Japan’s politicians have been trying to drum up election fever this summer, but followers of a growing craze are more excited about strongmen who have been dead for centuries — samurai warriors.
A mania over feudal warlords has been sweeping Japan, capturing the imagination of many in a way that gray-suited lawmakers can only dream of as they brave the sweltering dog days ahead of today’s election.
Japan’s medieval knights have become all the rage, battling it out in video games, on cinema screens and in manga comics as sexy sword-wielding hunks.
PHOTO: AFP
Sales of their biographies have surged, their family coats of arms have been snapped up as lucky charms, and their former castles are being besieged by legions of fans yearning for a brush with Japan’s long-gone martial noblemen.
Samurai figures now beckon from cellphone wallpapers, and the wives of famous warrior-lords have become the stars of high-rating historical TV dramas. The general history magazine Rekishi Kaido (“History Road”) has run cover stories on samurai lords almost every month for the past year.
The history fad — worth US$745 million a year, according to Dai-ichi Life Research Institute economist Toshihiro Nagahama — has been driven by hit video games and the A-list casts of popular samurai TV dramas.
But some social observers also say the trend reflects a deeper yearning for potent leaders in a country fatigued by recession and uninspired by a bland political system dominated by two centrist mainstream parties.
In testing times like these, “people tend to turn to strong symbolic figures on whom they can project their ideals,” said Hideki Nakagawa, a Nihon University sociology professor and an expert on pop culture.
What started out as a trend among video game nerds erupted into a mainstream craze this year after young women latched onto it. Japanese media quickly found a label for them — rekijo, or female history geeks.
In a society where market researchers recently identified a new male demographic as passive “herbivores,” “women seek ‘super carnivorous males,’” said Ichiya Nakamura, a media and pop culture researcher at Keio University.
“The warlords were different from the cold-eyed, dispassionate Japanese men of today,” he said. “They stood out because of their strong personalities.”
In a store dedicated to samurai books and paraphernalia, a 17-year-old female fan agreed wholeheartedly, gushing that the “warlords sacrificed themselves for justice and to protect the people.”
Now, she scoffed, “politics purely serves the interests of politicians.”
Currently hip warlords include Oda Nobunaga, the first leader to bring Japan under unified rule, and Date Masamune, dubbed the “One-Eyed Dragon” after his solitary eye and known for his iconic helmet with a blade-like crescent.
“We are in an era that lacks politicians with strong resolve,” said Fumikazu Oyama, 39, browsing through a bookstore specializing in the Sengoku or Warring States Period, which lasted from the 15th to the 17th centuries.
“They only procrastinate and delay solving problems. Japan will surely worsen if this situation continues,” he added, leafing through samurai biographies in a section labeled “The Male Resolve.”
At the Tokyo bookstore Jidaiya sales of samurai biographies have jumped 10-fold over the past year, a spokeswoman said.
The new surge in samurai interest may also offer a glimpse into the consumer mind as the country is emerging from its worst recession since World War II.
“When consumers are frustrated by a sense of stagnation topped by a recession, they develop an infatuation with figures that could break this stagnation,” said Yoshiya Nomura, of Dentsu’s Center for Consumer Studies.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS