Hello dear reader, my name is Tyler Wright, and I’m glad you’ve taken the time out of your busy schedule to read through my blog post. This last summer, I spent my time abroad in Japan on my college’s study abroad program with Akita International University, but before we can get into what it was like living over there for an entire semester, you should be aware of just why this matters so much to me that I felt I should write my blog about it.
Ever since I was about eight years old, Japan and Japanese culture has been a part of my life, although I didn’t realize it at the time. Like most kids of my generation’s first exposure to Japan and Japanese culture it all starts with Nintendo and their record-selling console, the Nintendo Wii. I still remember the dingy basement of my first home where we had it set up, with puzzle piece-style playmats covering the concrete floors, a daddy-long-legs infestation, an insufferably loud treadmill, and two CRT T.V.s. The Wii itself was a clunky little console, looking back on it now. It’s a pain to try and get the motion sensor set up; the controls for games with or without motion control feel terrible on the stick and nunchuck controllers (the only ones my family had for a good few years), and the graphics on most of the games for it were good for their time, but abysmal by modern standards.
However, in the grand scheme of how I came to love and want to learn about Japan, and to decide to go on this journey, the Wii is naught but an accomplice, for the true spark of my passion for Japan lies with a game that mostly has reviews ranging from middling to negative: Koei-Tecmo’s Samurai Warriors 3. I went back to play it as a nostalgia trip before I flew off to Japan, and I can only state that the reviews it got were most certainly deserved. The game has clunky controls, awful in-game graphics (although the art is very well done), and it is quite slow overall, but my younger self didn’t love it for its gameplay; no, he was enthralled by the story.
For those not in the know, which I imagine to be most reading this, as the series is quite niche, the Samurai Warriors series of games are set in the Sengoku Jidai (Warring States) period of Japanese history, which is considered to have begun in the 1470s and ended in the year 1600, although I personally think a better place to consider it ended is in 1615. The games primarily focus on the stretch of time starting from Nobunaga Oda’s rise to power with the Battle of Okehazama until the Summer Siege of Osaka, with players taking on the exaggerated personages of famous samurai and daimyo from the time period and participating in the famous battles and skirmishes of the period. For the first three games of the series, the player would select one of these historical figures’ stories (embellished and changed for dramatic effect) to play through, taking control of the character and participating in battles the real figure or members of their clans took part in.
It was one of these stories that gripped my heart in a way I hadn’t ever felt before that started me on my journey: the story of the nicknamed “Number One Warrior of Japan” Yukimura Sanada, whose real name, for those interested in looking it up, is Nobushige Sanada. His story in both reality and the fiction of Samurai Warriors 3 is heartbreaking. With the exception of the second game in the series, his story ends the same way: a final headlong charge at the Tokugawa line in an attempt to kill Ieyasu Tokugawa. An attempt that fails. It is not his final charge by itself that is so heartrending, rather, it is having watched, over hours of gameplay, Yukimura grow from a naive younger man serving the Takeda clan with overwhelming devotion, watching the entire clan be destroyed at the Battle of Nagashino, moving past the pain of knowing so many people he knew died to serve the Toyotomi, make genuine friendships amongst his fellow samurai, only to watch as he receives the heartbreaking news of most his friends deaths at the Battle of Sekigahara, the effective destruction of the Toyotomi clan, and having to fight what remaining friends and family he has left during the two sieges of Osaka Castle.
More than anything, for years I wanted to understand why. Why did all these people die? Why would he charge to his death when some of his friends and family were still alive, even if they were on his enemies’ side? What could drive someone so strongly that they would do what Yukimura did? From there, I became fascinated with the culture and history of Japan. The more I investigated, the more I discovered stories like Yukimura’s, and with time and exposure to other Japanese media such as anime and manga, my views and understanding of Japan grew. At the same time, something felt missing. I knew the stories that Japan exported; I knew some of the history of the country, but what of modern-day Japan and the people that lived in it?
That last question had been simmering in my brain for six years, and after discussing it with my advisor, Lewis Robinson, my mother, the foreign exchange director, Jeffery Willis, and determining the amount of money I could make over the semester I would be missing here at Farmington, I finally decided to get an answer to it and go to Japan, making my dream come true.
Categories