with the foreign minister and said, “Now that this sort of weapon has been used, it is becoming increasingly impossible to continue the war. I do not think it is a good idea to miss an opportunity to end the war by attempting to secure advantageous conditions. Besides, even if we try to discuss terms, I am afraid we won’t be able to come to an agreement. Therefore, I hope you will take measures that will conclude the war as soon as possible.”

Thus, emphasizing the need to end the war at the earliest possible opportunity, the emperor asked Foreign Minister Togo to convey his opinion to Prime Minister Suzuki. Togo immediately contacted Kido and the prime minister and requested that they convene a meeting of the Supreme War Leadership Council."

--- Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War / Noriko Kawamura

Links - 19th September 2024 (Assassin's Creed: Yasuke)

Grummz on X - "Ubisoft is laying off people now because they know something you don't. They have the actual pre-order numbers for Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin's Creed shadows. If things don't turn around on launch day, there will be far deeper cuts. These cuts need to happen, like thinning the herd or removing debris from forests to prevent bigger fires.  Ubisoft is absolutely infected with DEI and excessive bloat in hires. I hope they retain as many productive devs as possible and trim where the trim really needs to happen: deadweight activists and middle management."

PlayStation 5 Subreddit Permanently Bans User For Being Disappointed That 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' Did Not Feature Asian Male Main Character - "after Ubisoft released the first trailer for Assassin’s Creed Shadows that revealed the game will allow players to play a female shinobi named Naue and the African Yasuke, user Golemisbest reacted to it in the PlayStation 5 subreddit asking, “Any other Asian people disappointed that we don’t get an Asian male MC?”... The post in question has been removed and deleted from the subreddit as well: Ubisoft’s decision to make an African character and a female character the main characters for Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been met with a ton of backlash. While the trailer has over 5.6 million views on YouTube, it has over 401,000 dislikes and only 229,000 likes.   Many of the top comments are criticizing the trailer and Ubisoft as a whole. One writes, “The most heroic thing about this trailer is that they left the comments open.”  Another posted, “Remember this is Ubisoft. No Pre-Orders.” Still another added, “‘hey our Shogun was assasinated by a 6’5″ black gaijin, anyone seen him around town?'”  One cracked, “From an Italian perspective, this looks like pineapples on pizza.”"
The progressive stack strikes again

Perma Banned | Facebook - "So in a now edited Famitsu article - Ubisoft devs actually confirmed that they chose Yasuke as their MC, breaking their tradition of fictional characters… Over what is essentially narcissism and some form of tokenistic behaviour? So its not because they wanted to craft the best experience possible in gameplay and Narrative, But because they want to validate their “centre of the world” sensibilities by inserting themselves into foreign history. Well that puts things into perspective now doesn’t it?"

Assassin's Creed subreddit starts banning anyone who complains about historical accuracy - "In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you will play as two entwining characters, a female named Naoe, a deadly and skilled ninja, and Yasuke, a man to be believed by some as the first black samurai, the latter of which is the subject that has sparked heated debates online.  Naoe is a fictional character created solely for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. However, whether Yasuke was really a samurai who had served under Oda Nobunaga until he was assassinated in 1582, a simple bodyguard, servant or someone of no real relevance, he is a real historical figure, no matter who he’s perceived to be.  The story of any good Assassin’s Creed game has always been themed on a historical moment and has featured real historical characters, who have until now been NPCs. Yet, Yasuke is the first main playable protagonist in the series that was a real person.  Assassin’s Creed Shadows also stirred controversy when it was revealed that there would be same-sex romantic options for both Naoe and Yasuke, as well as claims of stolen content, and having those elements thrown into Ubisoft’s makeshift version of history, many corners of the internet are not happy. This led to an apology by Ubisoft to the Japanese audience. It seems the topic of historical accuracy in Assassin’s Creed Shadows isn't going away any time soon and it may likely pick up more traction when the game is actually released. As such, and seemingly tired of the same conversations, GamesRadar has reported that Reddit moderators have now begun to ban those who complain about historical accuracy in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.  “There is no "debate" - Yasuke was a Samurai. If you disagree, you can do that somewhere else,” reads the headline of a moderator of a Reddit post."

Grummz on X - "Why do they do this so much?  The Yasuke Assassin's Creed Shadows controversy is part of a pattern. That pattern is historical revisionism via media and even official sources.  Every dramatization now seems over eager to race swap historical figures for PoC. In Yasuke's case, he did exist, but actual historical sources were edited after the controversy to "support" the fiction.  This is marxist revisionism (the latest Yasuke historian is also a communist and member of the far left party in Japan).   This is what they do. They destroy the past, revise it, and gaslight you, claiming it was always that way. They even do this in fiction too, recall the 40k Female Custodes RUSH to fix all the wikis and claim "the lore was always this way."  And this isn't limited to race swapping. There is a similar mass push to claim most historical figures were queer. See the latest on Abe Lincoln or all the recent tweets about Spartans.  We can't have this. We either have truth, or we have nothing but zealotry and ideology. This will destroy civilization. They are asking us to live a lie.  One side is lying to you, over and over, and if you question it, you are smeared and attacked for defending the truth.  Defend the truth anyways!  Thanks to @ZhorgLabs"

Grummz on X - "Look, what happened with Japan and Assassin's Creed Shadows was horrible.   Real history was revised and rewritten to FIT the narrative of a VIDEOGAME.  When they tried to support it with "experts" the leading expert turned out to be FAKE.  This is not just about a videogame character, this is about how DEI is so INSANE that they would revise history to support a fake narrative, insulting an entire NATION in the process.  This is why we fight. It's insanity."
The same people who say it's a videogame so it's fiction so it's okay to blackwash get upset over movies (even ones which are explicitly fiction like Gods of Egypt) which feature white people in originally non-ambiguously white roles (but they also get upset when Rami Malek plays an Egyptian, because his skin is too white)

Grummz on X - "Japan is trashing Ubisoft in the replies. 9M views and counting. As some say in Japan: If @Ubisoft really wanted to make AC Shadows fiction, why didn't they just use a fictional character and make him Japanese?"

Grummz on X - "Following Ubisoft's "apology," lying @IGN suddenly says there is no proof Yasuke was a Samurai, after saying he was and that anyone saying otherwise was part of a hate group. IGN is now part of a hate group according to their own articles."

IGN Brazil is really mad at their readers: "Gamer, you don't care about historical accuracy in Assassin's Creed, you just don't want black people and women as your main characters." : r/KotakuInAction - "Some bits: "While the blonde samurai from Nioh barely stirred up social media when he was introduced as the protagonist of Koei Tecmo's soulslike, the black protagonist of Assassin's Creed Shadows seems to have instantly created thousands of doctors and experts in the History of Japan."  "The average gamer's outrage is due to the simple fact that AC Shadows has a black man and a woman presented in a non-hypersexualized way as protagonists. If it had been a white or Japanese man as the main character, Ubisoft would be free from any type of demand for "historical accuracy" from the public, and the discussion about the use of the term samurai would not even exist."  "You just have enormous difficulty accepting, slowly, that games have tried to introduce more to their characters. A black character can even be a protagonist, as long as he is placed in the role of a criminal, as occurs in GTA San Andreas or GTA V. A woman can also be a protagonist, but preferably if she is sensual or sexualized enough for the average gamer's taste. . As Assassin's Creed Shadows does not put Yasuke and Naoe in these conditions, the review bombing began before the game was even released. Regrettable, but not surprising."  (Translated from Google Translator)"

Ubisoft's Stock Plummets 12% Despite Exceeding Sales Targets

Japanese Historian Claiming Yasuke Was A Samurai Exposed As Communist - "Japanese historian Yu Hirayama who claims that Yasuke was a Samurai has been revealed to be a former member of the Japanese Communist Party. Hirayama made his claim on X where he wrote, “It seems like there’s a lot of talk about Yasuke, a black man who served Oda Nobunaga. There are very few historical documents about him, but there’s no doubt that he was a ‘samurai’ who served Nobunaga. Regardless of one’s social status, if one’s master promoted one to the rank of ‘samurai,’ one could become one in medieval (warring states) society.”  He then shared his explanation, “I can say this because the historical documents state that ① Nobunaga gave him a “stipend,” ② he was given a house, and ③ he was given a sword.” From there, he elaborated, “Being given a ‘stipend’ and serving Nobunaga closely fulfills the important requirements of a ‘contract between master and servant’ and ‘agreement to receive a stipend.’ It is also important that he was allowed to carry a sword, so he was a two-sworded servant and not a servant (servants were not allowed to carry swords). And if he was given a house, there’s no room for doubt.”  Hirayama continued, “He was probably a slave until Nobunaga took over the missionary slave, but due to the above ① to ③ , he probably became a ‘samurai’ of his own volition.” He concluded his assertion by attempting to counter arguments that he could not be a samurai given his life was spared and he was returned to the Church by a retainer of Akechi Mitsuhide.  Hirayama wrote, “During the Honnoji Incident, Akechi’s side did not kill Yasuke because he was an ‘animal’ or ‘not Japanese’, but that was only because Akechi did not recognize Yasuke as a ‘samurai’ (probably because he had discriminatory feelings). At that time, it was common for a master to promote someone of low status to a ‘samurai’. To begin with, there is a good example in Hideyoshi.”... As noted by historian Anna Zofia Cichocka a board member of the board of the Paweł Włodkowic Institute, communists use history to impose their ideology.   She explains, “As soon as the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia in 1917, history, as a science of the past,  was destroyed. It became a political tool totally controlled by the communist authorities and an instrument of communist propaganda. History was completely subordinated to Marxist-Leninist ideology, and it was the Communist Party that always decided which interpretation of that ideology was correct. This made it possible to constantly manipulate and rewrite history according to the ever-changing needs and political sensitivities of the Soviet regime at a given point in time. The result was lies and manipulation on a mass scale.”   On top of Hirayama being a communist, X user purplewhale24 shared that he’s a member of Pony Canyon and specifically its Area Alliance Department, which according to the company “embraces the mission of ‘Revitalizing regions, energizing Japan through the power of entertainment.’ Our primary focus lies in regional revitalization and branding, utilizing our proficiency in planning, producing, and promoting entertainment content. Through innovative approaches, we showcase the distinctive charm of local areas while fostering sustainable community development.”  Purplewhale24 notes, “The new historian saying Yasuke is a samurai is Yu Hirayama. His is partnered with Pony Canyon, a music and entertainment company, to promote Japanese culture through ENTERTAINMENT and is also a PR media site trying to globalize to the west.”... “Pony Canyon’s US distribution is handled by Right Stuff Media, which is a subsidiary of CrunchyRoll, which is owned by Sony Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment. Now we know why Yu Hirayama is pushing the narrative that Yasuke was a samurai. It’s Sony in disguise.”"

Japanese Gamers Launch Petition To Cancel Ubisoft's Upcoming 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' Game: "This Is A Serious Insult To Japanese Culture And History" - "One wrote, “We ‘fabricated’ a blank space in history.”  “The old lady in the thumbnail used the word “historical” a lot in an interview with IGN last month and claimed that it was based on historical facts, so it’s unreasonable to call it fantasy now,” wrote another...   Still another wrote, “I wonder what people would think if we made a game set in medieval Europe where an Asian man wearing full plate armor wanders around town and kills French people in the name of social reform.”"

Japanese YouTuber Explains Why The Japanese Are Calling Ubisoft To "Immediately Discontinue" The Creation Of 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' - "he notes that Ubisoft is promoting the game as historical and points to an interview that Game Director Charles Benoit conducted with Xbox Wire.  Benoit was asked, “This is a familiar setting for gamers – how does this game differentiate its take on the setting?”  He responded, “We’re at the end of Sengoku era, in a turning point of Japan history. Assassin’s Creed is well known for its depiction of the history and accurate recreation of the world and it’s what players can expect with Assassin’s Creed Shadows. We’re showing real historical figures, such as Oda Nobunaga and a lot of events that happened during that time, so you’re not only playing in feudal Japan, but learning about this fantastic time period.”  “Also, we’re giving the opportunity to the players to live not just one, but the two best fantasies of Japan: the Samurai and Shinobi,” he concluded. After pointing this out, he listed off a number of reasons why he and other Japanese gamers are opposing the game, “We are protesting marketing DEIs, historical distortion stemming from their disregard for Asians and their arrogance, and discriminatory responses to protest from Japan.”  From there, he focuses his video on what he describes as “the biggest attempt to distort history Japan, that is the legendary Samurai, they claim, Yasuke.” He then brings up a number of historical documents and begins with a samurai’s diary that mentions Yasuke. He uses an AI translation that states, “He was taken under the care of Nobunaga and given the name Yasuke. He was granted a residence and given personal items. From time to time, he was also entrusted with Nobunaga’s tools and belongings carrying them for him.”  Next, Shohei Kondo brings up a second historical document called Chronicles of Lord Nobunaga. An AI translates, “Lord Nobunaga provided support to a black man who was presented to him by missionaries. His skin was as black as ink and he was about 1.82 meters tall. His name was Yasuke.”  He notes that this document also indicates that Yasuke was given something, but it’s unclear what exactly it is as it can be translated a number of different ways including a place to live, a short sword, or rice. From there, he brings up a third document titled Jesuit Annual Reports of Japan. An AI translates, “On the Monday following Easter, Nobunaga was in the capital. A commotion arose as many people wanted to see the ‘black slave,’ leading to injuries and near fatalities from thrown stones, Observers speculated that showcasing the ‘black slave’ for a fee could easily raise significant funds. Nobunaga invited him to his presence, causing quite a stir and confirmed his skin color was natural. Nobunaga’s sons were also please, and Nobunaga’s nephew, the commander in Osaka, rewarded him with 10 kanmon.”  It continues, “The priest accompanied a black slave, and since no one in the capital had ever seen a black slave before, countless people came to see him. Nobunaga himself was amazed, confirming that his skin color was natural and not painted, and stared at him. The man understood some Japanese, so Nobunaga talked with him endlessly. Impressed by his strength and some art skills, Nobunaga was very pleased, decided to protect him, and assigned guards to escort him around the city. Some rumored that Nobunaga would make him a lord.”   “The black slave given to Nobunaga by the visitor went to the residence of Nobunaga’s heir after Nobunaga’s death and fought for quite a long time,” the document details. “An Akechi retainer approached him and told him to surrender his sword without fear, so he handed it over. When the retainer asked Mitsuhide how to handle Yasuke, Mitsuhide replied, ‘The black slave is like an animal and knows nothing, and since he is not Japanese, do not kill him.’ Instead, he ordered, ‘Place him in the church of the Indian padre.'” After the AI finishes Shohei Kondo states, “There is no document saying Yasuke was a samurai. There’s no document.”  He then shared a translation of another Japanese YouTuber explaining that the idea that Yasuke was a samurai came from Wikipedia edits. The YouTuber specifically points to a Wikipedia edit done on Yasuke’s page on June 14, 2013 to claim that he was made a bushido warrior and kept close by Nobunaga. This change, the YouTuber alleges, convinced many that Yasuke was a Samurai. The video then goes on to note that Thomas Lockley, an Associate Professor at Nihon University College of Law in Tokyo, published a book titled Nobunaga and Yasuke in 2017. He then published a book titled Yasuke: The True Story of the Legendary African Samurai in 2019, which is actually a novel and thus is fiction.  Given there is only about two or three pages of historical documentation of Yasuke, the Japanese YouTuber notes that Lockley had to have exaggerated in order to fill the pages of the 400-page book. He also notes this book helped convince non-Japanese readers that Yasuke was a Samurai. Shohei Kondo then pointed to another interview Ubisoft executives gave to Famitsu. At one point in the interview Assassin’s Creed Shadows Creative Director Jonathon Dumont said, “‘We were first looking for ‘our samurai,’ someone who could be our non-Japanese eyes though, this is because through from the beginning the story of the Portuguese arrival would be a very good way to tell the crisis in Japan.” Kondo reacted, “He thinks Japanese Samurai is not Samurai. It’s not. You’re Samurai. As I mentioned in previous video, when we protest about it and then their response is basically, ‘Shut up, you are racist.’ This is really the great example of how the marketing DEI is actually destroying minority culture, destroying. This should be stopped. Really, this should be stopped.”  From there he encouraged other Japanese YouTubers to make videos calling out Ubisoft and noted, “Otherwise our history [is] going to be destroyed by this fake agenda.”"

2 Assassin's Creed Shadows developers reveal why they chose Yasuke in 2 languages. : r/KotakuInAction - "Assassin's Creed has never had a historical character as its protagonist. Why was it decided to break tradition with Yasuke?
The decision to include him was made around the time we determined that we would set the game in the Azuchi-Momoyama period and specifically during the rise of Oda Nobunaga. In doing research, we realized that Yasuke was present in every major event that actually happened, and it was a surprise to us. 'Who is this guy?" we asked ourselves, and when we learned more we said 'Okay, that's interesting, let's put him in the game.'... we looked for the biggest samurai possible, and lo and behold, Yasuke popped up again. He was in front of us all the time, so we decided to include him as a second character...
Italian: Picked Yasuke because they realized he "was present in every major event that actually happened", and that they "looked for the biggest samurai possible".
Japanese: Picked Yasuke because he was connected to Oda Nobunaga and "interesting". "

Ubisoft Apologizes to Japanese Historical Re-Enactment Group for Using Its Flag in Assassin's Creed Shadows Art Without Permission - "Ubisoft Japan issued an apology on X/Twitter and admitted it used the flag in two pieces of art without permission. It also claimed to have apologized to the flag's owner Sekigahara Teppo-tai, a historical re-enactment group made up of volunteers who perform to the public at festivals and other events."

Japanese Historian Yūichi Goza Speculates That Yasuke Was Simply Oda Nobunaga's Bodyguard And Entertainer Rather Than A Samurai As He's Depicted In 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' - "In an interview with Japanese website The Sankei Shimbun with translation via DeepL, Goza, who is a faculty member of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies focusing on Japanese medieval history and the author of “What is a Samurai?”, was asked, “What kind of person was Yasuke, and was he a samurai or not?”... When asked about the magnificent armor that Ubisoft depicts Yasuke wearing in Assassin’s Creed Shadows and what position he actually held under Nobunaga, Goza responded, “The Japanese people around Nobunaga were very surprised by Yasuke’s dark skin and seemed to be interested in it. In a sense, it was a show, and having a black man like Yasuke so close to him would attract attention and, in a sense, show off Nobunaga’s ‘power’.”  “In a sense, Nobunaga could show off his ‘power.’ Therefore, I believe that the most important purpose was to show off to everyone,” he relayed. “In the Jesuit historical records, it is written that Yasuke was powerful and could do a few tricks. I believe that he was in fact Nobunaga’s bodyguard and entertainer.”  He then declared, “He was not the ‘Samurai Warrior’ that Westerners imagine him to be, slaying one enemy after another. Even if he did fight, he did not command his men, but worked as a single combatant.”... Goza said, “I understand that many people think that if you want to respect the samurai culture, the main character should be a Japanese samurai. Especially since the story is based on a real person, it would be more natural to have a famous swordsman/samurai such as Miyamoto Musashi as the main character, rather than a black man named Yasuke, whose actual character is not known.”  He continued, “If Yasuke, who may or may not have been a samurai, is made to be a ‘representative of the samurai,’ it would be like taking something away from the Japanese samurai culture. Therefore, I think it is natural that some Japanese and foreign people would react with discomfort and dissatisfaction when they hear the word ‘cultural theft’ being used in the film. Even if Yasuke were to appear in the game, it should have been in the form of a Japanese samurai (as the main character) and Yasuke as well.” Goza was then asked about various forms of media aside from video games including movies, TV shows, and novels adopting stories that are contrary to historical facts and what his thoughts are on this.  He responded, “I think it’s a matter of degree. For example, there is a rare theory that Minamoto no Yoshitsune did not die in Hiraizumi, but went to the continent and became Genghis Khan. This theory was mainly popular before the war, but it was denied by historians at the time as ‘impossible.'”  “If a game in which Yoshitsune became Genghis Khan and fought in the game were to be sent out to the world, I think it would still be problematic, even if it were labeled ‘This is a fiction,'” Goza explained. “Especially Mongolians would be angry because Genghis Khan is the greatest hero of Mongolia.”  “Of course, I don’t think that all creative works based on history can be based on historical facts, but especially when they are put out to the world, I think there should be consideration for the fact that it could become a diplomatic issue if the game is put out in a way that hurts the pride of people in other countries,” he asserted. Goza then contrasted Assassin’s Creed Shadows to the recent remake of Shogun that aired on FX, “As a contrasting example, I would like to cite the American drama Shogun (2024), remade with Hiroyuki Sanada in the lead role. The main character is modeled on Tokugawa Ieyasu, although his name has been changed. The events leading up to the Battle of Sekigahara have been altered considerably, and the historical background, including buildings, is a bit suspect. But when I watched it, I felt the understanding and respect for Japanese history.”   He continued, “An Englishman modeled after William Adams (Anjin Miura) washes ashore in Japan and teaches the protagonist how to move a ship and use a cannon, and so on. This alone would suggest that a white man with an advanced civilization is teaching things to a stupid colored person, but this is not the case. The Englishman is at first confused and repulsed, but gradually becomes impressed by the proud way of life of the Japanese samurai, and the process of understanding and respecting them is depicted. It is not a one-way relationship, but a story of mutual understanding. There is a respect for other cultures at the root. I think this is an important aspect of fiction based on history. If you depict the history and culture of a foreign country, I think if you had a proper understanding of those basic aspects and paid respect to them, problems like this would not have occurred.” It appears clear that Goza does not believe that Ubisoft and their game Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been respectful of Japanese history and culture. And it’s not hard to figure out why given Ubisoft was attempting to market the game as historical. In an interview with Xbox Wire, Game Director Charles Benoit detailed, “We’re at the end of Sengoku era, in a turning point of Japan history. Assassin’s Creed is well known for its depiction of the history and accurate recreation of the world and it’s what players can expect with Assassin’s Creed Shadows. We’re showing real historical figures, such as Oda Nobunaga and a lot of events that happened during that time, so you’re not only playing in feudal Japan, but learning about this fantastic time period.”...   In an interview with Famitsu, the game’s Creative Director Jonathon Dumont also admitted why they chose Yasuke as one of their protagonists, “We were first looking for ‘our samurai,’ someone who could be our non-Japanese eyes though, this is because through from the beginning the story of the Portuguese arrival would be a very good way to tell the crisis in Japan. The team liked the character Yasuke, and we thought we could expect to use him to discover Japan.”  He continued, “We thought that starting with a samurai already in Japanese society would make for a very interesting and intriguing character who has also concepts that we don’t necessarily know about. And it would aroused our interest in what happened to him. Starting as a character who is already rooted in history, we will be starting to find out something happens around him, which tickles our curiosity.”"

Backlash From Japanese Players Prompts National Politician To Investigate "Cultural Theft" Of 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' - "The politician in question, Satoshi Hamada, is a member of the House of Councillors, the Upper House of the Japanese National Diet... Hamada retweeted a post from a fellow Japanese X user summarizing the various issues local players have had with Assassin’s Creed Shadows‘ presentation, such as how some of its buildings feature Chinese instead of Japanese architecture or how a lowly servant can be seen sitting on the same level as Oda Nobunaga himself... Another user raised the topic of Nihon University College of Law in Tokyo Associate Professor Thomas Lockley‘s African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan, itself the main source for Yasuke’s false interpretation as a samurai, and accused its conclusion as being “based on his own imagination”.  Even those who generally approved of diversity and inclusion initiatives found themselves unhappy with Ubisoft, with one individual telling Hamada, “The recent drastic movements are good in nature, but they are excessive in their emphasis on Asian people and unnatural favoritism for black people.”"

Grummz on X - "Just got a report from someone at Japan Expo. @Ubisoft staff are asking that anyone using the seats at the Assassins Creed: Shadows booth to turn around to face their screen. People were using them as benches to watch the much more popular Nintendo booth across the way. Nobody cares about Ubisoft."

Meme - PlayStation @PlayStation: "Will you take on Yasuke's brute force or Naoe's stealthy strategy? See the samurai and shinobi in action with over 12 minutes of Assassin's Creed Shadows gameplay:"
Alberto Barbossa @AIBarbossa: "So a black man has "brute strength" while the Asian has "stealth and cunning""

Perma Banned | Facebook - "I am so sorry for ranting about Ubisoft and AC Shadows a few times now but...the more news coming out from this game the more crazy it becomes...and I just can't look away from it. So what's new?  Well, Ubisoft was caught copying Zoro's katana from One Piece (the anime), and passing it off as Yasuke's katana. . .. ... How Ubisoft? How are you THIS incompetent? How are you capable of creating this big a trashfire from this Assassin's Creed Shadows game of yours? How the f....HOW did you caught STEALING Zoro's sword from ONE PIECE down to the SWORD STAND, and pass it off as Yasuke's sword? THis isn't even about opinions anymore, there is no argument on whether Ubisoft disrespected Japanese history/culture or not. This is quite possibly straight-up ART THEFT"
One Piece: Ubisoft Accused Of Stealing The Design Of Zoro's Sword - "The post points out how Yasuke's sword looks exactly like Zoro's Sandai Kitetsu"

LearningTheLaw on X - "Insane! Thomas Lockey, responsible for Japan's major deception about Yasuke, was caught editing Wikipedia since 2015. He has since quit social media and claimed he will never play AC Shadows. Portrayed as a hero by the media, he's now seen as Japan's biggest historical scammer!🤯"
Grummz on X - "Thomas Lockey turns out to be a fraud, editing Wikipedia under another name to support his fake book on Yasuke.  Encyclopedia Britannica relied on him, Wikipedia relied on him. Everyone did to support the lie that Yasuke was a samurai in Assassin's Creed Shadows.  The Japanese hunted down his story and discovered his wikipedia alt. He has left Social Media in shame."

LearningTheLaw on X - "This is crazy. The entire Yasuke fanfic story was fabricated by a white man named Thomas Lockley, using fake Wikipedia sources. He even deceived Japanese people. Everything you read about Yasuke is fake, imposed by white liberals. In 2024, they erased history on Wiki for a game🤯
Yasuke History was altered to sell books, movies, and impose a fake narrative. I always wondered why Yasuke became popular online after 2012. It was a psy-op operation that even reached overseas.
They've truly mastered the next generation of colonialism. We have to acknowledge that."

Meme - Grummz @Grummz: "Thomas Lockley, Yasuke historian, has deleted his Facebook page.   The Japanese have been hammering the fact checks on Thomas Lockley, the historian widely cited by other papers, book and official sources for the "proof" that Yasuke was a samurai.   They say he is a fraud and have been finding out he has been editing Wikipedia under an alias "tottoritom" to promote his books and papers."

Perma Banned | Facebook - "I'd like to talk about things other than AC Shadows, but the news coming from this thing is truly something. Thomas Lockley is said to have been removed from Nihon University staff list. His NHK television program has also been delisted. Things are really escalating for this now proven grifter. Oh btw, Lockley said he has "no involvement with AC Shadows developement" before he left the internet. Welp turns out he did, Ubisoft actually did a podcast with him and took advice from him directly."

D.Va's Thot Patrol | Facebook - "Bruh the whole story about Yasuke (the alleged black Samurai) was a complete fabrication created by a single person called Thomas Lockley who has now deleted all his social media and completely disappeared from the internet after Japanese officials and historians started to question him on the validity of his works since he's the main source for all claims about Yasuke being a Samurai.  Turns out the whole purpose of this made up story was to sell his books and it was recently discovered he altered academic documents for Wikipedia articles with false information since 2015 and is now facing national backlash for his lies, Ubisoft was already facing extreme backlash from the Japanese since AC Shadows was announced, this is now pretty much the final nail in the coffin for this game.  Why aren't more people talking about this? Not only this whole thing was a complete fraud but it's by far one of the funniest developments I've heard in a long time, this masterclass carny single handedly worked countless fools and even companies with his story and probably made millions off it all that time."

LearningTheLaw on X - "Thomas Lockley, author of Yasuke: Black Samurai, falsely claimed he never spoke to Ubisoft before deleting his accounts. It's now confirmed Ubi was influenced by him for AC Shadows and featured him in a Spotify episode. Lockley is now facing national backlash for his dishonesty."

Meme - "Assassin's Creed: Shadows Notes
Tom Tottori related. Last Update: July 15, 2024
Check this out first!! The birth and spread of the "African Samurai" Yasuke legend - A user's contribution to Wikipedia
July 6, 2012 Editing of Yasuke by the account tottoritom begins (Yasuke was not edited until September 11, 2015)
September 12, 2015 The reference was changed to a paper by Thomas Lockley published in 2016. *This was revised many times on this day. Main revisions Revision comparison 1 I Revision comparison 2 I Revision comparison 3
February 2016 Thomas Lockley has published a paper on Yasuke, who served Oda Nobunaga, entitled "The Story of Yasuke: Nobunaga's African Retainer" in the 91st volume of the Sakurabunronso (published in February 2016)
January 25, 2017 "Nobunaga and Yasuke: The Black Samurai Who Survived the Honnoji Temple" is now on sale
February 3, 2017 The reference was changed by tottoritom from the article published in "Sakurabunronso" to "Nobunaga and Yasuke: The Black Samurai Who Survived the Honnoji Temple
October 31, 2018 tottoritom added a link to Thomas Lockley's page
November 8, 2018 Thomas Lockley's page was deleted from Wikipedia as it was deemed unremarkable (tottoritom also participated in the discussion at the time
January 25, 2019 tottoritom introduces the release of the book "African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan," which is essential to telling the Yasuke legend to this day ."

Chertok on X - "Just so I’m clear: Ubisoft decided to score some DEI points on making a game about a black samurai, but the historic research they’ve based their entire premise on turned out to be fraudulent? That’s: (1) hilarious; (2) a recurring theme with DEI."

Meme - tk8d32（多忙につきスローペース） @tk8d32: "These photos used in AC Shadows concept were taken in the 19th century, about 300 years after the era in the game. So, was there anybody who can really check the japanese history in AC Shadows before starting game development?  There's too much time gap. #AssassinscreedShadows"

CD Projekt Red Senior Lead Weapon Artist Apologizes For Noting Criticism About 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' Is Valid - "CD Projekt Red Senior Lead Weapon Artist Michal Kalisz apologized for claiming that the criticisms Ubisoft and its development team are receiving for Assassin’s Creed Shadows are valid. Initially, Kalisz took to X and wrote, “The concerns and criticism around Assassin’s Creed Shadow[s] are valid and I personally think it might disrespects Japanese culture with the provided historical inaccuracy. People, especially Japanese people, have full right to oppose trends like this.” Kalisz apologized for these comments on May 19th. He wrote, “I’ve noticed criticism regarding my recent comment about AC Shadows. After reflecting on it and reading your responses/retweets, I realize I owe you an apology.” He continued, “First of all, I acknowledge that I am not qualified to share statements or discuss such topics. Your feedback has highlighted the importance of being more informed and respectful in my opinions. It has also shown me that we should be more open to new ideas and not restrict ourselves too much while creating new worlds. We all draw inspiration from a wide range of media, and that’s great. I appreciate your patience and understanding. I’ve learned something valuable and will strive to do better in the future.” Kalisz concluded, “I’m looking forward to the next AC; the setting intrigues me a lot.” Despite claiming he read criticism of his original post, it does not appear he’s allowing as much criticism on his apology post given he locked down his account. This action calls into question the sincerity of his apology given it happened so quickly and reads like a corporate PR statement. Mark Kern aka Grummz speculated that Kalisz was bullied into posting the apology. He wrote on X, “Senior Lead 3D weapons artist at CD Projekt Red get bullied into changing his stance on Assassin’s Creed. Grummz added, “The dev pressure out there to conform is immense, and if you don’t play ball, you will get pushed out. Nobody in AAA gaming is free to speak. I have so many friends and contact who tell me they will lose their jobs if they say anything.” In fact, Grummz previously reported that at Activision the company’s reviews and bonuses are determined by “how hard you DEI.” He posted on X back on May 16th, “Your bonus and review depend on how hard you DEI. DEI Officers are installed on every dev team to ensure THE MESSAGE.” This appears to be corroborated by Activision’s 2023-2024 Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Report. The report details that the company tracks representation and inclusion data on all of its employees. It states that it “started measuring every employee’s sense of belonging through an Inclusion Score, a quantitative measure of the extent to which employees feel welcomed, valued, and included within the organization.” Another slide from the report delves into how the company is tracking its employees via Inclusion. It states that the company “launched individual employee diversity, equity, and inclusion goal setting to foster accountability to building community, trust, belonging, and collaboration.” It also appears that individuals who have high Inclusion Scores or meet these inclusion goals they are rewarded through “a sponsorship program” that allows them to “connect with senior advocates, gain exposure to leadership projects, and ultimately increase diversity at the leadership level.” It’s likely there are certain metrics taking place at CD Projekt Red as well. CD Projekt Red CFO and board member Piotr Nielubowicz detailed how committed the company was to ESG. He stated, “Although this is perhaps not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about video games and ESG, we believe that our primary means of influencing the world at large is by developing games which can enrich gamers’ perceptions. This is why we do not shy away from confronting socially important topics in the stories we tell.” He continued, “Our games depict social inequalities, the various paths people take through life, and the problems they face. We want to make sure that the characters populating the worlds we create represent a diverse set of mindsets, social groups, and backgrounds.” Nielubowicz also confirmed the company has “a range of internal training courses” employees participate in to be trained in ESG thinking."

Links - 19th June 2024 (2 - Assassin's Creed: Yasuke)

"Oh no! Someone has been assassinated!"
"Who could've done this?!"
"Search for anyone out of the ordinary!"
*people ignoring Yasuke*
*Yasuke whistling*

'Assassin's Creed Shadows' Makes Franchise History With Most Disliked Trailer Of All Time - "The game is receiving significant pushback for featuring Yasuke, an historical figure of African descent in the game that is set in Japan rather than a male Japanese Samurai.  Two of the top comments on the trailer translated from Japanese read, “European and American game companies: In order to avoid racial discrimination, black characters must be included in games to to ensure the diversity of characters and subvert stereotypes. The same European and American game companies: We decided to put a black samurai in a game with a Japanese background. His mission is to kill various Asians. Thank you Ubi.”  The other states, “If this is true, if there is even a slight mention in a country’s history books that “black people existed at a certain time in history,” all the main characters in games set in that country will be black. There is a possibility.” Other top comments translated from Japanese state, “It’s kind of funny, you should have cast a black protagonist in Assassin’s Creed Unity set in France instead of Sengoku Japan.”  Another reads, “It’s no good to expand on a person like Yasuke, who is only recorded in documents that are less than a few pages long, and turn it into a ‘historical fact.’ A company that practices political correctness can openly discriminate against Japanese people.”  “Discrimination against black people? Absolutely not. Black people have been replaced by white people. Now they are trying to repeat the same mistake by targeting Asians,” reads another."

The legend of Yasuke > Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan - "Though he was now considered a free man by most standards, he did not own any land of his own. He was essentially a samurai in name only. After Nobunaga allowed Yasuke to live with him for more than a year, Akechi Mitsuhide, one of Nobunaga’s most trusted generals, betrayed Nobunaga at Honno-ji and forced him to commit Seppeku, or ritualistic suicide.  When Yasuke received the news of Nobunaga’s death, he immediately withdrew to Nijo Castle, the home of Nobunaga’s heir, Oda Nobutada. Sometime later, an attack by Mitsuhide’s forces followed as well. Yasuke fought alongside Nobutada’s warriors and only surrendered his sword when the last of Nobutada’s warriors did likewise.  When asked what to do with the former slave, Mitsuhide dismissed him as an afterthought, saying Yasuke, and those of the same hue as him, were animals and as he was not a true samurai, not worth killing. With that, Yasuke was taken back to Kyoto to the Jesuits. This is, regrettably, the end of Yasuke’s tale. No one knows what became of Yasuke after he returned to the missionaries. He faded into obscurity, his true story lost to time. He may have earned his complete freedom and traveled back to his homeland. He may have stayed in Japan, or he may have returned with the Jesuits. It is uncertain at this point. But this is the story of Yasuke, the first “Afro-samurai .”"

Senior Writer For 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' Declared: "There's More Than Enough Games Out There With White Men As The Only Playable Characters. Let's Do Better." - "Assassin’s Creed Shadows Senior Writer Giles Armstrong previously detailed an animus against white characters as part of representation ideology."

Meme - Aiko Tanaka: "As a Japanese, I can confirm that Yasuke is not even mentioned in the Daimyoki(大名記) which record the names of all samurai and retainers under control, including those who made no notable contributions. Yet, they still declared him a samurai. Our culture is rich, with many stories and notable figures known only to the Japanese. This game could have been a bridge to share that richness, but instead, they chose to focus on a figure like Yasuke, who is barely known and not mentioned in our historical texts, seemingly to serve their own agendas. We are already aware that other cultures have started casting black individuals in roles that are traditionally preserved by other countries, seemingly just for propaganda purposes, such as the mermaid and Cleopatra. Now, it seems our culture is not being spared; they are merely using Yasuke to push a specific narrative, which is simply common sense.
Edit: I often receive rude comments, mostly from Black people. I'm explaining things nicely here. If you think you know more about our culture, then provide solid evidence that he was a samurai, not just random stuff you've seen on the internet. Stop living in your delusions; it's not healthy."

Meme - Brad Kiely: "That moment when you're a black man in Japan that gets paraded around because of your skin colour, then hundreds of years after your death you get paraded around because of your skin colour."

Meme - Perma Banned: "This is official Ubisoft marketing...and I had to read it a few times to make sure its real. What an odd thing to say Ubisoft. Freeing the Japanese...from who? From themselves? The same way the Conquistadors freed the Native Mayan/Inca/Aztec natives...from themselves? Did the people writing these marketing material even know the setting of the product they are marketing for? Or is this Ai generated text?"
"BECOME A LEGENDARY SAMURAI
As the charismatic samurai Yasuke, strike your foes with brutal precision and power. Use his combat- oriented skills to attack, block, parry, and defeat your enemies. Master the vast arsenal of weapons at your disposal - featuring katana, kanabo, bows, naginata, and more - to free Japan from its oppressors."

Meme - "What are you doing with my bike, Yasuke?" *Samurai with sword*

Meme - "Hey Amber, do you like my new hairstyle? *cornrows*"
"No, it's cultural appropriation. Claiming parts of a culture that isn't your own is problematic! But anyway, let me tell you about the Legendary Black Samuari Yasuke."

Meme - "I've finished the protagonist design for the new Japanese Assassin's Creed game. He's just like you asked"
"God Damn it Parker, you need to get your hearing checked. I said I wanted a Ninja!"

Ubisoft Appears To Confirm 'Assassin's Creed Shadows' Protagonists Yasuke And Naoe Are LGBTQ+ - "the company declared, “Naoe and Yasuke’s disparate personalities also lead them to have different relationships and rapports with other characters, and they don’t always feel the same way about people, nor do people always feel the same way about them.”  Next, they discussed romance options, “Romantically, they will also attract and be attracted to different types of people. Through the pair, players will get to experience a multitude of relationships.”   This revelation comes amid Ubisoft contracting with Dartmouth Associate Professor Sachi Schmidt-Hori. Sachi Schmidt-Hori is an LGBTQ activist with her biography on Dartmouth’s website reading, “I am interested in investigating how gender, sexuality, corporeality, and power are represented and negotiated in pre-seventeenth-century Japanese narratives and illustrations. My first book, Tales of Idolized Boys: Male-Male Love in Medieval Japanese Narratives (University of Hawai`i Press, 2021) is on medieval chigo monogatari (Buddhist acolyte tales), which often depict romantic relationships between Buddhist priests and adolescent boys. These tales challenge a host of normative and moral standards we (academics, especially) internalize, including such ideas as ‘sexual orientation,’ ‘transgenerational sex,’ and ‘sexual agency.'”...   Not only has the company contracted with this radical LGBTQ+ activist who appears to be promoting “transgenerational sex,” an alleged internal document shared to social media by Jeremy Hambly, aka TheQuartering in April detailed, “We are proud to represent the diversity and inclusion that exists in society as part of our everyday work. Representation is part of our DNA and will remain that way regardless of external pressure or influences.”  It concluded, “Ubisoft firmly stands for diversity and inclusion in our workplace and our games, and we believe there is no room for hate in gaming.”"

Meme - 𝙲𝚘𝚙𝚊 𝙴𝚡 𝙼𝚊𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚊 @CopaExMachina: "Recast Hiroyuki Sanada as T'Challa"

Meme - Japanese man: "急いで動物"
Black Slave: "Pliz help"
Soyjak: "OMG. The first black samurai"

i/o on X - "19,000 likes for a lie that won't go away no matter how clear the historical record: Yasuke (who indeed existed) was not a samurai. He was a servant and retainer. Now the white creators of a popular video game have joined Black Twitter in propagating this durable myth."
IGN on X - "In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you’ll play as 2 protagonists:
- Yasuke, a real historical figure known as the legendary “African Samurai”
- Naoe, a fictional shinobi"

Meme - ">be slave
>only job is carrying weapons for other men
>japs dress you as samurai because they think it's funny
>end up in battle
>immediately surrender
>get enslaved again
>300 years later
>THE LEGENDARY BLACK SAMURAI"

People miss the point about the outrage over Yasuke : r/KotakuInAction - "People seem to think that people are outraged about Yasuke because of historical accuracy. Or the idea that Ubisoft are trying to make him something more than he was (tbh, I’m still not sure what his role irl really was).  No. The problem isn’t in itself that they have made the character a black samurai.  The problem here is that doing so is symptomatic of a larger problem that has infected not just the gaming industry, but film, tv, and most popular media.  Ubisoft didn’t make the main character Yasuke because they were interested in him or telling his story. They did it because they needed the slightest excuse to force diversity into the game.  Every assassins creed game has had a protagonist relative to the setting. Why have Ubisoft gone out of their way to make the protagonist a real historical person rather than an original character of Japanese descent?  It’s not as if AC hasn’t had playable black characters before, and no one was angry about them. Because they fit in reasonably well with their settings, they weren’t forced in.  I think it’s finally time for me to kiss AC goodbye."

Censored Men on X - "🇯🇵🎮 The whole Yasuke in Assassin’s Creed situation is actually very interesting, as it seems to have caused a lot of confusion among liberal gamers.  AC decided to go to Japan for the first time ever and they chose a black samurai as the main character.  Historically, Yasuke wasn’t how he’s portrayed in the game.  The team at AC have deliberately over-exaggerated Yasuke’s role during his time in Feudal Japan.  On one hand, you have liberal gamers saying it’s fine and that gamers are only annoyed at the decision because they’re racist and hate black people.  On the other hand, you have liberals who are calling this cultural appropriation and believe it's essentially taking away from Japanese culture.  And then you have another large part of gamers who believe that an Assassin’s Creed game set in Feudal Japan should have a Japanese MC.  The decision to cast Yasuke as the MC for the game has also been extremely poorly received in Japan, as is evident from the like to dislike ratio on the game’s Japanese trailer.  This whole situation certainly is interesting.  I believe a Japanese person should’ve been the MC for a game set in Feudal Japan.  Anything else simply doesn’t make sense for a plethora of reasons.  What are your thoughts on the situation?"

The Japanese comments on the new Assassin's Creed gameplay trailer are absolutely brutal, some choice examples: : r/KotakuInAction - "628 likes to 6.7 dislikes, keeping in mind dislikes are usually undercounted. I've seen some people on Twitter argue that it's just "Western chuds" disliking, but I scrolled for a good 10 minutes and I haven't read a SINGLE positive comment.
"A torii is not the entrance to a village. Ubisoft knows less about Japanese culture than Koreans do." (in Korean) The Chinese trailer also sits at a similar ratio of 161 likes and 981 dislikes. - Ubisoft has done the impossible, unite Koreans, Chinese and Japanese.
"For UBI's convenience, or to put it bluntly, they only have a perspective that imposes the way of thinking of white and black society on Asian society. Their own society's way of thinking is right, and they force Asians into that mold, which leads to discrimination and insults."
"If you see a black person dressed as a samurai, everyone will assume he stole it."
"Japanese women with slanted eyes are really weird..."
"Naoe also has Southeast Asian features. The sword is curved and not a ninja sword. Yasuke is out of the question."
"Yasuke, who isn't even a samurai, plays at being a samurai and walks through a Japanese city and massacres Japanese people as if nothing had happened - typical of Ubisoft."
"It's so scary to see samurai killing so many people in the streets while Yasuke is saying he won't tolerate evil. They're more like demons than samurai. Why not set it in a battlefield?"
"When Yasuke passes by, the Japanese people make way and bow their heads. And the samurai are just playing a role to humiliate the Japanese in order to elevate the massacred black people in Europe and America."
"Why did he say it is a good harvest when they are in the planting stage?"
"It's so surreal and funny that a huge black man walking around Japan in full armor in the 16th century doesn't seem to be surprised by any of the villagers lol. To a Japanese person, this is just a joke."
"There is a scene where Yasuke crushes the head of a fallen enemy, but this cannot be overlooked. He is not a zombie, so there is no need to destroy his head. Yasuke is not a samurai, he is a racist."
"I find it interesting that Japanese people bow so much to Yasuke."
"I can ignore the historical falsification that Yasuke was a samurai, but this isn't Japan to begin with. It's "Japan made by foreigners" - that's not it, UBI-san. The graphics is good, that's all. I'll buy it if you are able to respect Japan a little more."
"I didn't even travel to France, but I experienced discrimination."
"Is this the legendary game in which black bandits play samurai in Nippon and massacre Nipponjin?
"Who would buy such a middle finger to Japan?"
"Aside from the fictional setting of black samurai, there is no need to portray Japanese people as shabby and make them bow repeatedly every time they pass by. It almost feels like there is malice towards Japanese people."
"Personally, I've never really understood the concept of "cultural appropriation." Now, I've come to fully appreciate how vicious and unpleasant it is."
"It is a well-known historical fact that Yasuke later travelled to Europe, killed French people and became Napoleon"
"When I commented, "Where is the samurai?" in the English version, I was met with a barrage of criticism. Overseas is scary.""

Meme - Kangmin Lee @kangminjlee: "Still can't believe Ubisoft created a game where a black man goes around killing Asians in 2024 lmao. Also blending Japanese traditional music with hip hop because there's a black samurai is just... lol. The pandering is just too on the nose at this point" Meme - "This game is based on real history" *Yasuke doing a flying kick on a peasant* "Assassin's Creed Japan"
"The History" *Black man in hoodie doing a flying kick on an old Asian man* "San Francisco 2021"

Meme - *Japanese woodcut* *Black man in white robe screaming while carrying off television set, with policemen after him*

SJW fatigue: Why anime & manga are conquering the West

SJW fatigue: Why anime & manga are conquering the West

"For a long time, Hollywood and the American comic book industry have been seen as international media behemoths. It used to be that they never even faced any serious competition. But lately, they seem to be losing that grasp. The last decade of film and comics has seen a sharp decline in quality...

If you’re looking for American comics, there’s mainly only two publishers producing them – Marvel and DC, which account for about 80% of the comic book market. Both companies have been around since the 1930s and have grown into giant corporations that completely dominate the industry. With numerous wildly successful superhero series, both companies have also ventured into other forms of media and have proven to be extremely successful. But while pumping out numerous films, TV shows, games etc, it seems their core product – comics – has seen a dramatic dip in quality, readership, and profitability. New issues are predominantly received as stale, repetitive, outdated, and overwhelmingly hyper-politicized. Many fans and veterans of the industry feel that modern comic book writers have seemingly abandoned the basics of what made the medium successful in the first place – creative and engaging storylines, memorable, unique, and relatable characters, and stunning artwork. Instead, new releases focus on the same old superhero tropes, infused with heavy-handed political messaging and offering little to no variety.

Chuck Dixon, known for his extensive work on Marvel’s ‘Punisher’ and DC’s ‘Batman’ comics in the 1990s and early 2000s, thinks it’s no surprise that manga is “wiping the floor” with American comics.

“It’s not hard to see. The artwork is attractive. It’s different. It’s engaging. It’s interesting. It’s varied. So there’s a lot of reasons to like manga. And not a whole lot of reasons to like what’s out now,” he said in response to a fan question on YouTube. “Because what’s out now, for the Big Two [Marvel and DC], is, for the most part, poorly crafted. There’s a few exceptions, but for the most part, it’s poorly crafted, poorly conceived, there’s an obvious political agenda to everything, and there’s no variety.” 

“It’s superheroes, superheroes, superheroes. And they are all avatars for the writer’s political agenda. And they’re kind of tiresome. They’re not particularly well-drawn. They’re not particularly well-realized.”

However, criticism isn’t something that the American comic book giants seem to appreciate these days, and most gripes with modern comics are often disregarded as coming from hateful bigots who don’t know better. As a result, longtime comic book fans have become alienated from their beloved franchises and turn elsewhere for fulfilling entertainment, leading many to manga...

The stories are generally told in a straightforward linear fashion, allowing readers to jump into a new series fairly easily and follow it from beginning to end. In Western comics, it’s a bit more complicated, as many of the characters have been around for decades and have gone through numerous major overhauls and re-boots and have been featured in numerous side stories, spin-offs, crossovers, and other ‘non-canon’ works, which can be confusing for newcomers.

Perhaps the biggest difference from American comics, most of which are published by DC and Marvel and typically focus on superheroes, is that manga is produced by countless artists (known as mangaka) and released by numerous publishers ranging from huge conglomerates to small independent print houses. This results in a wide variety of visual styles, but, more importantly, provides works in literally every genre, subgenre, and subject matter imaginable. 

Of course, there’s a lot of series about people with superhuman abilities, but there’s also an endless amount of manga exploring genres such as comedy, drama, horror, sci-fi, romance, erotica, fantasy, etc. There are also numerous series about things like fishing, hunting, golf, racing, ballet, gaming, music, sports, science, psychology, business, law, politics, crime, war, biographies, history… the list goes on.

Additionally, mangaka tend to explore other cultures, religions, countries, and time periods in their works, oftentimes providing a unique spin on them, further expanding the possibilities for creative and intriguing stories.

The benefits of such a diverse and creative environment in the manga industry naturally spill over into animation...

One of the underlying reasons for such creative freedom is that Japanese artists tend to face significantly less regulation compared to their US counterparts. While mangaka are not really limited in what/who they can or cannot write about, for US comics, that’s not really the case. Since the 1950s and until fairly recently, American comic book publishers have had to adhere to the Comics Code Authority – a self-imposed set of guidelines created amid a public concern that some content could be corrupting or traumatizing to young readers. This code ended up wiping out numerous genres in American comics and severely neutered those that survived. Today though, most publishers have abandoned the code, but now they face another, arguably more aggressive, form of informal censorship – social justice activists.

While DC and Marvel comics certainly feature a diverse cast of characters and places, in recent years, the creative freedom to explore certain topics has become severely limited by having to contend with activists and their campaigns against things like ‘cultural appropriation’ – which suggests that drawing inspiration from other cultures is oppressive against minorities. Portraying certain groups and ideas in the ‘wrong’ light, or not praising others enough, has also become a trigger for some vocal far-left activists, who immediately respond with demands for retractions, apologies and cancellations.

Not only has the American comic book industry been increasingly watching its creative step because of these groups, but some of the activists have actually joined its ranks, resulting in what many old-school fans see as one of the biggest reasons Western movies and comics are failing – overbearing ‘woke’ progressive politics.

Fiction has always explored politics or had some sort of political subtext or context, and comics and manga are no exception. There are certainly political themes and subtext in Japanese manga, but that doesn’t seem to have a detrimental effect. For the most part, when politics are included, it’s done rather subtly or in a way that doesn’t detract from the story, allowing readers to easily ignore it. Additionally, the types of political messages present in manga are just as varied as the topics the medium covers. The reason is that Japanese artists don’t tend to face any social or legal repercussions for expressing any political position, so there’s really nothing stopping them from just saying what they think...

Essentially, it’s not that manga and anime don’t have politics in them, it’s that the works explore political themes, and tastefully integrate them into the worlds, instead of blatantly preaching political talking points to the readers/viewers. The political subtext remains just that – subtext. The messages (where they are present) don’t detract from the world and story, but instead, add a layer to them and give audiences food for thought, as most artists seem to prefer letting their stories speak for themselves, and avoid moral grandstanding over the readers.

Modern American comics, on the other hand, are displaying much less subtlety and moderation in their political messaging. A lot of the comics coming out of the US today overtly place politics at the forefront of their stories and use new or long-established characters as nothing but vehicles to deliver political talking points. 

While some claim that there is just as much politics in manga as there is in comics, the key difference is subtlety. Take for example the notoriously ill-received ‘New Warriors’ by Marvel. Dubbed by many as ‘The Social Justice League’, the announcement of the new series saw overwhelming backlash and eye-rolls, as the characters were perceived as the literal embodiment of woke culture, and the character names only reinforced the notion, with heroes such as ‘Snowflake’ – Marvel’s first nonbinary character – and ‘Safespace’, who uses pink forcefields to shield himself from harm.

In fact, Marvel has launched an entire series specifically dedicated to delivering modern socio-political issues to its readers titled ‘Marvel’s Voices’. One of the issues features Spider-Man and Spider-Girl taking part in a pro-immigrant rally and learning about the term ‘Latinx’ – a word which progressive white liberals use as a more inclusive way to refer to people, rather than the gendered terms ‘Latino’or ‘Latina’. In reality, most Hispanics have never even heard of the term, while many consider the term offensive, and only 3% use it to refer to themselves, but the comic doesn’t seem to acknowledge that fact, instead promoting the term as a ‘more inclusive’ one.

Additionally, both Marvel and DC have been open in their hate towards former US President Donald Trump, as both publishers have released comics featuring a parody of Trump, portraying him as a central villain for the heroes to take down.

Given that Trump gained nearly half the vote in the 2020 election, it’s clear that there are many who still support him and will take issue with such portrayals. Politics in Western comics have essentially become unavoidable, and the messages come exclusively from the progressive left, leading a large portion of the audience to become alienated and ditch American comics altogether...

As audiences grow more frustrated with every major release, the producers of these adaptations continue to boast about their works being progressive and ‘diverse’ – which is generally achieved with token gestures like race- and gender-swapping fan-favorite characters from the source material.

For example, Netflix’s tendency to race-swap characters has become a meme unto itself, especially when it comes to red-haired women, for some reason. Just take the latest ‘Witcher’ adaptation, where the fan-favorite blue-eyed and red-haired Triss Merigold is portrayed by an actress that couldn’t be any further from those descriptions, which are found in the books and games...

Everytime Hollywood announces yet another remake or adaptation, audience expectations seem to be so low, that many just choose to ignore watching the doomed-to-be-bad remake altogether and go watch/read the original instead.

Japanese manga and anime aren’t the only ones stealing the attention of Western audiences. Korean films have also been gradually growing in popularity around the world. ‘Parasite’ took an Oscar, ‘Squid Game’ became one of the most-watched Netflix shows ever and zombie flicks like ‘Train to Busan’ have proven that Korean filmmakers can go toe-to-toe with their American counterparts in genres that have traditionally been Hollywood staples.

What makes Korean films so special? Simply the fact that the stories are creative, well written, well-acted, well shot, and most importantly – feel authentic, without the need to be preachy or shoving political propaganda down its viewers’ throats. Sure, most of the Korean films mentioned above have quite the political and social subtext, but the characters and plot take precedence, and the films can be enjoyed without delving into South Korean politics.

Hollywood and the American comics industry, however, don’t seem to have caught on to what they’re doing wrong yet. Instead of taking a page out of the Eastern entertainment industry’s playbook, many Western creators instead choose to either double down on their failing practices or criticize Eastern creators. ‘Power Girl’ co-creator Gerry Conway even called to have mangaka ‘taken to task’ for their supposedly rampant sexism and misogyny.

The author griped about Western artists being “deservedly taken to task regularly for outrageously sexist treatment of women” while Japanese authors were supposedly free to include over-sexalized women in their works without facing criticism. While the author seems to ignore the never-ending complaints and boycotts Western activists lodge against mangaka and their readers, his perspective once again highlights the difference between West and East. The Western perspective that sexualized drawings of women are inherently ‘sexist’ and ‘misogynistic’ fails to consider that many of the artists drawing them are women themselves (and enjoy drawing them that way), and that audiences tend to prefer attractively illustrated and written characters rather than asexual chunks of political propaganda. And perhaps in part, that’s yet another reason more audiences are drawn to manga and anime rather than the Western ‘politically correct’ productions.

Obviously, all these studios want money, but it seems that most of the directors, writers, and executives are either out of touch with their viewers/readers, or honestly believe that social justice warriors on Twitter are a viable core audience. In either case, instead of changing course and adapting to the wants of their broader audience, they seem to prefer churning out remakes and reboots while doubling down on woke messaging. Criticism and bad viewer ratings, meanwhile, often get brushed off as coming from people of ‘unacceptable’ political or social persuasion, be it sexism, racism, or any of the multitude of other -isms and -phobias on offer."

Clearly Chuck Dixon doesn't know what he's talking about and is ignorant that comics have always been woke and political.

Sweet voice: The role of voice quality in a Japanese feminine style

(via readings for Linguistics 156: Language and Gender)

Sweet voice: The role of voice quality in a Japanese feminine style

"As observed by Lise Skov and Brian Moeran in Women, media, and consumption in Japan, Japanese public life is saturated with female voices.

We hear women everywhere. So audible that we hardly listen to their carefully enunciated voices greeting us at the end of almost every telephone line, and on every visit to every commercial building in every city in Japan.... Female are the voices of instruction, warning mothers and children to mind their hands and feet on the escalator, reminding passengers not to forget their belongings on the train, recommending consumers to purchase this detergent, that wine, those contact lenses, cleansing creams or leopard-spotted leotards. Anonymous images, anonymous voices, yet ever present. (Skov & Moeran 1995b:1–2)

The ubiquity of these voices, however, is not their only distinctive quality. The voices sound extraordinarily similar, as if one determined woman were following you around the city of Tokyo with a megaphone. But there is something else, as well: the voices sound oddly alien, and completely unlike announcement voices in other countries. Visitors to Japan often remark that they sound ‘high’ (Miller 2004:151). What they are attempting to describe has, in fact, little to do with pitch—rather, these voices are all produced using a distinctive voice quality, resulting in a vocal style I refer to here as ‘sweet voice’...

The voices of Japanese women have been persistent targets of popular interest and generalization, particularly in the area of pitch, which is closely intertwined with voice quality both in physical and perceptual terms. The current common wisdom on Japanese women’s pitch was codified in 1995 by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who declared that certain enlightened Japanese women were rebelling against squeaky-high pitch norms in a piece entitled, ‘Japan’s feminine falsetto falls right out of favor’ (Kristof 1995). In the Kristofian view, traditional Japanese femininity requires high pitch, and women who do not use high pitch are therefore challenging the status quo. This view appeared once again on the front page of the New York Times in Hiroko Tabuchi’s (2013) article about the All-Japan Phone Answering Competition, titled ‘Japan’s top voice: high, polite and on the phone’. She reports that ‘some experts explicitly tell women to speak in a higher voice than usual to sound feminine and energetic’ (A1), and portrays women who reject high pitch as modern and untraditional (Tabuchi 2013). In the following analysis, I suggest that the characterization of traditional feminine voices as ‘high’ is problematic in a few respects: most crucially, the confusion of voice quality and pitch has led to a broader conflation of distinct Japanese feminine styles that index different social meanings...

Sweet voice is an example of a stylized, professional voice. In other words, sweet voice is largely the province of professional announcers and voice actors, and is rarely if ever produced by ‘ordinary’ women. Addressed later in the discussion of the voice’s physiological properties, the absence of sweet voice in nonprofessional speech is not merely a matter of convention, but of physical limitation; the sweet voice is difficult to produce, and only those who have trained extensively are able to consistently replicate it. Native Japanese listeners exposed to sweet voice are immediately able to recognize it as a professional voice, often describing it as anime no koe, ‘voice from Japanese animation’. As a result, issues of exaggeration or fakeness that apply to other vocal styles that are used by real women, such as the cute burikko vocal style described in Miller (2004), do not apply here—the sweet voice is always ‘fake’ in some sense. Nonetheless, I argue here that sweet voice plays a crucial role in establishing authenticity within the frame of the fictional world in which it occurs...

The sweet voice can be heard in a vast array of contexts—from video games, to television commercials, to public announcements. This analysis, however, focuses on the role of sweet voice in anime (Japanese animated films and television programs). Anime is a particularly suitable format in which to examine the sweet voice style for a number of reasons. From a practical perspective, it is difficult to acquire a large amount of high-quality data from other sources, such as public announcements. Anime has the advantage of not only providing a lot of speech data, but also data from many different speakers, and data from the same speakers using different styles as they portray different characters. Moreover, many of the professional voice actresses, or seiyuu, who perform in anime are also involved in producing sweet voice in other contexts; Ouhara Sayaka, for example, performs one of the voices included in the present anime study, does announcements for multiple train lines, and works as a radio DJ (Haikyou 2008)...

The voice acting industry in Japan is highly developed, and seiyuu can achieve a level of prominence comparable to ‘live’ actors or pop idols. Seiyuu are involved in voiceover work of all types, including dubbing for foreign films and the adult entertainment industry, but the heart of the profession lies in performing voices for anime; it is their association with particular anime characters that leads to a seiyuu’s popularity. While seiyuu can follow multiple paths to entering the profession, they are generally the products of two years at a specialized training school followed by another few years of apprenticeship at their talent agency. This extensive, centralized training may account for how the sweet voice has emerged as a distinctive and uniform style...

From a perceptual perspective, the sweet voice style is dramatically distinctive. It has a light timbre and the tense resonance of a singing voice; the speaker sounds as though she is smiling. While speakers shift between different levels of breathiness, a unifying voice quality is retained throughout the performance...

Rather than only comparing the pitch of these sweet voice characters to the pitch of ordinary Japanese women, it seems most relevant to first interpret them in relation to the other voice types that commonly appear in anime. In Teshigawara’s (2003) study of the voices of anime heroes and villains, she finds two groups of pitch targets for female heroic characters: 320 Hz and 400 Hz. As shown in Figure 3, the pitch of sweet voice characters is generally lower than both of these targets. Removing the exceptionally high Touma Yumi and Satou Ai, who average at 307.92 Hz, the mean pitch of the sweet voice characters is 262.7 Hz. This finding is consistent with the intuition that, while sweet voice can occur at a range of pitches, it is most often distinctively low by female anime voice standards. As discussed in the following section on the function of sweet voice within the anime setting, sweet voice characters are not heroines but rather are used to portray older-sister types; this lower pitch target helps distinguish them from main characters and establishes their relative maturity.

In comparison to the speech of ordinary Japanese women, sweet voice is relatively high: Masataka (1992) finds that Japanese mothers have an average pitch of 177 Hz when speaking to adults. When addressing children, however, their pitch increases gradually from 175 Hz to 252 Hz as they produce more utterances trying to elicit a child response. By contrast, Ohara (1999) finds a much higher average pitch for adult women, with her population of five female university students using an average F0 of 261.6 Hz when addressing a professor and 253.2 Hz when addressing friends...

Female characters with sweet voices appear in various genres of anime, including both male-oriented (shounen) and female-oriented (shoujo) programs, targeting multiple age ranges. In spite of this, certain commonalities exist among the characters who have sweet voices. Four general principles concerning sweet voice character traits can be outlined as follows.

i. Sweet voice characters are primarily (relatively) older women in positions of traditional female authority...

ii. Sweet voice characters are extraordinarily beautiful...

iii. Sweet voice characters are neither villainesses nor heroines...

iv. Sweet voice characters are sexualized yet ladylike...

Readers familiar with anime tropes will recognize that the character qualities described above are not representative of the average female anime character...

In addition to the distinctive behaviors and character traits associated with the sweet voice, the use of sweet voice in anime is accompanied by a set of linguistic features known as Japanese Women’s Language (JWL). Contrary to what its name suggests, scholars agree that JWL is not commonly used today by most Japanese women, but rather only by a subset, and only in certain contexts (Okamoto & Shibamoto Smith 2004:3). Nevertheless, JWL continues to be associated with women’s speech in Japan, and carries pragmatic implications of supposedly traditional Japanese feminine features including softness and nonassertiveness (Inoue 2006:12)...

As described in Okamoto & Shibamoto Smith (2008), two discourses are relevant in the discussion of JWL: norms dictating that women should use ‘polite, gentle, and refined’ speech and norms regarding which linguistic features index these traits (Okamoto & Shibamoto Smith 2008:88). Within this framework, the authors observe that various linguistic features may be identified as contributing to a feminine style: for example, while many linguistic norms for JWL relate to using features from standard Japanese, viewed as more refined than dialects, feminine styles can also be indexed using certain regional dialects. Specifically, the authors observe cases in which polite forms of the Kyoto dialect are used to con- struct a feminine style on television dramas (Okamoto & Shibamoto Smith 2008:102)...

The use of JWL in anime is particularly significant in that it introduces these features to young viewers who do not necessarily hear JWL from speakers in their everyday lives. In her account of her own experiences with JWL, for example, Inoue (2006:8) identifies particular television characters, including a teacher and an older-sister character, as the earliest speakers of JWL she ever encountered. Thus, JWL’s function in anime is not merely interesting as a reflection of societal patterns, but may be crucial in the creation and perpetuation of second-order indices that connect linguistic features with particular feminine traits in Japanese society...

Characters who use JWL but lack a sweet voice often fall into the category of the spoiled oujousama, or princess. The spoiled princess is a comedic villain, a girl with money to burn on expensive feminine clothing and a fancy education, who seeks to portray herself as proper and refined, but is inevitably revealed to have violent, unladylike tendencies under the surface...

The sexual appeal of the older woman in Japan was noted by Clammer (1995:210) in his study of men’s magazines, in which he observed a contrast between cute younger girls and the ‘true sensuality’ embodied by more mature women. This opposition of cuteness and mature beauty is one of the central distinctions that forms the structure of classification of sexually attractive women negotiated in the discourse of moe...

 The phenomenon of categorizing the sexual appeal of women is hardly exclusive to anime fans, but moetic discourse is part of a distinctive subculture that engages in extensive quantification and standardization of the consumption of female characters, to the point of developing notions such as the zettai ryouiki, ‘absolute area’, meaning the distance of bare skin between the hem of the skirt and the top of the socks, for which the ideal ratio has been calculated to be 4:1:2.5 with a margin of error of ±25% (Dark Mirage 2008)...

 While not all successful seiyuu become big stars, some of them are able to parlay their success in performing particular roles into personal fame, moving from voice acting into recording music and making personal appearances. One seiyuu who has managed this feat particularly well is Inoue Kikuko, who has carved a successful niche for herself based on her sweet voice performances. Accounts of Inoue’s voice written by fans commonly include both perceptual descriptors (e.g. ‘soft’, ‘sweet’) and descriptors which reference typical sweet voice roles (e.g. ‘motherly’, ‘angelic’)...

It is no accident that fans draw this association between Inoue and the roles she performs; Inoue has deliberately created a public persona for herself that evokes the qualities of the sweet voice characters she has portrayed. As noted in the Seiyuu Directory quote above, Inoue has adopted the nickname onee-chan, a familiar term for older sister. She also, with much tongue-in-cheek fanfare, claims to be only seventeen years old, although she has been a professional seiyuu for longer than that (Manbow 2008). Like her characters, Inoue wears her hair long and dresses conservatively, preferring long skirts and long sleeves. The voice she uses for public events and interviews is not the sweet voice, but it is extremely breathy; we might call it a real-world approximation of the sweet voice...

 While it is far more rare than the female sweet voice, a male version of sweet voice does appear in certain settings. One notable use of male sweet voice in anime is in the series Death note (2006), in which the main character, Yagami Light (voiced by actor Mamoru Miyano), has a sweet voice. While most anime featuring male protagonists tell the tales of average young men who are marked for greatness, Death note tells the story of a boy who is far from average, and the use of sweet voice contributes crucially to viewers’ understanding of his character...

What happens to a sweet voice when it is dubbed into another language? In the case of English, at least, dubbers are faced with a dilemma; on the one hand, the sweet voice or anything resembling it would sound exaggerated and bizarre in English, but on the other hand, dubbing with a less stylized voice often results in a loss of characterization and emotional intensity. Dubbers generally opt for the latter of these two options, resulting in English versions with relatively lackluster vocal performances that compare poorly with the originals. (This is one of the reasons why non-Japanese-speaking fans prefer subtitles to dubbing."

History Extra - Olympics

Olympic history: everything you wanted to know - HistoryExtra

""‘What inspired the birth of the modern games? And who was them, who was the driving force behind the reemergence?’

‘So there's a simple answer, which is wrong and a complex answer, which is long. The simple answer is Baron de Coubertin, a French Catholic aristocrat, who was the founder and entrepreneur that created the IOC. And his inspiration, if you believe his own very, very unreliable memoirs, and documents, is a child, a childhood obsession with Olympia, and the Olympics that burned all through his life, until he got the opportunity to realize it. 

And then there's the real one. So the Olympics disappears from European consciousness, from the fourth fifth century CE, for pretty much 1000 years. Most of the texts in which mentions of it are available, disappear. Who's reading those documents? Nobody's reading Pliny, you know, in the, you know, in 1066, these documents disappear. And Olympia itself is hit by a tsunami in the sixth century CE and disappears under a layer of Mediterranean silt. So even archaeologically, it pretty much disappears. And, during the Renaissance, all of those Greek and Roman works reappear, and suddenly in Europe, people have access to this idea, oh these games that the Olympics. And so you have from about the 17th century onwards, you have in popular culture and literature, people kind of calling stuff the Olympics or Olympian. You find it in Milton's poetry. You find it in Shakespeare. 

You have the Dover, Robert Dover’s Olympics, which are basically a kind of rural games of the 17th century being given the Olympics moniker. In the late 18th early 19th century, people have now really absorbed a bit more information about what the ancient Olympics are. And a modern sporting culture is beginning to emerge. And those two things together produce a whole series of attempts to revive or reinterpret the Olympics way before Baron de Coubertin gets to it. So you've got, during the French Revolution, they rewrite the calendar, and they discover, what, we've got to have a leap year in the calendar and a leap day. What should we do with that Leap Day, and it's actually proposed in the French revolutionary parliament in the 1790s, that we should have a Republican Olympics, and they stage a French revolutionary popular Olympic sporting festival in the streets of Paris in the 1790s. It then disappears as the Revolution collapses, and France moves on to invading much of the rest of Europe.

You then have attempts in Sweden, you have attempts in Germany, to, to revive some kind of Olympic sporting festival, but the really important ones are in Greece and in England. And in England, you've got Dr. Penny Brooks, who is a rural GP committed to improving the health and wellbeing of the rural poor by encouraging them in sensible, rational exercise. And part of his strategy in Shropshire is to stage a kind of cross between a drunken rural festival and a kind of faux classical Olympic sporting gym karna. And this is the much Wenlock Olympics, or Olympic festivals which carry on through the 1840s 1850s or arrive, revived later on and are locally a very popular event. You have similar attempts to revive the notion of the Olympics in Greece, in the late 19th century where Greek nationalists are kind of, because Greece as a modern nation state is only created in the 1830s. So it's like, hmm, what is modern Greece, who are we? Maybe we’re like the Greek Olympians, maybe if we restage the Olympics, this is a connection to this deep past. And so you have attempts by basically nationalists to revive the Olympics, as a kind of, almost like a sort of battlefield recreation, recreation, the way people recreate the American Civil War in costume, right. Similar kind of thing. 

So all of this is floating around in the 1870s and 1880s. Into this comes Barons de Coubertin. And Baron de Coubertin’s main mission initially, is as a French aristocrat trying to work out like, what is my mission in modern France, you know, what is what is the purpose of life? You know, the aristocracy has been moved to one side here, how do they do it in Britain? How have they managed to kind of stay in charge, what's their secret? And he works, he decides, after a whole series of trips to British institutions and English public schools, that of course, it's sport. It's the sporting culture of England's public schools and universities that are training this morally and mentally and physically powerful ruling class, and he wants some of that in France. And he becomes a very, very enthusiastic promoter, and organizer of amateur sports and sports culture through the 1880s but he's not an Olympian. And then he puts an advert in the press as people used to do in those days saying, I am seeking a correspondent in England to exchange letters on the meaning of sport in the modern era. And Dr. Penny Brooks writes to him and says, Baron, come to Much Wenlock. Let me show you how we're doing it. And de Coubertin goes to Much Wenlock. And we don't know all of the details, but they put on a fantastic you know, sort of faux Olympic rural festival. 

And at this point, Penny Brooks introduces to Coubertin his whole notion of Olympic revival because he's been trying that in England with other people and it's not been working. And Coubertin goes away, and suddenly out of nowhere, and with only one reference in his entire life to Dr. Penny Brooks, he's suddenly a convinced Olympian. And in 1892, he stages a conference at the Sorbonne where he first announces the call for a modern Olympic Games. And de Coubertin’s genius is to bring together a whole bunch of ideas and people that had not been fused before, pined for the Olympian revival movement to actually make it happen. And at the core, at the core of it, is his notion. It's almost a kind of modern cult of the Neo Hellenic athletic gentlemen, that is what the Olympics is about. It is, as he said, himself, a celebration of manly virtue. You know, this is what the, this is the peak of what sport can deliver in the modern world is the cultured sporting gentlemen of the English public school, or the American blueblood, Ivy League universities...

It's a cult of, you know, masculines sporting virtue. And as Baron de Coubertin said, you know, the Olympics should be a display of manly virtue, for which the reward is the polite applause of women. So that's how most of the IOC, most of upper class sporting culture is thinking about women and women's sports in this era. And so there are virtually no women, there are no women participants in 1896, there are in 1900, but it's only a fluke, because it's really the French Republican games, and 1904, 1908, 1912, you've got a few women's swimmers, you've got a few women archers, no athletics, no gymnastics, basically, very, very few women. And this changes after the First World War.'"

 

How the 1964 Tokyo Olympics redefined Japan - HistoryExtra

"'First and foremost, the Americans in 1945, had to be historians. Because in Japan, you've got a country where after 1868, when you have a modernizing group of people coming to power, the old shogunate done away with, they have what looks like a really successful modernizing project. You know, you have democracy of a certain kind, you have industry, you have advancements in science and culture, Japan looks like a really promising country really up until probably the late 1920s. So the Americans had to ask themselves, why is it than a modernizing project that seemed to be going well, and was going along vaguely, actually not vaguely, quite specifically, Western lines, which is, you know, good for the American view of the world? Why does it go wrong? Why does it go this badly wrong? And on that basis, how do we then use the occupation of Japan to to put the country on tracks, you know, which we would approve, and I suppose one of the conclusions they reach is that Japan's modernization in that earlier period had been incomplete, that it was kind of superficial, that all the things I just talked about were true.

Japan acquired all these things, these trappings of modernity, but there was still a sort of feudal mentality going on underneath, particularly in the way that people would be prepared to do what superiors required of them, whether it's your father in a family, you know, your boss at work, or your superior in the armed forces, and how do you uproot that mentality? And so, you know, to  the question about whether it's successful or not, there are some unsuccessful elements, because for some of the Americans during the occupation, they wanted a real root and branch reform of Japanese culture, of Japan's outlook, you know, so you can't bow any more. You have to hold hands, they were even promoting kissing, because these sorts of things are felt to be more democratic. They put men and women on more of an equal footing. That level of cultural overhaul you can't really successfully achieve it turns out, but in other ways, I think they did. 

They did succeed remarkably, we sometimes think about it in terms of 3 Ds. So demilitarization, got rid of Japan's armed forces, completely successful. Democratization, trying to persuade the Japanese that democracy is more than elections every few years, that you have to have a sort of civic responsibility. That I think was was partially successful. Women get the vote for the first time. Lots of left wing parties that would have been criminalized in previous years in Japan do rather well, at least early on. So on those sorts of measures, it seems to do okay, and trying to Decentralize power. That's the other D, the idea that you had these hugely powerful conglomerates, who controlled lots of Japan's wealth, or were in cahoots with the government. So trying to disband those, people would have heard of Mitsubishi, for example. So in trying to piece apart these big conglomerates, known as Zaibatsu. 

So, in some ways, I think that most of that was quite successful. But in the end, of course, what happens, your listeners will be well aware, in the late 40s and early 50s, communism becomes the big Boogeyman. And so whereas some of the some of the people that go out from the United States to Japan to run the occupation, very young, idealistic people wanting to really make this, remake the country in the image of New Deal America. In the end, they get overruled by people who say we can't have Japan as a kind of socialist basket case. It needs to be reliably middle of the road conservative, it needs to be friendly towards capitalism, it needs to be very hostile towards communism'"

 

The rise of the Paralympics - HistoryExtra

"'People with disabilities have been competing in the Olympics since 1904. There was a USA gymnast called George Eyser, who actually won six medals in 1904 in gymnastics with a wooden leg. Pistorius wasn't the first time that an athlete competed in both games. I mean, the first time that happened, was actually Neroli Fairhall from New Zealand, who competed in archery. Now they were in separate years, so she competed in the Olympics in 84, and the Paralympics in 80 and 88. Then Paola Fantato from Italy, also an archer. She competed in both the Olympics and the Paralympics in 1996 in Atlanta, and there's a number of people who've done it since. I think the reason Pistorius got so much media coverage is obviously because of the blades and the arguments around the danger to other athletes and the advantage he was supposedly gaining etc. which many scientists have actually disproved since then, but moving forwards you know, well, I mean, Natalia Partyka, the Polish table tennis players missing one arm from the elbow down, she's played every Olympic and Paralympic Games since Beijing 2008. She's in Tokyo at the moment and I'm sure will play in the Paralympics as well'"