Long ago, people on Tsushima Island lived in peace.
Then everything changed when the Mongols attacked.
So I’m jumping on the bandwagon and talking about the game Ghost of Tsushima.
This is a history channel, so we’re gonna talk about how historically accurate the game is.
It fits dammit!
First off, I wanna say that the point of a game is to be entertaining,
not to be historically accurate.
The developers have pointed out that they would not let historical accuracy get in the
way of a good story or kickass swordfighting.
I ain’t criticizing the game, it’s an amazing game,
this video is just for tricking you into learning.
And for petting foxes.
Alright, let’s start with the actual invasion.
What really happened?
In 1274, in Japan’s Kamakura Period, The Mongols did land at Komoda Beach.
In the game, the invasion was this whole drawn-out campaign with Mongols making camps
and invading castles all over the island.
This totally makes sense for a game because a game’s gotta last longer
than one or two battles, or else you wouldn’t be able to
procrastinate and ignore your real life responsibilities.
The actual invasion of Tsushima lasted about a day.
We only see Mongols in the game, but it was a mosh pit of
Mongols, Han Chinese, Jurchen, Khitans, and Koreans, all under the Mongol banner.
They numbered in the thousands.
The Japanese side had about 80 mounted samurai, so you would think they were massively outnumbered.
But each samurai had a few foot soldiers supporting them, meaning they were massively outnumbered.
What ensued was like the story of the 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae,
in that a small, brave group of defenders failed to stop an invading army and died.
Lord Shimura and Jin Sakai were not among them because they didn’t exist.
All of the characters in the game are fictional.
Khotun Khan didn’t exist.
Kublai Khan was the Mongol leader at the time, but he wasn’t physically at the invasion.
A clan named --
Ooh fox!
A clan named Sakai did exist, but it was founded later in the 1300s and it was in a totally
different part of the country.
The real defenders were led by the Sō 宗 clan, and lucky for us they wrote down what
happened so that 800 years in the future, I can make a video about it.
If you notice, Lord Shimura was called the jitō 地頭 of Tsushima, not the daimyo.
Daimyo is fairly well known to the public, but most people have never heard of jitō.
Back in the Kamakura Period, daimyo didn’t exist yet.
The shogun appointed people to manage various pieces of land and the people in them,
and collect taxes from them of course.
These managers were called jitō, commonly translated as land stewards.
The real life Lord Shimura was a man named Sō Sukekuni 宗助国.
He was the deputy jitō of Tsushima rather than the jitō.
In the game, the pirate Goro escapes Tsushima to ask the shogunate for reinforcements.
This is based on something that did happen.
After the Mongol victory, two men took a boat and got out of there at 2 times speed.
One of them, I think his name was Pōru Ribia, told people,
“The Mongols are coming! The Mongols are coming!”
and people were like “Mangoes?”
and they were like “No, Mongols”
and people were like “Oh.”
They didn’t ask for reinforcements though, and unlike in the game,
no reinforcements came.
Everyone knew the invaders were coming for the big islands.
It wasn’t like the Mongols wanted tiny, insignificant Tsushima,
it was a place they had to hit on their way to the real prize.
After the Mongol army demolished the samurai in Tsushima and killed some of the locals for fun,
they stayed for about a week, hit the nightclubs you know,
then they hit the island of Iki, and then Hakata Bay.
There, they lost and then Naruto-ran all the way back home.
Near the end, the game hints that a typhoon is coming,
because of the popular belief that a typhoon hit the Mongol fleet and saved Japan.
But a typhoon probably did not happen.
None of the Japanese sources mentions a typhoon.
You would think something that important that saved Japan would have been talked about endlessly.
One Japanese source does say that a “reverse wind” blew the invaders back to their lands,
but this just meant that favorable winds allowed the Mongols to sail back home.
Now a Mongol source does claim that a storm destroyed a bunch of their ships,
but it’s unclear if that happened while the Mongols were already sailing back, or if it was just
them saying, “Uh yeah yeah we didn’t lose, a storm did it, a storm I say.”
The Mongols later invaded a second time 7 years later, in 1281,
and that time a typhoon did hit them.
Now let’s talk about --
Oooh foxie!
Now let’s talk about honor.
The main theme of the game is about Jin Sakai going against the honorable samurai code.
Poisoning people and stabbing them in the back is really fun,
but dishonorable,
but fun,
but dishonorable.
Oh gods, the conflict.
Thing is, this conflict between honor versus survival simply did not exist for the samurai.
The code of bushidō that said samurai must be honorable and loyal
was invented in the modern era.
Samurai didn’t act in such a romanticized way, following their lords to the death,
never stabbing people in the back.
In fact, if you look at the battles in medieval Japan,
they were full of people rebelling against their lords
and betrayals,
it wasjust one betrayal after another, even in the middle of battle.
So a more accurate word to describe samurai is not “loyalty,” but “disloyalty.”
Samurai stayed with their lords mainly because it benefited them.
When it became more beneficial to switch sides, they likely switched sides.
Samurai leaders always kept an eye on their subordinates in case those selfish gits
stab them in the back.
Even in the Edo Period, a time of peace, the shogun used all kinds of methods to prevent
his lords from rebelling, like keeping their families hostage in the capital.
They wouldn’t have had to do this if samurai weren’t the
deceitful little opportunity watchers that they were.
Of course, there were famous cases of loyal warriors who sacrificed their lives for their lords,
but those losers are famous because they were the exceptions.
Samurai were people, and people are generally not fans of dying.
If given a choice to save their own asses or their lord’s ass,
they’d probably pick their own asses.
Jin had to grapple with being a ghost.
Oh yeah, in the Japanese dub, they use the word kurōdo 冥人 for ghost,
which is a word they created for the game.
Kuro 冥 means “dark” or “darkness.”
And do 人 means “people” or “man.”
So kurōdo means “man of the darkness.”
Jin had to grapple with using dishonorable tactics like killing from behind and poisoning.
Of course, the real samurai had no problems with that.
Most battles started off as deceitful ambushes instead of someone charging head-on
like a gallant warrior who’s probably about to die.
If Jin Sakai had to infiltrate a base, it made total sense to sneak around
and poke people from behind.
Samurai would have zero qualms about that.
They used deception and trickery all the time, and it was considered normal, not dishonorable.
At the end of the day, what made you a good samurai was winning.
When Jin Sakai poisoned the Mongols to prevent bloodshed for his own men,
the shogun would’ve told him “good job.”
Although, he did disobey his lord and escaped from prison, so that would land him in trouble.
Alright, I’ll do at least another one of these videos, about battles and weapons.
It’ll be here once it’s ready.
Let me know if there is anything you want me to cover about the game.
We have one new patron this week, Chronophage.
Thanks man, you guys keep the channel going.
Alright, I love you, and spread the knowled --
Ooh fox!