Shōgun (Chapters 1-9) – James Clavell – Episode 84

The Buddies start in on the epic historical fiction novel, Shōgun by James Clavell. They start with part 1 (prologue – chapter 9) on their 1,000+ page voyage. With a new tv show coming out on FX in February, the Buddies couldn’t put off D-mans favorite book any longer. The Buddies got to chatting about full sends, baths, and the importance of peeing on things to show dominance. We are even treated to a historical scene setting portion by D-man aka Dan Carlin 2.0. So bring your katana and wakizashi swords, some bubble soap (for the bath), as we soak in everything Shōgun has to offer.

Intro (0:00-2:10)
Stock Up/Down (2:11-22:19)
Favorite Scene (22:20-27:03)
Lingering Questions (27:04-32:13)
History/Scene Setting w/D-man aka Dan Carlin 2.0 (32:14-41:21)
Conclusion (45:04-43:16)

NEXT BOOK: Shōgun (Part 2 & 3) by James Clavell

Transcript for SEO purposes 🙂

All right, welcome buddy book club. My Namo is Dylan and I’m here with my feudal lord and I’m yo
Kanitjuwaki Sama. Hello Dylan son. Wow, I give you Sama and you give me Sama?
You didn’t see me, I’m literally bowing right now. I’m almost hitting the ground.
I was about to say you better be palms down on the ground.
There’s deep respect right now for you. You just didn’t see it.
All right, well we’ll see. You might be going to commit some set book.
We’re breaking down some bestsellers and this week we’ll be discussing show gun by James
Clavel. If you’d like to recommend a book for us to read or reach out to us any past episodes,
you can visit our website but it book up.com or site. We’re at DMs or Twitter or Instagram.
Body book up podcast. You can listen to us on iTunes, bot of our every year podcast so please
download and subscribe. Keep this one’s a long time coming. Honestly, I think when you first
suggested that we take our immense talents to the internet and shame ourselves in front of all these
people that my first thought was let’s do show gun, which is one of my favorite books of all time.
But it’s an epic. It’s a thousand page like airplane book in the sense of when you go to the
airplane bookstore and they only have the paperbacks that have the tiniest type, it’s a thousand pages
there. So I’m really hoping that I’m not sending you to do something that you don’t want to do
and wasting your time because I would feel immense shame and would be forced to commit set book group.
I liked it so far. It’s obviously a lot to go for the readers out there. This is only going to cover
part one, which is the first nine chapters. So I think it’s about like probably 10 hours, I would say.
It’s broken up into like six books with a prologue. So we’re going to cover the prologue and book one,
which isn’t a ton of content, but we also wanted to really set the stage of like where we are in
history because this is a historical fiction book that does loosely tie back to things that happened
in the real world. So we just kind of wanted to do like a set and setting kind of pod with a little
bit of content before we really dive into because after this, it’s just nonstop political and
killing people and all sorts of fun stuff. Keith, let’s jump into it with some stock up, stock down
for book one, stock up. What do you got? Stock up old school full sense.
Are you familiar with the term full send, demon? I think so. Like if you’re skiing and you decide to go
off a cliff, like really, really sending it. I’m just going to send it. And these are really my
three favorite scenes. I’m going to get out, I kind of spoiled them right right here, but I mean,
I had to call them now because they’re all great variations of full send and different capacity.
Number three, Blackthorn, telling the story of his boat getting attacked and there are people
about to rate it and he’s like, oh, fuck this goes down, lights the magazine, which I had to look up,
which is the magazine is where they stored the ammunition lights it. Those people start to jump
onto his boat, get on there, he dives off and explodes, kills all the people on his boat. He goes
down to ship essentially, but he finds another boat, so I’m over and takes Captain to that one.
Great example. Fuck this boat, fuck these people. Lights everything out fire.
I’m pretty sure that’s how the USS Arizona went down at Pearl Harbor because that’s what that was
like the big explosion one. Oh, really? Dig went in there and lit it on fire? No, no, no, they just
hit it with Torpedo or a bomb. So like they hit that magazine and that’s where all the ammunition is.
Yeah, munitions are. So the whole thing exploded immediately. Yeah, I’d never heard of that.
I’ve only heard of a gun magazine, which is obviously probably where it comes from.
Number two, Blackthorn tells Yaboo, I think it was Yaboo, but he’s like, I’m gonna piss all over
your dead corpse or I forgot what he says exactly. And the other was like, okay, cool, cool.
Just pulls his dick out and pisses on it. No, that was, oh, me sorry. See, there’s a, I’ve had a
trouble with the Omean Yaboo difference. That’s part about that though. Really was Oby and Blackthorn
both say, oh, Lisa didn’t piss on my face because that would be too disrespectful. Piss on his back,
that’s okay. You know, that’s really not that bad, but pissing on his face would have been the last
straw. He gave him a break. That’s the distinction. Yaboo is like, oh, why didn’t you piss on the
barbarians face? Like, if you’re gonna piss on him, why not piss on his face? Like, oh, no, that’d be
too much of a disfaceless face. There’s no way he would come back up. Yeah, that sounds backspire.
And then Yaboo is like, very smart, very smart. The number one, by far, I laughed out loud in this
happen. Yeah. Yaboo is meditating. They’re trying to get his attention because he’s like, I’m gonna
die whatever, like, I’m just gonna, you know, chill here. One guy goes, fuck it, bonsai and
it lands next to him just to get his attention and dies instantly. That’s what I’m here for. I’m
all about that. I love that. That that literally was a turning point. That was the end of chapter nine.
So that’s when I said, I’m ready for part two. Let’s fucking go. So full sending. Old school. Love it.
Full sending for sure. Also pissing on people. If you really want to dominate over someone,
to show them your power, you just pee on them. When my dog was a puppy and when she peed on the floor,
people like they make their dog sniff it. No, I pee on the dog just to then show her. Yeah. Like,
okay, you pee on the floor. I pee on you. Think about it. Well, it wasn’t the face though. So it
would have been very disrespectful. Yeah, I would not. Yeah, I would not be. Yeah. But I also love the
the scream before it. The bonsai. I mean, that’s like, great. I mean, that’s the same thing.
Anytime you scream before you get about to kill yourself, that’s great. You love to see it.
It’s nice that cultures have different screams that they have to do before they go and for us,
it would be freedom mostly after a male Gibson in the Patriot, but that’s for me. Oh, that’s great.
And oh, excuse me, male Gibson in Braveheart, but Black Thorn when he sees that Samurai jump off the
cliff, like kill himself just to potentially get Yabu’s attention, not like, oh, this is guaranteed
to work out. Yeah. It’s just for potential. That’s like one of my favorite parts of the book in
general, especially at the beginning is just this total fish out of water vibe that’s going on,
where we can’t imagine now because you can see every culture and TV or in social media or within
their own kind of art, whatever the case is. But back then, you have know what he had no idea who
these people were. It’s just a mythical people, really. And they think it’s so many times in this that
they’re not the same people. You know, like, oh, these Japanese people are different. They don’t
feel cold. Like they say that all like, oh, they don’t feel cold. Like they don’t feel all these things.
But they do. They just have a different way of going about it in their culture doesn’t allow it,
especially with the samurai, you know, Bushido code is so important. And like the idea of duty,
like their duty and allegiance to their leech lord is the most important thing within Bushido code.
If you can die for your leech lord, that’s the greatest thing ever. This guy’s sacrifice, Black Thorn
was just blown away by being like, these people are actually psychotic. Who would possibly do
that because the European cultures value life so much and not necessarily, but not necessarily
what you do in life, but they value life itself, which has its positives and negatives. Whereas
the Japanese, the samurai, and this value duty and honor more than anything else. When they say
it so many times, especially because they’re Buddhist or the vast majority of them are Buddhist,
we’ll talk probably later about the Catholicism involved. But they talk about reincarnation and
just that life is a fleeting. It’s a do-drop within a do-drop kind of thing. So to them, it’s not a big deal.
It’s like, well, if you were good and you die, it’s like, well, then you’re gonna get reincarnated
is something better. So who cares? Anytime they have shame, they’re just like, well, gotta end it.
I’m like, I’d have end my life like a hundred times at this point of shame was the other time.
That’s all I took. A shame in myself and millions of times. Yeah, just standard shame,
I can’t possibly handle this. Yeah, yeah. I can’t live with this. I must kill myself. Which we
haven’t seen anyone actually commit Sepuku, except for the guy in the pit. Sepuku is a ritualistic
suicide for those unaware. And it’s an honor to commit Sepuku for your legelord. If they give you
that, I guess it’s an honor. Obviously, it doesn’t happen unless bad things go down. But no one’s like,
Oh, happy birthday, commits Sepuku. Well, he only gave him a small knife, so he couldn’t
technically do it. He could only slither with that or something, is that how it goes or is it? I
thought you had to have a certain type of knife to do it. No, the small knife is the knife. So a Samurai
cares two swords. They carry their katana, which is, you know, their killing sword. And then they
also have a smaller dagger, size sword. And that is the sword that you would use to commit Sepuku.
And actually you would wrap a cloth or something around most of the blade because you don’t need
much of the blade. You just need enough to cut open your belly and let your intestines fall out.
Which if you’re really disgraced, they just let you die that way, which could take days. But usually
there’s a second involved. And that second will cut off your head immediately after you’ve cut
cut open your stomach. So, you know, dying in a good way would definitely be having the second.
Sitting there with your guts hanging out for a couple days, not so cool. My first stock up is
baths. I mean, it seems to be too obvious. Okay, cool. I was like, it kind of is right. You know,
but it’s just going to seem so obvious. And actually my second one was ritualistic suicide. So I
guess we’ll just finish that one because Sepuku is really the only way to expedite a shame, a sin or
a fault. I actually like the bonds I die better than Sepuku, but that’s just me.
Ritualistic suicide does both, but at least if you have a shame, a sin or a fault,
and you want to maintain your honor, you commit Sepuku. It’s good. You get reincarnated
positively. So, you know, we’re supporting that, but baths back to that. It’s so interesting to
me the cultural clash where the Europeans think that baths make you sick, like bathing too often
makes you sick. And the Japanese are like, yeah, bathing all the time as often as you possibly can.
Like, why wouldn’t you? And it just seems blatantly obvious to me. Like, someone smells bad.
You’re like, that just seems sickly, right? You can see when they’re in the pit or whatnot.
It’s like, oh, they smell terrible. Like, it’s horrible. So like, wouldn’t you want to get that
off of you? I didn’t really understand it, but Japanese baths, I mean, we’re talking, you get the
full treatment, you’re getting massages, there’s perfumed oils and all sorts of stuff going on in
there. It sounds honestly wonderful. And I was just also interested in what’s your take on baths
in general, because I don’t take baths, but I do miss them because obviously there’s a child that
was a big thing. I thought it’s funny too, because when you look think about like the Europeans back
in the day, you think of them in the powdered wigs and they’re like very firm and proper, but they’re
just gross. They’re barbarians. They call them barbarians. And like, if we sell them today, you’d be like,
oh, this person’s just absolutely disgusting, you know, you would be ashamed. Yeah, 1000%.
You need to see it through the eyes of the Japanese. You’d be like, oh, I didn’t even realize that.
Yeah, and I also think it’s funny, you said the powdered wigs, because I think that kind of came from
venereal diseases. I might be making this up, but I’m pretty sure the idea of like powdered wigs came
about because of like syphilis or something and like the scent of it all. When the Japanese call
the Europeans barbarians in this, I’m like, hell, yes, they are barbarians. These people are disgusting.
Well, you kind of just become so sympathetic to this Japanese culture, which seems, and they say
Japan is the land of the gods or whatever, but it sure seems like it. It’s beautiful. It’s clean.
Even the small fishing village, everything is just like it neat and tidy, and there’s just this
artful order to things and the interest, obviously, most of this is coming from the samurai class,
which has the ability to think about poetry and meditation and not the work and folk who I’m sure
bust in their ass and not getting a lot of thanks for it. Then you think of the Europeans who are just
filthy and disgusting and don’t want a shower and my other stock down, which I’m going to burn
here is they went and said they want to bleed them, which why does that seem to make sense to you?
Stock up Japanese culture over European culture. I agree with that. The thing about massages too,
or not massages, I had massages of the stock up as well. They can go hand in hand. I’ve never gotten
one, but I now I’m like, I kind of want a bath and massage after this book. For me, the biggest issue with
bass is I don’t like just sitting somewhere and not having something to do, and I used to always bring
a book in the bath, right? It was a little bit older, and I biggest pet peeve is I’d get it wet,
you know, like my hands would be like turning the page and now the book’s all moldy and wet.
I think audiobook solves it, so maybe I just now post up an audiobook. I’m feeling like I need to
give it another shot. It’s funny. The first thing I did when I got my Amazon Kindle was I drew a bath.
Because it was the great, it was exactly what you were saying. I used to bring books in or whatever
the case was. Did you paint it or use pencils or how’d you draw it? Oh draw it back. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, we’re back. The Kindle you can get wet or whatever the case is, and it was so much better
than I just sat there and I read and had a couple of brusquies in the bath. Great experience. Yeah,
it was a really good time. There you go. No bubbles though. I didn’t do the bubble bath. That’s my fault.
I mean, if I was reading this book, I would definitely be having some sake. I’m going, what about stockdown?
Stockdown flirting. You know, you and I in a previous life would go to a bar. We were young whippersnappers,
you know, a little moxie and hope still filled in us at that point. You know, now we’re a little bit
old from Mungin, so a little different. But the time I remember us out and about and me approaching
a girl to flirt with at the bar and instantly getting rejected within 30 seconds and stumbling
over my words and then coming back and drinking myself into a stupor. Pretty standard, really.
Pretty typical night, but I don’t know how I didn’t figure out that all you need to do is walk up to
this woman or girl and just pointing at you. Woman at them. That’s all you have to do, do you?
Oh, no. Oh, no. Woman. Woman. And she tells you your name and you just say, no, no, you’re woman.
Woman. Woman. You keep on saying it as many times you possibly can and pointing.
Eventually they just get into your bed and get naked. That’s why I’m in this book, which I’m just like,
wait, what? How does this work? It was on there for one of my favorite scenes when his first encounter
when he’s hungry, but the women thinks he wants sex with the oldest woman,
disrobed, and the others just like, oh, they get all excited and they just sit there expectantly,
like, okay, like, let’s see what happens next. Like, this is going to be fun.
Kind of a little bit crazy, right? The first of all, the arrogance to be like, no, no, your name’s
a woman. Trust me. I know your name. I don’t know your language and anything about it.
You’re a woman. And then also just throw them to be like, yeah, it sounds good. We did it wrong
back in the day and, you know, missed our opportunity. Miss our opportunities indeed. And I was
thinking about that. I was trying to tie that back to your, uh, the shame and the sepico you’d be
committing over the years. Yes, yes.
And we’ll probably be talking about this more in future episodes, but just the way that Japanese
seem, at least this culture, this samurai culture at the time, seem to view sex is so fascinating
to our ideas, which are formed from the European ideas. And Blackstone gives us a little bit of
insight into that, but, you know, the idea of nakedness is something that people are not comfortable
with in Europe or, you know, being around other people where everyone seems to be mostly naked,
at least the men, you know, they were their loincloths and then they also freely are naked. It’s
just nakedness isn’t, there’s no shame behind it, which I think definitely comes from some form of
Catholicism, probably. And then just with Kiku and Omi, so you’re loud a wife and then consort,
but Kiku is having sex with Omi slash like he’s over in her place and then Omi’s wife comes back to
town and Kiku is like, Oh, I should go over there and just like let her know that he’s here and see if
she wants me to wake him up and bring him home. And his wife is so excited to see her. She’s like, Oh,
hey, Kiku, how’s it going? Kiku is like, Oh, your husband’s over my place. We just banged, but uh,
she’d actually bring him back. She’s like, No, but sit and have a child. I was so confused by that. I’m like,
wait, is this the same person? I was, thanks for clearing that up because I was very confused.
It is the same person. And I think I made this clear to the listeners out there, but
this is my second full-time reading the book. Granted, I haven’t finished it. I’m gonna keep track
with the pod, but it will be my second full-time. I did start listening to it a couple of years ago
again. The first time I read it was in my early 20s. So I do remember some big stuff going on or
some some of this stuff. So I do have an idea of like where things are going or whatnot, but I will say
that the ideas of sex are very different and the comfort level of giving your husband a night with
a corduassand at a tie. It’s people are very comfortable with that. No problems whatsoever. So having a
household that is your wife and lots of other women is is okay. It’d be like your wife’s just giving
you for your birthday like a gift being like, Oh, I got you this escort who will sing to you,
serve you tea and sake in extremely graceful ways. She’ll play the guitar and then she’ll lay you
and maybe get a massage, whatever the case is. Yeah, sounds terrible, honestly. Sounds terrible.
A lot of you’re listening terrible, not interested. My first stock down and kind of the only one I
really have left, but is traveling anywhere by boat? We kind of talked about this in the last episode
with the airship stuff, but boats just seem terrible. It all seems horrible like every bit of it. None of it
would be interesting to me. The fact that this is how people had to travel to see the world or to like
get out of a situation to you know, move to a new place. I just don’t know what’s happened with the
world, or maybe I’m just looking for my own eyes, but I am extremely mentally weak. I would not be
able to handle any of this. I would not be interested. They’re like, All right, we’re going to go travel.
We don’t know exactly where our end spots going to be. Your teeth may fall out from scurvy and the
skin may fall off your face and we have nothing to eat besides the maggots that are in our apples,
but let’s do it. I’m like, Yeah, okay, whatever I might make some money. I’ll probably die, but I might
make some money. No, no, thank you. The fact that anyone did this really blows me away and once again,
the Japanese are right being like, I don’t like to get on boats. We’re not a sea-faring people. We’re land
people. Yeah, so I support them. I complain about like flying and wearing about flying and it’s like
one in three hundred million chance of dying on a plane. And so, and then this they’re like, so yeah,
you get in the boat. We’re going to take out five of them. Four of them are a hundred percent not
coming back. All those people in those are dead. They’re going to die. And then the boat that’s going
to come back, it’s going to have like 10 to 20 of the the hundred fifty people we put on the boat. So,
you know, the ratio of surviving when you take a boat trip is like five percent chance. So let’s take
a bunch of those. It’s like, okay, I’m out. Yeah, I’m out on that. Even when Black Thorne’s having his
flashbacks to his teacher and learning about sea-faring and wanting to go on this expedition with Drake,
he’s like, you know, Drake is like, he’s like, he’s like, oh, he just did this amazing thing. He’s like,
yeah, but they only came back with like 10 percent of the crew. That could be me. I could be in that 10
percent. It’s me. I’d be like, I’m always in the 90 percent. So, well, it’s definitely like the,
hey, you can get a hundred million dollars only 10 percent chance of living. I would do take that deal.
That’s like what they’re, they’re actually signing up for. My last stock down is clocks in the gold
standard. Give me the Japanese way. I mean, I’ve written a couple blogs about time and just not
understanding it in general. Same thing with currency. I have no idea really how currency worked, but I
know back in a day, or at least until like the 60s or 70s, I want to say, we were backed by gold.
So like every US dollar is printed, we had enough gold to cover that. Basically, it was gold currency,
or gold standard. It never made sense to, if you’re starving or the things like to get destroyed and,
you know, the country goes to shit, gold doesn’t do anything. I can’t eat gold. I can’t, I can’t drink gold.
It doesn’t do anything. I always made sense of like, oh, we should almost tie it to a resource that
actually has supreme value that no matter when, you know, a thousand years from now, it will have value.
Like rice, which is what the Japanese do. Makes perfect sense to me. Perfect sense. The currency is
rice for that, right? Yeah. So in feudal Japan, a cocoa of rice is equal to the amount of rice a family
will need to survive in a year. We should be on the wheat system or the corn system in the United
States. It’s just be like, I’m going to give you 10 key codes or cocoa. It’s like, okay, cool. That’s
10 corn of rice. It’s like gold. What am I going to do with gold? It’s just you basically converted to
whatever is most popular dish. It’s like pizza for me, ice cream for you, you know? Like it’s just,
okay, yeah, it’s like, I don’t know that that seems like a pretty expensive cost for that car. I’ll give you
3000 pizzas for it and it just makes perfect sense to me, you know, what that amount is, right? But like,
yeah, well, actually, I don’t even want to think about that with the cow chopping I did today.
How many gallons of ice cream that thing’s going to cost me? It makes way more sense.
It’s good for the life. Because right now it’s just a credit card. It’s just money. It doesn’t mean
anything to me. There’s no value to me. Yeah. You could buy this one gold ring. I’m like, I don’t care
about gold. Who gives a shit? It’s it’s also important to teach people the value of your currency too.
Because if I was going to Crateron Barrel where I’m buying this dang couch and they’re like,
oh, all right, so you’re going to have to bring in a tractor trailer full of ice cream. You have to
bring a thought 10 years of ice cream that you’re going to eat. I’d say like, no, I don’t think I can do
that. But now I just have this dollar with George Washington’s face on it. I don’t care, you know,
whatever. It doesn’t matter to me. And time, you said time to how to time tie into that. So the time
they use is the burning of a candle, which is like, they’re like, all right, three candles or is that
it is incense? Okay. Stick a stick of incense. Yeah, which I don’t know if they burn perfectly even,
but I liked it. You know what? I don’t think the an hour makes any sense. Time doesn’t make any
sense to me. It’s arbitrary. Give me something that I can see, you know? It’s actually like, once this
is done, it’s over. Makes more sense to me. And the sailors use our glasses, which also makes more
sense. And I wish working for the man. It was like, hey, there’s, you know, you’re working nine hours
today. It’s like, you know, flip over an hourglass, work that time, flip it over again, go do something,
flip it over again, work. It makes it would make it easier, I think, for me to crush work as opposed
to just like sitting there all day. I mean, like, good God. This is, there’s still so much to time to pass.
Plus the incense burning like tracks time, but it’s also smells wonderful. Yeah. They know they’re doing
the smiles here. I appreciated that. Do you have a favorite scene? I feel like the first book or the
prologue of the first book is kind of broken up into we got the Erasmus, which is the ship that Black
Thorn they crash into Japan. We have the guys in the pit. That’s a whole thing. Black Thorn meeting
Yabu, the torture night. Yabu’s favorite when Yabu gets his rocks off to people getting tortured.
And then aboard the Japanese galley where lo and behold, another storm comes and then saving Rod Rigo.
Those are kind of like the big things that happen in there. I think the boat with the Portuguese
captain was the best. I think the prior part was kind of setting up, hey, this is a fish out of water.
This is what I’m trying to say. This is what they’re interpreting and things like that back and forth.
Once you got someone that was in there, I think once the action started happening and there was
a little bit more stream like mitigation, it made it much more enjoyable for me. What about you? Yeah.
I agree in that sense and I do love how this book because it’s so long. You know, this is a huge novel
and so many times when you get these big novels, it just jumps kind of like perspective to perspective,
which this does. You know, you it’s not just coming from Black Thorn. You’re getting other
people’s perspectives, but it kind of zooms out to like different places and different things
that are happening. We’re shogun is it’s just focused in this fishing village in Yizu and we’re
getting some understanding really of the geopolitical situation, but not a ton and then obviously we’re
going to learn a lot more like we’re approximately like 200 pages into a thousand page book. So many
of the main characters haven’t even been introduced to us yet, which is really enjoyable. I like to
think about books like this almost as like a mini series where you know, this would be the first
episode maybe three of the most important characters or two or three of the most important characters
like haven’t even been introduced to us yet. You know, there’s there’s so much left to go on that
front. There’s so much back and forth of the language stuff that not like a ton happens,
but I did love everything surrounding the pit between them going into the pit, all the fish
guts getting dropped on them then being like what the hell are we doing here? The samurai coming
down and him murdering himself and everything like what the hell’s going on them drawing straws but
that not even working out. So that going into the torture night because then you’re like what the
hell are they going to do to torture him? Which I must say boiling someone alive pretty fucked up.
I also didn’t really understand other than like the love for torturing is like they’re like we want
to make these people are our vassals and that was kind of one of my lingering questions I can bring
on now, but like is there revenge? Is that not a thing in Japan? The best way to get someone to
subservient is not necessarily to start boiling their friends alive. It doesn’t seem like that would be
the best way. I would I know. Yeah, but what’s funny is both groups look at the other as a dumb
animal. I think it says a lot about like people in general. Like you’re beating the dog type thing
they’ll make it a completely exactly exactly. This is they’re trying to get obedience to these people and
they became aware of how much a person’s life matters to them like they say even say when it comes to
Anjinsan who is John Blackthorn, how he would let someone piss on him so that one of his people
wouldn’t die. Right. The lesser person than him. That’s ridiculous. We would never allow that to happen.
But they realize okay, it’s cool to him. So the torture is okay. Well now we can hang this over you. We
can torture anyone at any time if we want. But it’s also just the habit of being a sick fuck and
just loving torture and wanting to be part of that. I was out of that. I really liked also the
like saving Brad Riego stuff where it was a you know Blackthorn kind of challenges Yabu and Yabu is
like okay. That made a little bit more sense to me is like okay I want Blackthorn to be my
vassal. I’m going to show him that I’m not just this one thing that he thinks I am. I’m much more
than that and I’m also much stronger like because Yabu is kind of like a short fat guy. So I think to
see him nimbly scaling down a mountain and also just like knowing that he’s a good swordsman as well.
I was like okay well maybe this Yabu guy ain’t too bad and then you also owe him and that that does
matter. But in a small small favorite scene maybe it was the old Japanese lady who was so happy
to see his big European penis that she said she can now die happy. That I enjoyed very much.
Someone that you’re paying dissent of I was pretty proud of our ancestors there. Oh he’s like oh my
mother says she can now die happy because she saw your penis erect. He’s like all right.
For me they’d be like we’re expecting a lot more honestly we heard the stories that’s a shame.
It’s too bad. The Russian judge gives it a three.
Let’s do some lingering questions. No they want to make them vassals. It wants someone to revolt
and kill one of my boys. I feel like you just put them all down. What do you mean when did someone
do that? So they revolt and they kill the one samurai or basically fuck them up so that they
throw them in the pit with them. What was the advantage to keeping them alive? I understand the
skills and the necessaryness to keep black thumb but why wouldn’t you just be like I fuck all these
dudes? We don’t need them. What are they providing? Well I think the idea is that black thorns
interest in keeping them alive will keep him under control. So he wants black thorns wants his
men to survive. So if you keep them alive then black thorn can then still be taking control of.
Whereas if they just kill all of them then black thorn will really just be out for vengeance.
The whole thing. And also Yabu doesn’t care about that one samurai. He doesn’t care about 10,000
samurai if it helps him get to where he wants to be. And Yabu is also smart enough to know that
this is these barbarians are not like the Portuguese barbarians. They could be useful to him. He
doesn’t yet know why he has ideas like his idea to have them teach samurai how to use this
European, this barbarian boat maybe against the Portuguese or against other Japanese because
the Japanese are able to sail that. It could change a lot of things as well as having a musket
armed regiment of samurai which obviously these Europeans know how to use those weapons.
They might be better because the only Portuguese that are currently in Japan are Jesuits and
priests. So they’re not going to be the ones that they would go to to learn armaments. So I think
that’s part of it. The other thing that I thought was interesting and I was going to bring up with
the flirting stock but I was kind of strange to me that I don’t know if they just do value women
a lot more or this idea of sex is just not really not a big deal to them. But like if you’re
going to take these people and you’re like we’re going to imprison them or enough I can get them
under a thumb. Why are you also giving them the benefits of here’s some nice like vegetables and food
and also here are all these prostuits you can just sleep with them whatever you want. If you think
these are barbarians and shitty people that you should be in jail why were you also treating them
to things like that you know what I mean? Yeah I think a lot of that stuff at the beginning is also more
of taking a lamb to slaughter in the sense of if they know they’re going to die if you tell them
oh we’re going to torture all of you to death. Then who knows what they could do you know they’re
going to get because they’ve been there yet so they’re like we need to keep them nice and
hot. Exactly. That makes sense. Exactly so they’re like we’re just going to keep these guys fed
nice and calm we have no idea what job who’s going to want to do with them. Yeah it probably won’t be
good but in order to make sure that they don’t go crazy and start tearing our town apart like let’s
just make sure they have no seeming their testicles. That’s smart actually I didn’t all right that
really does a good answer there I didn’t think about that. You’re welcome you’re welcome go minus
I mean I’m sorry I think so I don’t know why I said that. And I had prediction but I think obviously
that black thorn will learn Japanese and then start to appreciate their customs his rage will still be
there which was like they’re not used to that which is going to be a good thing you know obviously
like they’re used to like being internal everything internalized and like very relaxed and like no
emotions but he’s going to use that and like they’re going to be like oh this dude’s sucking bad
ass because he has this rage. Yeah he’s got this berserker energy because we all know at this point
black thorns going to have some sort of transformation and he’s such a perfect main character
for this because of his curiosity and he’s super intelligent. Yeah it’s ability to pick up languages I
think is the most important thing. Yeah 100% well he’s also you know bilingual which probably should have
been a stock up in general or he’s like trilingual and he speaks latin Dutch english Portuguese yeah
he’s like quadling and you see it later which you know it’s going to be a little bit of a spoiler
alert but in the next section he they go into Osaka because that’s where we leave them at the end
of this part they go into Osaka and he immediately starts to figure like trying to figure out like
how could I take this castle if I wanted to you know it’s just like his brains always working
and you need to be quick in this society to survive. When it comes to this book one of the things I
just love in general about it is just the intricacies of the conversation between samarize and like
even the nonverbal aspects because everything is so strategic the slightest slight could mean
that you’re saying something so terrible but you can’t say that so you just kind of put a little
something in there and it’s like oh my god that was so but then the other person can’t respond to it
someone says oh this soup was kind of cold that you cooked you can’t be like well how dare you
well there you’re going to zero to 100 because they’re either like you’re right you can have all
my property or they’re pulling their dick out pissing on someone or they’re like throwing the food
on the ground saying this is fucking pathetic you shouldn’t be my son’s wife like your piece of
garbage like Jesus Christ so there’s a little there’s a little ton of subtlety or not no no
in between yeah exactly okay so I want to just like set a little bit of the stage here because we
didn’t get to a ton of it so I want to make sure that’s clear and how we’re going to break this
up is instead of doing like you know book report we’re going to do a little history lesson here
and it’ll should be mostly painless because I’m not going to involve any real names or dates
but I think the key aspects are what’s going on in Europe at the time what’s going on in Japan at the
time and how those two fit together does that make sense I mean obviously America so you got to
keep include that what year is it it’s 1600 the year we’re about to overthrow the British in
176 years so we’re we’re fine none of the Americas are actually charting it no one’s actually
being in America no you were 1490s right yeah but I mean like they’ve seen the coastal lands but no
one has really like permeated into and that’s with most countries like at this point in history we know
the shapes of the major continents but no one has really like dove into those a ton except for
some of the South American stuff in terms of the new world that’s kind of crazy because it’s so
much harder to get to Japan than it is to the America right from from England right like and from
Netherlands so they’ve been there I mean obviously people live there but you know Europeans and what
not it could have been there the idea of looking into the country you know like more than 20 miles
in or whatever the case is like just not happened so Shogun itself the book although it is historical
fiction it gives an account of the rise of some of these Dimeos right and where they we’ve heard about
Torinaga he’s gonna be involved in there a battle happened in like right after 1600 that this kind
of draws from so like this this happened in there and there was a English sailor William Adam
who was around at the time so he’s kind of plays the John Black Thorne character it somewhat loosely
based on the events that did happen in real life around this time and in Europe at the time the
Netherlands had recently won a civil war that what they talked about here the 80 years war to gain
independence against the Spanish Catholics and the Netherlands their ruling families Protestant
Netherlands are loosely allied with England thanks to Queen Elizabeth who is also Protestant
the Spanish and Portuguese Catholic English Netherlands Protestant simple is that but the Spanish
and Portuguese divide the world between themselves via a couple treaties we don’t care what those
treaties are but they basically say all right out of all the new world here’s what you get here’s
what we get and the Catholic Church is the real imperial power with the Pope at its head who gives
the Spanish and Portuguese the right to go forth and convert all of these people or kill rape and
pillage whichever one you say in the name of God that’s what’s happening in Europe pretty simple in Japan
there’s been like six centuries of constant civil war 35 years ago a minor dimo grota he was able to conquer
almost all of Japan but then was assassinated by one of his generals that’s going to become important
later that this general that assassinated him but grota is best strategic general in vassal the man
that would go on to become the taiko who they talked about he consolidated power with the help of
Torinaga and Ishiro who are these two big bad dummies and this led to a time of peace that lasted
for a decade the taiko couldn’t become shogun because he was peasant born so he just took on the
title of taiko and a year ago the taiko died and with his heir yemen only seven years of age there’s
now a power vacuum so the taiko set up five regents to rule until his son yemen comes of age those
regents include Torinaga and Ishiro and then those are the big power players those are really the
ones we have to super care about their sworn enemies and then there’s three other guys and the only
kind of important thing is that two of those other guys are Christian so how this Japan and
Europe think fits together is Japan needs silks from China China won’t trade with Japan but wouldn’t
mind getting some of that Japanese silver so the Portuguese who arrived in Asia a couple decades ago
can trade with China and they have a base in Macau the Chinese gave them Macau so since the Portuguese
can trade with China and also can trade with Japan the the Japanese have a working arrangement
with the Portuguese to trade silver for Japanese silks and in exchange the Japanese allow the Portuguese
to operate in Japan and convert some of the populace that’s a really good run now first off
appreciate that that’s helpful why don’t the Japanese learn Chinese seems like they’re giving too
much power to the Portuguese just as translators well I’m sure there some people speak Chinese that live
in Japan but the Chinese don’t won’t trade with Japan oh oh you’re saying they’re a middleman so they’re
like they’re yeah exactly okay exactly so the Portuguese are just acting as a middleman but the
Portuguese get a lot out of it because they get they’re take so they get rich off of their take
which they send home yearly in the black ship which we’ve heard about briefly so there’s a black
ship that every year goes from Asia back to Spain or Portugal whatever with loaded with money
and on top of that these Jesuit priests get somewhat free reign to go around Japan and convert people
like the Japanese Dimeos like the head Dimeos most of them don’t like Christians there’s two Christian
Dimeos but Ishito and Torinaga neither of them have any interest in having Christians on Japan’s oil
but because they are needed for this exchange with China they pretty much put up with them and allow them
some leniency and is the the swoos canal is that a thing right now or is that not until is that manmade
the suez? sorry isn’t the suez in the middle east? yeah so to get back to Portugal do they need to
go below Africa? oh no yeah they go they go through Magellan’s path so like they go below like south
America oh really? yes there’s no Panama canals is that shorter Japan all the way to Portugal rather than
the other way around? yeah I don’t think there is a current path through Africa but yeah so in this
world where obviously there’s tons of stuff going on in Japan has had 10 years of peace after hundreds
of years of civil war pretty much now there’s this power vacuum with the taiko out so it’s kind of like
we’re like black thorn who we meet at the beginning is just thrown into this powder keg and he’s at the
middle of everything that’s going to be happening for kind of the world like it’s a huge event for
the world and although this is not a true story there are some truths to it the author obviously did
like a ton of research who could even imagine the epic scale of this is what I love so much because
it also is the opposite where you just get these minute intimate details between two people and
later we’re going to see inside some of these like super powerful people’s heads and like how they
think and how they strategize and it’s like like mind blowing stuff I’m just not I’m not that smart so
it’s nice to read about someone else that’s that smart at the time in Japan do they think they’re all
Japanese it’s not like a united country right or is there like some samurai code that everyone
believes they’re under yeah well there is the emperor you know there is the emperor yeah so there’s
an emperor comes from an unbroken line of this family they’re legit deity like they are the son of
God okay but they don’t actually hold any real power per se but the emperor can grant power
to other people so emperor is kind of a shitty situation because they don’t make any money they
can’t make any money only like the the dimeos are like who’s ever running it give them like an
allowance so there’s been like Japanese emperors in feudal Japan who are poor like had to like sell
things to actually like eat and that’s kind of this whole idea of a show gun which is the ultimate
rank a mortal can achieve in Japan and and I say immortal because the emperor is immortal yeah in
their mind so but in a show gun means supreme military dictator only one man can hold that title
at a time and only the emperor the divine son of heaven can grant you that title so you do need
the emperor like the emperor is very important but at the same time he’s not important at all it’s
like the royal family in the UK yeah kind of honestly at least at this point the current point
Japanese itself is an island nation that is one unified group of people but it is divided in that
there are different dimeos who run different areas of that country we’re not going to say would
you recommend it because you know we’re just kind of scratching the surface but what are you most
excited for for this next section which will probably be book two well I’m just picturing the montage
of him training and learning the language and like building up his strength becoming the chosen one
so to speak you’re waiting for him to beat Tom Cruise in the last hour I’m thinking of that
Tom Cruise yeah the whole time I’m excited to meet tornaga he’s the best honestly spoilers it’s not
it’s not a spoiler they’ve been talking about tornaga the whole time how important he is and what not a
lot of the people we’ve met so far are all very very smart and but most of the time you get to
leadership it’s a person that’s in power but it shouldn’t have the power typically I would say most
of the time when you’re expected to meet someone that’s powerful you’re not really expecting much
in the way of like all disguised the greatest unless they’re practicing with yeah he took power at
the age of like 12 by fucking killing his parents and yeah well you think about someone like
Yabu who’s obviously smart cunning deceitful but also is still alive so you’re like okay what
but then Yabu bows to tornaga so it’s like how smart cunning and deceitful this person be to be
able to have not only Yabu but tens of Yabu and then he’s also fighting against all these other
regions so there’s gonna be a lot of fun stuff in a saga castle but Keith this was fun
shogun god it’s just such a big world it’s such a big world out there and I’m glad we’re exploring
feudal Japan it just feels Japan just seems so much cooler than kings and queens of europe and
that stuff it this is this just seems way more entertaining we’re talking about buchido code there’s
samurai it’s like this is really happening there’s gonna be ninjas in this story there’s gonna be
ninjas this devil give me appreciation for Japan other than the fish in the vegetables and I can
do it without that but everything else is pretty sick Keith that’s shogun part one we’ll catch you for part
two already them bye now bye now