Dr. Stephen Turnbull

[katwomansz]

Dr. Stephen Turnbull
As many of you know Dr. Turnbull was a consultant on the game Shogun Total War. And he has written many publications on Samurai. Which are your favorites? If I had to pick one to buy as a general reference volume I would buy his latest, The Samurai Source Book because it has a little bit of everything and is kind of set up like a Samurai encyclopedia. Its now in paper back. I have read as many as I could find. Our local library system has many of them. Many of them are now out of print but you can often find used copies.

The books are specialized so you can further follow your interests with his many different titles. You like battle details read Battles of the Samurai for example. This also goes into details about the layout of the land (which we all know is so crical to our personal battles!)

Happy reading!

[solypsist]

Hmm...I looked at few Turnbull books while here at work..I dunno, they seem ok. But I'm always more interested when a group speaks for themselves (which can lead to problems like that little WW2 omission in a textbook).
Still, I would prefer to bank on the authority of Japanese texts and written histories than an outsider's version.

[Word-san]

Why not both, Soly? As you yourself note above, lack of honest objectivity often leads to incomplete analysis.

While there is no doubt that an insider's perspective is important, an outsider's perspective is often extremly valuable, as they might draw conclusions missed by those directly involved. Your stated preferences would discount the entire history of anthropology.

[Zen Blade]

I tend to agree with solypsist....
I think Turnbull's books are ok, but from what I have seen they appear to be more user friendly and for the more casual or beginner in japanese history.

Unfortunately, the sources that would have the most data are in Japanese and thus are harder to get at for those of us who don't live in Japan or can't read Japanese.

-also, a small preference on my part.... I find it very annoying when English historians convert all the Japanese terms into European-feudal terms.... It is somewhat degrading.

also, and I think many ppl would agree with me on this, it is hard to get a concensus on Japanese history from historians. you often get variations on tales to the point that you don't have any clue as to who is right and the author's will omit the fact that there are differing accounts.

Amako and FWS though have by far the most information of anyone I know regarding this subject.

btw, if anyone knows how to get in touch with Amako, they should tell him that the history forum is back up!!

-Zen Blade

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Zen Blade Asai
Red Devil

[solypsist]

I have big problems with anthropology; the phrase 'cultural colonialism' plays a big part in this, especially when applied to extant beliefs.
Outsiders tend to be rather judgemental when describing "foreign" cultural practices; how many times can you spot bias when reading about Japanese death-honor beliefs or Aztec human sacrifice? The myopia of living within today's social mores lends itself to this, whether intentional or not, and the perspective of history tends to view some events as 'errors' and others as not, depending on what happened afterwards, which can be a big problem since life and events do not occur naturally within a linear and teleological order (Zzzzzz..), but current practices in history and related fields would us believe this.
Anyway, I agree it is a good idea to examine every available source, and didn't mean to come off so narrow-minded when describing my preference in learning on the earlier post.

[katwomansz]

Quote Originally posted by solypsist:
Hmm...I looked at few Turnbull books while here at work..I dunno, they seem ok. But I'm always more interested when a group speaks for themselves (which can lead to problems like that little WW2 omission in a textbook).
Still, I would prefer to bank on the authority of Japanese texts and written histories than an outsider's version.[/QUOTE]

Yes I agree Turnbull's works are for the beginner. But that can help get people interested in a topic near and dear to us. Which books would your recommend for those looking for more detail?

I have had trouble finding texts based directly on the Japanese versions. Is it because the Japanese history writers themselves could care less what a Westerner understands of their history?

[solypsist]

Currently there are several Japanese books that are best termed 'historical dictionaries'. Some have been translated into English and are three or four volume sets; I'm not in a position to access them right this instant, but I will get the names and such when next I'm at work.
Reading these can be as boring as reading an actual dictionary, meaning that there's no chronological order (entries are alphabetical) but each entry goes in depth quite well and contains further terms to look up for elaboration. Most entries also contain pictures.
What's the point behind this, you ask? Well, for one thing, the focus of information is kept streamlined and open resulting in threads of info that can be cross-read and thus 'tied' together by the reader like a pair of shoelaces, rather than just one meandering 'path' that the author/editor of a publication leads us readers to follow.
Now this sounds a lot like Turbull's latest, but these have been in existence for quite some time and are updated regularly to include recetn events/personalities. Seems it's taken Turnbull this long to figure out thisuperior system and then emulate it.


[This message has been edited by solypsist (edited 11-13-2000).]

[Anssi Hakkinen]

I've always personally disliked the dictionary type of presentation, specifically for the reasons you mention; it makes for disjointed reading and annoying page-flipping. The format of proceeding as a continuous, chronological narrative is natural for a history book that's supposed to discuss the history of a certain era.

If you're looking for just something specific, sure, then the dictionary approach comes into its own. However, if you have a vague idea of when the event in question transpired / the phenomenon in question was introduced / whatever, you can look it up in the appropriate place of the chronological narrative - something that is impossible with a dictionary. If not, you can always look it up in the index, and achieve some results in that way (okay, I admit it's painful).

With a "narrational" book, you get two things for your money: a good read (hopefully), that can be processed without boredom or repetitiveness from front cover to back cover, and a reference manual for later use. A dictionary fulfills only the latter purpose, if better.

Hope you understood even a word of that here or there. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

And this by Zen_Blade:
Quote I tend to agree with solypsist.... I think Turnbull's books are ok, but from what I have seen they appear to be more user friendly and for the more casual or beginner in japanese history.[/QUOTE]I can personally guarantee everybody on this board has been one in his/her day. And I think "The Samurai: A Military History"; for example, is very useful in its concise presentation of a long period of history.

Quote -also, a small preference on my part.... I find it very annoying when English historians convert all the Japanese terms into European-feudal terms.... It is somewhat degrading.[/QUOTE]I don't know if you referred to Turnbull or not, but he does comparatively little of that, as far as I've been able to notice. "Retainer" is the only one he uses with some regularity, as well as some of the more obscure ones like "fief". Going slightly OT here, but my Finnish copy of "Musashi" by Yoshikawa Eiji has *everything* in translated form: "ashigaru" are "infantry" etc. That's degrading!

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"Carai an Mierendaira!" -- "Glory to the Blue Cross!"

[This message has been edited by Anssi Hakkinen (edited 11-13-2000).]

[Word-san]

Quote Originally posted by solypsist:
I have big problems with anthropology; the phrase 'cultural colonialism' plays a big part in this, especially when applied to extant beliefs. Outsiders tend to be rather judgemental when describing "foreign" cultural practices... life and events do not occur naturally within a linear and teleological order (Zzzzzz..), but current practices in history and related fields would us believe this.[/QUOTE]

My take on current practices in history and anthropology is that there now exists a heightened awareness of the biases you mention, and that modern analysis tries very hard to short-circuit such bias. Witness the rise of the "self-relexive" documentary film, in which anthropologists have asked subjects to interpret films of themselves.

I feel that some of the best analyses are done by people who live between cultures. A great example of a book about Japan written by such a person is Carl Taro Greenfeld's "Speed Tribes," about Japanese subculture. Greenfeld was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and American father, educated and raised in the US, and has lived in Japan since the late eighties.

Or how about outsiders who spend much of their lives in a foreign country, studying it from the inside? Like Donald Keene, long one of the foremost, most respected Western authorities on Japanese culture. Not all anthropologists are blind to their own biases -- only the bad ones.

As far as 'cultural colonialism' goes, I'm much more worried about the detrimental effects of American pop culture and pro-consumption advertising upon other parts of the globe.

[FwSeal]

If I could only own (or recommend) one of Turnbull's books, it would be 'Samurai Warriors'. While the most 'basic' of his works, it is what he does best - a broad, general overview written engagingly and thoughtfully.
I'm not sure if this is what Soly was talking about, but an excellant english source is Kodansha's multi-volume encylopedia of Japan. Along with Japanese scholars, we see entries from the best names in the western study of early modern Japan - John W. Hall, George Elison, and Marius Jansen. The most interesting thing about this work is that the scholars actually present the latest theories on the figures they describe - Elison, for example, points out in his essay on Saito Dosan that Japanese historians now speculate that Dosan himself was never an oil-seller turned samurai - that his father was. He also notes that Uesugi Terutora might not have used the name Kenshin until as late as 1569 - not of great importance, but very interesting.
My absolute favorite book in english on early modern Japan is 'Japan before Tokugawa', edited by Hall. The pieces on the legal and economic aspects of the daimyo are fascinating - and can really open up a whole new world insofar as one's conception of the 16th century in Japan is concerned. The idea that one of the greatest problems a daimyo had to face was money, for example, is an interesting one. Mary Berry's 'Hideyoshi' is also very useful - as is her book on Kyoto in the early Sengoku Period. I read a long time ago that Elison was planning to tackle Oda Nobunaga, but nothing seems to have ever come of this...
I'd only like to see something come along that combines a bit of Turnbull and a bit of Hall. I was practically drooling when I got my hands on a copy of the 'Takeda Shingen' volume in the Rekishi Gunzo series - an entire book on this one individual! Seeing the 'sengoku' section of a Japanese bookstore is quite a shock - literally hundreds of books on everyone and everything imaginable (to put it one way, more books have been written on Sanada Yukimura then all of Turnbull's books combined).

[Anssi Hakkinen]

A volume on Takeda Shingen is impressive.

A bookstore with a section dedicated to the history of the Sengoku Jidai is a dream come true. The Japanese are *certainly* a people conscious of their history... I'd just wish they would share more of it with us Gai-jin who want to know! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

Now, to put another tidbit of info in my mental archive to use later, if/when I start to study the Japanese language: do the Japanese write major literary publications more in hiragana/katagana or kanji? Or does it vary by books? Or are they intermixed in any given book? I mean, my head isn't hard enough yet to learn the basics of a new language, but I wouldn't find it particularly appealing to have to study 20,000+ word signs to read that language adequately...

And, on an UNrelated note:
the Jibu no shoyu has returned!!
Namu Amida Busatsu!!!

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"A bushi who has mastered the jutsu but knows nothing of the do is like a priest who preaches one thing and does another."
- Shimmen Miyamoto Musashi

[This message has been edited by Anssi Hakkinen (edited 11-23-2000).]

[FwSeal]

To be honest, trying to read Japanese history has got to be one of the most frustrating exercises known to man. Most do not list hiragana (ie, phonetic) readings of the names provided or, more importantly, place names - so even Japanese readers can have a hard time with it (ask any honest Japanese student if you don't believe me). Basically, it boils down to this - as the Japanese language is not phonetic (as English is), one has to learn the various different ways a given charactor can be read - and this can often depend on what it is coupled with. For example, 'Masa' is usually the same when coupled after 'Naga', so one finds that Asano NAGAMASA, Asai NAGAMASA, and Yamada NAGAMASA all have the same reading. But 'Masa' in Yamagata MASAkage is written with a different charactor. The 'Masa' in, say, Abe Masatsugu is shown with yet a third reading. But the WORST has got to be place names. There is hardly any rule of the thumb there - I can't count how many brick walls this causes unless it just so happens that there is a hiragana reading of it generously provided. Otherwise, you fall back on a Japanese dictonary, only to find as many five different place readings for what you want to know!
The best place to start, then, is actually with children's books or historical managa, which are often written either in simple kanji and/or hiragana. In addition, the simplistic way in which these are usually written is nice. Seems sort of silly, but it is a good place to begin.

[This message has been edited by FwSeal (edited 11-23-2000).]

[Idaho]

If you think that struggling with kanji (chinese characters) in dictionaries and history books is bad - try the japanese supermarket... I wanted tuna and ended up with a can of boiled fish bones. i felt sick for days after!

Most Japanese read place name kanji as a picture rather than as two meaningful characters. If you ask them to explain the meaning of an obscure town's name - they will have no idea...

After a while it is possible for the learner to read the kanji like a picture - it is really satisfying when this happens as it makes some things much quicker. I could recognise all the place names on the Tokkaido line from Tokyo to Odawara (that's Sagami to those with a Shogun map of Japan) - but I had no idea of the meaning of the kanji.

[Anssi Hakkinen]

Thank you for the replies - it seems I will be working on this all my life if I ever even get it started. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif But, oh well. I suppose it isn't too strange an idea to assume that a separate picture / character exists for each name. Just a lot of learning by trial & error and never having the slightest clue on how to pronounce things.

Actually, this is starting to sound more and more intresting...

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"A bushi who has mastered the jutsu but knows nothing of the do is like a priest who preaches one thing and does another."
- Shimmen Miyamoto Musashi

[FwSeal]

I agree with Idaho completly. Learning to see kanji as pictures makes things much easier. Not that getting used to that is easy, of course. And when the stroke count starts getting up there, it gets really tough (I can really see why calligraphy was considered such a fine art).
The place name thing really is a big pain in the butt, though, when trying to compile information. While looking up some information for Zen_Blade on Asai Nagamasa, I came across this big battle he won against the Rokkaku I'd never seen in English. The problem was, the actual name of the battle (where it was fought) could be read at least three different ways. Since there was no hirgana provided for it (ONCE in a while, a book will be kind enough to write it alongside the kanji), I couldn't actually list the name - doing otherwise would just be making a random guess.

[This message has been edited by FwSeal (edited 11-23-2000).]

[Idaho]

When the hiragana or katakana are written next to the kanji, they are called furigana. Just thought you might like to know.

The trick with kanji is to not be over awed by them. It comes down to the fact that you either know a character or you don't. There is no guessing - that is true for Chinese and Japanese people too. Start by breaking the kanji into the elements. These are the basic strokes which are compiled to make the really complicated looking ones. There is a good book... which I have at home... sorry - remind me and I will get you the name. It starts with elements and helps you to remember kanji by using pictures.

Once you remember the elements you can start to recognise kanji - even if you don't know the meaning. You can say to your teacher "what's the meaning of the kanji that is the character for 'fun' but with the 'grass' element over the top?"... etc

[solypsist]

i have a friend who's learning japanese and boy is he going nuts! in the end it all comes down to memorization, but the same could be said with english...

[The Black Ship]

You can say to your teacher "what's the meaning of the kanji that is the character for 'fun' but with the 'grass' element over the top?"... etc


Would that be Marijuana? http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

[Anssi Hakkinen]

As solypsist said, English spelling and pronounciation sometimes have equally little connection to one another as kanji and Japanese... I couldn't find the story just now, but I think it was Oscar Wilde who introduced a word, composed of a meaningless-looking set of consonants, that he claimed would be correctly pronounced as "fish." (That was an exceptionally confused explanation, but if anyone has an idea about what I might have meant by that, please tell me http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif)

In contrast, in Finnish every single letter is treated as a syllable. An "a" is just that, whereas in English it's completely different for e.g. "star" and "cat." Therefore, the Finnish pronounciation is very straightforward: if you learn it once, you can pronounce any word. Finnish children are very much confused by the fact that "in English, words are not pronounced like they are spelled." http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

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"A bushi who has mastered the jutsu but knows nothing of the dô is like a priest who preaches one thing and does another."
- Shimmen Miyamoto Musashi

[Idaho]

Oddly enough fun with grass over the top is medicine.... the pictures have no logic.. they are just aids to memory.

[Idaho]

Hakkinen san - Pronounciation may be easy in Finnish but the language is one of the hardest in the world to learn! I have a friend in Helsinki and he finds it really hard (even though he can converse quite well). Finnish is completely inflected is it no? Also there are no words for please and thank you!

[solypsist]

only word for fish i know is
ghoti

you say the gh part like the F in lauGH, and the ti part as SH as in words like acTIon, but I forgot how the o part goes....


[This message has been edited by solypsist (edited 11-29-2000).]

[Anssi Hakkinen]

soly - that was what I meant, thanks. The "o" is pronounced as in "women", I think.

And originally posted by Idaho:
Quote Hakkinen san - Pronounciation may be easy in Finnish but the language is one of the hardest in the world to learn! I have a friend in Helsinki and he finds it really hard (even though he can converse quite well). Finnish is completely inflected is it no? Also there are no words for please and thank you![/QUOTE]Your friend is right, my condolences to him. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

Even us native speakers are not taught the specifics of Finnish grammar until in the university - they come naturally to us, but we really don't want to find out how they actually work. We do have some prepositions (eg before, behind), but the vast majority of those in English, like from, to, on and in ara expressed with inflection (as well as personal pronouns like me, we, they). As a consequence, any given Finnish verb can appear in literally thousands of different guises. Basically it's just adding a suffix, but sometimes the suffix changes some of the letters in the word itself, exceptions pile on exceptions... I'm damn glad I was born a Finn, because that's the only way I can be sure I never need to learn Finnish as a foreign language. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

But we do have a word for "thank you", and although nothing specific for "please", the meaning can be conveyed by other words.

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"If the choice is given between life and death, a samurai must choose death. There is no more meaning beyond this."
- Yamamoto Tsunetomo: Hagakure

[hach]

i have all of turnbulls books?
what do you mean for beginers?
by what comparison???

unfortunately there are'nt many english books/authors that we can use so turnbulls the best we've got and i've always been satisfied with his works.

he new book hunting the tiger(the 2 japanese invasions of korea in the 1590's)comes out in the next few months.

hach

[Ieyasu]

Not to sound silly, but I am very impressed by anyone who gets into learning other languages and cultures, particularly Japan... probably, because even though I am of Japanese descent, I haven't half the gumption you guys have! I mean, reading historical Japanese text with a bloody dictionary, looking up the hiragana context of kanji...!?

And Anssi's explanation on Finnish is wonderful... what a great thread. From Turnbull to this. lol

Anyway, I must look up some of this. You have inspired me to go into my own backyard (in LA there is an area called "Little Tokyo") and they have several well-minded bookstores.

Very cool. Curiosity and wonderment are what make people glow... thanks for waking me up!