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joepinetree posted:There's a great paper on Social Science History about how ships in the 1600s would change routes, avoid patrols, etc based on who they shared ports with. Essentially they document that captains would go to busy ports and then alter their routes depending on who was there at the same time. So word of mouth and connections like that were the bread and butter of sea trade. Uhh, I hope this is some sort of joke because they didn't have bread and butter, that was only for the queen.
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Apr 7, 2024 05:41
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Vampire Panties posted:dude learned portuguese somewhere, somehow, so he's probably seen dudes fight with a sword, but has never done it himself. If the Erasmus really raided portuguese settlements across Asia Blackthorne almost certainly would have been involved based on the number of the crew, and they probably did it with clubs, boarding pikes, and pistols/rifles. When they weren't literally dying of scurvy. Didn't the ship arrive in port with like 13 people alive?
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Apr 7, 2024 06:38
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Burns posted:The contrast between colonization between Japan and the Phillipines is staggering. Can anyone fill me in on why Europan colonization wss so much more influential in the Phillipines? Well it's because Japan didn't get colonized. You had European priests and some trade outposts in certain cities of course, but they never actually controlled anything. There's a 50-60 year period where this is going on and then in the early 1600s Japan decides "ok enough of that" and mostly closes off to the outside world until they get forced back open by Commodore Perry in the 1860s. Shortly after that they modernize and start colonizing other countries themselves.
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Apr 7, 2024 06:50
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The Philippines was populated by relatively small, relatively weak states in the 16th c., so the Portuguese and then Spanish could divide and conquer fairly easily. Even with civil wars and instability in Japan, the institutional and state apparatus there was much more robust when Europeans first arrived, so the Japanese were able to prevent initial attempts at subjugation and colonization. Hence the clamoring among Europeans to establish small footholds such as trading factories in major centers like Osaka—often the most that Japanese rulers would allow was segregated, small-scale trade that could be monitored and controlled.
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Apr 7, 2024 10:01
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the other thing about the civil wars, is they were at such an intensity that the majority of the country was at a war footing already, with clearly experienced and intimidating looking soldiers - that, plus the much longer distance, meant that even Spain would be hard pressed to send enough troops to actually take Japan, so the strategy of sending the Jesuits, slowly convert some of their nobles as Catholic puppets was the only practical one. even neighbouring great empires struggled big time with invading Japan. Fat chance an old colonial power ever could, unless their first encounter was maybe a century or two later and Japanese isolationism somehow kept them from getting musketry and cannon! even then, it’d be too costly to hold and not very profitable, so it was better to trade with them than take them.
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Apr 7, 2024 10:21
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Shortly after that they modernize and start colonizing other countries themselves. I mean part of the backdrop to this show is them attempting and failing to invade (and colonise) Korea, that's what the old bloke is reminiscing with Toranaga about in one of the early episodes. Okinawa used to be its own not-Japan thing til they got invaded a century or so before the show, too.
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Apr 7, 2024 13:34
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Cojawfee posted:Uhh, I hope this is some sort of joke because they didn't have bread and butter, that was only for the queen. What in the name of ned are you talking about, here, or am I missing a meta-joke. Now on an actual ship you'd have hard tack, which is bread in the Terry Pratchett dwarf bread sense, and butter wouldn't exactly keep very long on board, but neither were nobility-only level luxuries in general, especially bread. Like, 'give us this day our daily bread' from the Lord's Prayer?
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Apr 7, 2024 13:39
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I mean, hard tack is also called a sea biscuit, and Seabiscuit was a race horse, and horse racing was the queen's favorite thing ever. Think about it.
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Apr 7, 2024 13:57
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Nice Tuckpointing! posted:I mean, hard tack is also called a sea biscuit, and Seabiscuit was a race horse, and horse racing was the queen's favorite thing ever. Think about it. I thought she liked little dogs
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Apr 7, 2024 14:54
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On The Internet posted:I thought she liked little dogs She can like three things! (Little dogs, racing horses, AND oppressing peasants)
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Apr 7, 2024 14:56
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Now that's a party!
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Apr 7, 2024 15:54
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counterfeitsaint posted:She can like three things!   My theory gets stronger.
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Apr 7, 2024 16:19
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Well it's because Japan didn't get colonized. You had European priests and some trade outposts in certain cities of course, but they never actually controlled anything. There's a 50-60 year period where this is going on and then in the early 1600s Japan decides "ok enough of that" and mostly closes off to the outside world until they get forced back open by Commodore Perry in the 1860s. Shortly after that they modernize and start colonizing other countries themselves. There's a good book called Portuguese Seaborne Empire that goes over this a bit. I read it years ago for a class so I don't remember entirely the passages but basically Japan wasn't seen as valuable because it was viewed as a backwater spot after much more profitable Philippines, China, and India. The Dutch viewed them as trade partners first and foremost and England had no interest in colonizing it. Spain was much more interested in the Philipines and also viewed Japan as a trade partner around their trade routes from Mexico to the East.
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Apr 7, 2024 16:19
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feedmegin posted:What in the name of ned are you talking about, here, or am I missing a meta-joke. It's just a meta commentary on when I made a comment earlier in the thread where I thought it was funny that they were using rice as a valuable commodity when buying a sack of rice and a sack of beans is the cheapest way to feed yourself where I live and a bunch of goons jumped on my post with "well ACKCHUALLY white rice is the most valuable thing you can get in some countries" or whatever the hell they were saying.
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Apr 7, 2024 20:48
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Cojawfee posted:It's just a meta commentary on when I made a comment earlier in the thread where I thought it was funny that they were using rice as a valuable commodity when buying a sack of rice and a sack of beans is the cheapest way to feed yourself where I live and a bunch of goons jumped on my post with "well ACKCHUALLY white rice is the most valuable thing you can get in some countries" or whatever the hell they were saying. I can't speak to other countries, but they're absolutely right for Japan. The nobility viewed white rice as such a delicacy that it made up a ludicrously high amount of their diet, while the peasantry ate brown rice, barley and millet. It was so imbalanced that, until around WWI, thiamin deficiency was one of the leading causes of death among the upper class. The cause of the disease was only discovered because, during the Russo-Japanese war, the government decided that white rice was the most efficient way to feed the troops and suddenly the normally healthy peasant class were all contracting this disease of the nobility. 47,000 Japanese soldiers were killed during fighting and another 27,000 died from beriberi.
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Apr 7, 2024 21:21
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And yet samurai are paid in rice. Isn't that kind of like paying your nobles and officers in caviar?
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Apr 7, 2024 21:41
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This is just speculation but I'd guess that Yamato culture viewed rice agriculture as a key cultural feature that separated them from the indigenous barbarians and linked them to mainland "civilized" Asia. East Asia has this conveyor belt of cultural practices from the south and west that arrive and then become cemented as key features of civilized society right around the time writing becomes widespread in the late bronze age/early iron age (the division isn't as clear in East Asia because they kept using bronze concurrently with iron). Wheat arrived in the late neolithic and rice shortly after that and for some reason became the prestige foods in China. And then once people start writing about culture that seems to become a fixed cultural idea, that we eat wheat and rice and poor people eat millet and those nasty people eat nuts and horses. Chinese ethnography was focused on cultural practices rather than phenotypic differences, which is why definition of China keeps expanding to include people in the west and south. The weird thing about the late neolithic and early historical period is that, as posters have pointed out, wheat and rice agriculture wasn't particularly good for their health. In fact environmental degradation and the decrease in the variety of Chinese diets was a subject of comment in some bronze age Chinese texts, like "Hey sure do seem to be a lot less tigers and fish and forests around here, now people just eat wheat cakes." And the Chinese are the great civilization of the continent so if they're all eating terrible unhealthy cereal diets then we definitely do that because we're civilized, unlike those awful peasants and wild men. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Apr 7, 2024 |
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Apr 7, 2024 23:09
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*Me eating wheat cakes and dooming generations and generations to having diabetes and heart problems* Haha, ArgleBargle thinks we should eat berries sometimes.
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Apr 7, 2024 23:57
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It's wild how environmental degradation is a constant theme of the last 5,000 years. You don't think about the neolithic being a period of mass extinction but it is.
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Apr 8, 2024 02:48
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Arglebargle III posted:It's wild how environmental degradation is a constant theme of the last 5,000 years. You don't think about the neolithic being a period of mass extinction but it is. Soooo many cryptids are just things the locals hunted to extinction and kept alive through oral history
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Apr 8, 2024 03:00
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Doltos posted:There's a good book called Portuguese Seaborne Empire that goes over this a bit. I read it years ago for a class so I don't remember entirely the passages but basically Japan wasn't seen as valuable because it was viewed as a backwater spot after much more profitable Philippines, China, and India. The Dutch viewed them as trade partners first and foremost and England had no interest in colonizing it. Spain was much more interested in the Philipines and also viewed Japan as a trade partner around their trade routes from Mexico to the East. yeah the portuguese trade enclaves in India were serious moneymakers. Their caravels let them wrest control for the trade between the Mughals, southern kingdoms and the middle east for decades - even defeating a combined fleet of Venetians and Ottomans while they sold cannons to the rising vijayanagara empire.
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Apr 8, 2024 04:06
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I just watched the seven episodes available over the last few days and I absolutely love this show, particularly Fuji when she gets something to do. The one nagging question I have is this: so Mariko and Blackthorne are speaking Portuguese, even though it sounds like English to us. How was she able to read his journals and records in that one episode?? Presumably he wrote them in English, which she doesn't know.
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Apr 8, 2024 21:12
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drat i love this show Really liked the scene with the brother walking out of the mist with the full noise of an army behind him then the first greeting is sizing Toranaga up and accusing Toranaga of a complicated slight. The crowd reaction with Hiromatsu inching up on his sword hilt, Yabu and Omi visibly noticing Hiromatsu's movement, Anjin doing nothing, Mariko unflinching. Also much later just the grimmest joke about that execution between Hiromatsu and Toranaga before the final meeting between the two sides. Yabu is hilarious eating poo poo from everyone, just the unluckiest guy.
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Apr 8, 2024 21:19
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Nice Tuckpointing! posted:I mean, hard tack is also called a sea biscuit, and Seabiscuit was a race horse, and horse racing was the queen's favorite thing ever. Think about it. Tack is also the word for stuff that goes on a horse. Horse clothes and saddles and such Teriyaki Hairpiece fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Apr 8, 2024 |
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Apr 8, 2024 21:20
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I didn't see Blackthorne's line as a quippy stupid 21st century "so that happened" thing, I saw it as "Well, I guess we're finally doing this, huh?" Which is to me is incredibly different.
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Apr 8, 2024 21:22
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:I just watched the seven episodes available over the last few days and I absolutely love this show, particularly Fuji when she gets something to do. I don't think it was shown well, but the Portuguese got his journals from Rodrigues and translated them.
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Apr 8, 2024 21:40
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See, I knew I missed something! I thought the Portuguese gave the journals Toranaga untranslated and then he made some smartass remark about how it's gonna take a while to get these translated but didn't get anyone to do it just kind of put them in storage where Mariko got them later
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Apr 8, 2024 22:26
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Jamwad Hilder posted:I don't think it was shown well, but the Portuguese got his journals from Rodrigues and translated them. I'm pretty sure in that scene where Mariko is looking at the journal there were some pages inserted in -- the paper was whiter than the other pages -- and those were the translations into Portuguese.
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Apr 9, 2024 02:03
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Arglebargle III posted:This is just speculation but I'd guess that Yamato culture viewed rice agriculture as a key cultural feature that separated them from the indigenous barbarians and linked them to mainland "civilized" Asia. East Asia has this conveyor belt of cultural practices from the south and west that arrive and then become cemented as key features of civilized society right around the time writing becomes widespread in the late bronze age/early iron age (the division isn't as clear in East Asia because they kept using bronze concurrently with iron). Wheat arrived in the late neolithic and rice shortly after that and for some reason became the prestige foods in China. And then once people start writing about culture that seems to become a fixed cultural idea, that we eat wheat and rice and poor people eat millet and those nasty people eat nuts and horses. Chinese ethnography was focused on cultural practices rather than phenotypic differences, which is why definition of China keeps expanding to include people in the west and south. That makes it easier to understand this dude's thrill  I mean, I believe it wasn't just anyone in 1900s China who could get a nice bowl of white rice, right
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Apr 9, 2024 02:24
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certainly in the late 1900s they could,
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Apr 9, 2024 03:28
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It's interesting how the show was initially very book accurate but has kinda wandered off that over time (last episode being a particularly huge departure). It really feels like they probably could have used at least two seasons for the pacing they've settled on.
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Apr 9, 2024 03:33
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Peanut Butler posted:certainly in the late 1900s they could, Maybe if you're JD Rockefeller.
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Apr 9, 2024 03:53
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Negostrike posted:That makes it easier to understand this dude's thrill That guy's just got panache.
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Apr 9, 2024 04:22
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A good episode with several amazing scenes. Only two episodes left, man it's been a great ride so far.
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Apr 9, 2024 06:11
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Holy poo poo, well done on episode 8. Many savage lines were had, but none were more savage than Mariko's final rejection of Buntaro. Politely entertaining his tea ceremony to get his hopes up and then emotionally gutting him with the coldest smile and bow imaginable
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Apr 9, 2024 06:33
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Holy poo poo. That was an incredible loving episode. MikeC posted:Holy poo poo, well done on episode 8. Hiromatsu getting one last hit in with,"You will know what it is to be denied" too  Also  at Yabu unable to hide his beaming smile when Blackthorne was praising him, then realizing Omi is going  at him, ahaha
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Apr 9, 2024 06:52
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I was hoping for a bit more interaction between Blackthorne and his crew. Was that guy he encountered supposed to be the fictional counterpart for Jan Joosten? Because if it was, Shogun did him dirty (literally).
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Apr 9, 2024 07:04
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I'm going off memory so could be wrong on the details, but in the book version he meets with the whole crew and they're having a great time boozing it up, eating plenty of meat and and having sex with prostitutes, but they haven't acclimated at all to Japan and have no idea they're looked down on with pure disgust by the locals who stuffed them into the filthiest hovel they could get away with considering they're under Toranaga's protection. They seem utterly alien to Blackthorne, who realizes he has almost nothing in common with them anymore. He gets so emotionally distraught over this that when he leaves (accompanied by his men, since he has his own samurai and retainers at this point) he feels constricted and hot, so he tears off his clothes and goes for a swim. The samurai and other retainers just kind of shrug and go,"He must be grossed out by how dirty the foreigners were" and strip down and have a swim too.
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Apr 9, 2024 07:13
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Cojawfee posted:Maybe if you're JD Rockefeller. no rice was very cheap in the late 1900s, especially in the peoples republic of china,
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Apr 9, 2024 07:17
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Then die
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Apr 9, 2024 09:41
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