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BrawlMan
- Sunday at 9:30 AM
- #2,101
I don't mind Yasuke being the main character for once in a video game. He is almost always a side character not given much focus or somebody you had to fight, so I'll give Ubisoft or whoever on the design team credit right there.
rx915
- Sunday at 2:18 PM
- #2,102
I read a Japanese historian gave his take on it and then other Japanese historians or Japanese people in general as I can't find too much on other academics talking of it despite the claim I read in emglish chimed in against it or for it.
Feels familiar in a historical sense though that was back when priests debate other priests on theology and what's orthodox or not. Then more follow this or that narrative.
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unkownbomb
- Sunday at 4:41 PM
- #2,103
BrawlMan said:
I don't mind Yasuke being the main character for once in a video game. He is almost always a side character not given much focus or somebody you had to fight, so I'll give Ubisoft or whoever on the design team credit right there.
In real life, he was basically historic footnote to the Japanese compared to William Adams.
BrawlMan
- Sunday at 4:46 PM
- #2,104
unkownbomb said:
In real life, he was basically historic footnote to the Japanese compared to William Adams.
I don't give a shit.
Jyusan
Unwarrantedly smug
He/Him
- Sunday at 5:38 PM
- #2,105
unkownbomb said:
In real life, he was basically historic footnote to the Japanese compared to William Adams.
Makes him perfect for an AC protag, since canonically all of them are historical footnotes in-universe. Ezio is a radical whose only act of note is an assassination attempt on one of the popes that everyone hated. Connor was collateral damage in the big swinging dick of Washington's military victories agaibst the natives, who would grow up to inherit land from a childless old man and stand in the background of the more important founding fathers. Edward Kenway is a nobody that Abstergo cut together action clips of to make a pirate exploitation film riding the PotC wave. And if anyone even knows Kassandra and Alexios' names in the AC universe it'd be a miracle.
A running theme in the AC series is that the historical record is prone to being edited in ways that are more convenient to the people in power, and that people who are footnotes in the stories of the "Great Men of history" could have just as easily been doing triple backflips off the steeple of the Hagia Sophia into haypiles after beating the entire Ottoman Jannisary roster unconcious with their bare hands, and it's not like you're going to dig through 500 year old turkish records to potentially find out.
Xero Key
For Midgard!
- Sunday at 6:46 PM
- #2,106
Kassandra is known, kind of. They found the Spear by putting together some of Herodotus' writings. But "The Eagle Bearer" is probably minor footnote of academic debate. The cult actually dedicated to her didn't spread beyond one village because it was a scam. Maybe some of the others wrote about Kassandra, but I get the impression that those like Socrates did their best to bury her.
Anyway, has there been any news on when Jade is releasing? If I was Ubisoft, I'd give out the expected release date now to take some heat off of Shadows'… everything.
R
randomperson123
- Sunday at 7:08 PM
- #2,107
rx915 said:
I read a Japanese historian gave his take on it and then other Japanese historians or Japanese people in general as I can't find too much on other academics talking of it despite the claim I read in emglish chimed in against it or for it.
Feels familiar in a historical sense though that was back when priests debate other priests on theology and what's orthodox or not. Then more follow this or that narrative.
i heard japanese told that he also ex communist party member.
rx915
- Sunday at 8:41 PM
- #2,108
randomperson123 said:
Yeah I read that he has former biases too.
Atreidestrooper
The most lowliest trooper of House Atreides
- Monday at 9:44 AM
- #2,109
rx915 said:
I read a Japanese historian gave his take on it and then other Japanese historians or Japanese people in general as I can't find too much on other academics talking of it despite the claim I read in emglish chimed in against it or for it.
Feels familiar in a historical sense though that was back when priests debate other priests on theology and what's orthodox or not. Then more follow this or that narrative.
randomperson123 said:
rx915 said:
You mean that historian guy who wrote on X/Twitter about how the definition of samurai was fluid at the time and thus Yasuke could have been a samurai? With the historian in question being sure that he was a samurai, albeit a low rank one who could have been raised higher if Oda Nobunaga had survived?
While interesting, the guy couldn't have used a worse timing to make his comment, I think. From the looks of it, he didn't do much but add fuel to the dumpster fire.
The Japanese angry guys are angry at him for not supporting their viewpoint, the more level-headed ones are worrying about how the academic argument will be utilized in the cultural war between the English-speaking DEI and anti-DEI movements, and the paranoid are starting to see shadows of conspiracies.
Blue_Glass_Spear
Final
- Monday at 7:24 PM
- #2,110
Atreidestrooper said:
You mean that historian guy who wrote on X/Twitter about how the definition of samurai was fluid at the time and thus Yasuke could have been a samurai? With the historian in question being sure that he was a samurai, albeit a low rank one who could have been raised higher if Oda Nobunaga had survived?
Not a historian actually. Guy had a history degree but worked for marketing. Even then the post was more speculation then hard fact. Even the definition used is so open that it makes merchants samurai.
Atreidestrooper
The most lowliest trooper of House Atreides
- Monday at 9:20 PM
- #2,111
Blue_Glass_Spear said:
Not a historian actually. Guy had a history degree but worked for marketing. Even then the post was more speculation then hard fact. Even the definition used is so open that it makes merchants samurai.
We could be talking about a different guy. The guy I'm mentioning, Hirayama Yuu, has an official profile that states that he has, at least, filled positions that do need expertise in Japanese history in the past, though more in the sense of knowing how to treat historical records and maintaining them and so forth.
...Yes, I know that said profile exists upon a webpage owned by Pony Canyon, but the context is that it is a part of Pony Canyon that attempts to tie entertainment with promoting culture and history. I'd guess he is the token expert around to give the company a nice face, which paradoxically means that he is enough of a historian to get tapped for legitimacy but not enough of a historian that he can just walk about without being propped up by the entertainment industry.
That said, assuming we are talking about the same person, I agree that the guy I mentioned made posts that have a lot of speculation in them, which is fine in a purely academic situation since theory crafting is a part of academia.
But, in this case, his comments completely miss the point of the situation going on and caused the angry guys to go angry at him. To which he made the mistake of responding at their angry comments, as he missed the point they are trying to make. On top of that, the timing was atrocious.
Naqu2o
The Devil
- Yesterday at 1:18 PM
- #2,112
I was reading Final Fantasy discussion on 5ch and damn the recent Ubisoft tweet lit them up. Maybe making that tweet was a mistake, as it wouldn't have attracted that much attention.
From what I have seen the Japanese has several issues with the game
1. Copyright issue. Ubisoft uses certain real life artwork in their game as decoration. Those are actually historical image and certain legal entities own the right to them. Using the image in the game may violate the holder interest and the Japanese takes those copyright issue seriously. Though those images can be found on Google or Wikipedia and such for free, but they are arguing that this isn't non profit. This should be easily fixed
2. The flipflopping about whether it's historical fact or not. Japanese doesn't like non Japanese writing about their own history and make mistakes while claiming it's historical facts. At least Ubisoft can calm this issue
3. The association with Thomas Lockley. Thomas Lockley is one of the historian in support of the new AC. However this public support also brings to light a few prominent highly controversial claims he made in the past, including writing that many Japanese feudal lord actively participated in the black slave trade and owned black slaves. This angers a lot of people but isn't related to AC, imagine a controversial figure supporting a cause and instantly causing that cause to have a permanent stigma.
(Specifically he claimed that since Nobunaga made Yasuke his vassal, it makes black slave popular among Japanese noble.)
Atreidestrooper
The most lowliest trooper of House Atreides
- Yesterday at 5:22 PM
- #2,113
Naqu2o said:
From what I have seen the Japanese has several issues with the game
While all true points, you forget one point that also happened in the "side lines", though I guess that doesn't pop up in 5ch.
A number of Japanese people who tried to explain those points to English speakers prior to Ubisoft's statement tweet got shouted down at as "White guys pretending to be Japanese" for whatever reason, which caused those Japanese people to end up radicalized and paranoid.
NotTheVaultBoy
“Hear that? We have OPTIONS!”
- Yesterday at 6:37 PM
- #2,114
Ubisofts apology is definitely one of the apologies of all time.
TLDR : "We are sorry for how you(Japan) feel with regards to the decisions we made."
Akali
- Yesterday at 6:48 PM
- #2,115
Whats even the point? Ubisoft isn't cancelling the game and they're not gonna get rid of Yasuke. This issue is no where big enough to have any negative effect on the game. So what's the point? People can play Naoe if they want to play a Japanese person in a game set in Japan. Whoever is still malding at ubisoft for Yasuke is doing themselves no favor by sticking with racists. Just let it go and play games you like. People gonna give you side eyes for being so hung up by the fact a game has a black protagonist.
V
Valak
Vl
- Yesterday at 8:19 PM
- #2,116
Akali said:
Whats even the point? Ubisoft isn't cancelling the game and they're not gonna get rid of Yasuke. This issue is no where big enough to have any negative effect on the game. So what's the point? People can play Naoe if they want to play a Japanese person in a game set in Japan. Whoever is still malding at ubisoft for Yasuke is doing themselves no favor by sticking with racists. Just let it go and play games you like. People gonna give you side eyes for being so hung up by the fact a game has a black protagonist.
Several times it has been made clear that this is not the problem, the problem is the disrespect to the Japanese culture by making too many mistakes when they transferred the culture to the game, the other copyrights that Ubi is ignoring and the problem that Ubi instead of trying something goes on and on about how they have done nothing wrong and does not apologize or try to fix anything that has been said before.
Longes
- Today at 3:06 AM
- #2,117
Naqu2o said:
The association with Thomas Lockley. Thomas Lockley is one of the historian in support of the new AC. However this public support also brings to light a few prominent highly controversial claims he made in the past, including writing that many Japanese feudal lord actively participated in the black slave trade and owned black slaves. This angers a lot of people but isn't related to AC, imagine a controversial figure supporting a cause and instantly causing that cause to have a permanent stigma.
That's incorrect. Thomas Lockley isn't "in support" of the new AC. He has at one point posted on Facebook that he has nothing to do with the new AC and to please stop sending him hate mail. Before wiping all his social media.
However, Thomas Lockley is the patient zero for nearly everything Yasuke. His fiction book "African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke" and his alleged editing of Wikipedia represent the majority of our knowledge of Yasuke. This book is non-academic fiction, and has a problem with circular referencing. Even Lockley said in an interview that we know basically nothing about Yasuke so he's making shit up for the book. The book has been controversial for a while and has now risen to accusations of academic misconduct.
And because Lockley is the main/only source on Yasuke, the discussion of historicity of Yasuke inevitably brought him into the conversation and exposed the rocky foundations.
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