Medieval Japan: Myths of the Samurai

Gone Medieval

History Hit

History

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 June 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Medieval Japan - especially its stories of fearless Samurai and Ninja warriors - have an enduring place in our consciousness. But how true are they?

In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis talks to Joseph Robey, who has made it his mission to make the stories of Medieval Japan more well known.

This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.

You can take part in our listener survey here.

If you’re enjoying this podcast and are looking for more fascinating Medieval content then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here.

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit.
0:02.6	To listen to all of our episodes, add free and watch hundreds of history documentaries
0:06.8	download the History Hit app or go to historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.
0:12.4	And if you're an Apple listener, you can subscribe for new add free episodes within the app.
0:22.9	Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis.
0:25.7	When I think of Medieval Japan, there's one thing that fills my mind.
0:29.6	Samurai and samurai swords hold a unique place in the collective consciousness.
0:34.4	I have to confess that beyond believing them and their weapons of choice to be uber cool,
0:39.6	I don't know very much about Medieval Japan or the samurai.
0:43.8	Fortunately though, I do know Joe Roby who's made his mission to make the stories of Medieval Japan
0:49.3	more well known and today at least to explode some of the myths that surround the samurai for us.
0:54.6	Welcome to Gone Medieval Joe.
0:55.9	Oh, I'm happy to be here.
0:57.2	To start us off with, can we talk a little bit about how Japanese society was structured
1:02.0	during the Medieval period?
1:03.2	How similar was it to what we know about kind of feudal Europe or was it a completely different system?
1:08.1	To be honest with you, there's a lot of similarities.
1:10.0	Very much like in Medieval Europe around the time, you have a pretty rigid caste system or class
1:14.4	system, whatever you want to call it, with nominally peasants at the bottom rising up through the ranks
1:19.5	until you get what would be your equivalent of the aristocracy and knights and then the emperor
1:24.7	who'd be like the king at the top.
1:25.9	But the big difference is that once you get to the upper echelons of the society, there's a
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.