Strategist Kanbei - Netflix Series

Kuroda Yoshitaka (1546-1604) was a chief strategist under Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

I wrote my take on this show and it doesn't feel wonderful, so I went looking for other reviews and I while I did find some, I didn't find anything wonderful enough to post here. Maybe this post will be better when I get done messing with it.

I am kind of wrapped up in this show. We spent two or three hours a night for the last three weeks watching it.

Suprisingly there is no trailer for this show on YouTube. It's a long series, 50 episodes, roughly 45 minutes each. 

The show sucked us in and didn't let go until we got through it all. I suspect it was due to the acting and the soundtrack. Soundtrack is pretty great, mostly invisible, but occasionally in tense situations it would become heavy. There wasn't much else unless you count the samurai armor, which appears to be half voodoo talismans and half actual armor, if bamboo can be armor. I don't know what their armor is made of, but it ain't plate steel.

The acting is what made it. Several characters had specific traits and after a while we got to where we could tell how a scene was going to go, based on the well-known characteristics of the people involved.

Starts in the mid 16th century and goes till Kanbei's death. Most of the scenes are interiors, about evenly divided between court proceedings and domestic discussions. Everyone is barefoot all the time, unless they are going to war, then they wear straw sandals. Or you are Hideyoshi, when you get to be king you wear golden slippers that look like they are made of Mylar. The buildings are very nice, but the interior furnishings are very sparse. I suspect the show was made on a shoestring budget. Later episodes have more stuff, more outdoor scenes, more elaborate battle scenes, that sort of thing. The earlier episodes are very spare. Frugal, mind you, not stingy (quote from the show).

Map of Japan in the 16th Century CE
Not like any seen in the show

There are some battle scenes, but they are very brief and only serve to show you that there is fighting going on. Maps are frequently shown, sometimes black & white paper maps are shown in court or in commander's meetings, and sometimes color maps are shown on the screen, but I was never able to make head or tails of them. I don't think they were oriented with north at the top.

16th-century Japanese atakebune coastal warship

Once in a while a scene showing dozens of ships would appear on the screen for a few seconds. Evidently the navy was big deal. There was even rumors of an armored ship. We saw a drawing of it, once, in court.

Portuguese carrack in Nagasaki, 17th century

Jesuit priests from Portugal showed up early on, and Christians were present throughout the show. Hideyoshi kicked out the priests when he became king on an account of them getting uppity.

Mostly the show is about the various lords negotiating alliances with their neighbors in anticipation of a battle with another alliance. Half the time these guys renege on their promises and switch sides which leads to lots of teeth knashing and hair pulling. Oh yea, most of the lords have the tops of their heads shaved leaving only hair on the sides and back.

The show mostly makes sense, but every now and then something happens that doesn't, which leaves me wondering wtf is going on here? For instance, there are no instances of single combat. If someone does something they don't like, they just store it away even though everyone is armed with swords. Seems like in Europe, fights got picked at the drop of a hat. Now the fact that there are no chairs and everyone is sitting or kneeling on the floor a good ten to twenty feet away from the others - means that to attack someone, you are going to have to get up. Maybe that's to give the guards time to step in and quell the unruly. No chairs until you go to war, then when the commanders have a meeting everyone has a stool to sit on.

Everybody has like six names: the name they were born with, the name they got when they became an adult, when they achieved a certain rank, when they had some cosmic insight. And as they are all multi-syllable, alien concoctions of letters, we gave them all nicknames, so we could tell who we were talking about. Monkey remained Monkey even when he became king of the world. Kanbei could be Kan-bey or Kan-bee. Nobunaga was No-mumble-mumble. On one hand I want to say No-bun-aga, but on the other hand I think No-bu-na-ga is more like the correct pronunciation, or as close as a western tongue is going to get. So whenever I wanted to say his name I had a dilemma. Do I say it this way? Or that way? And I couldn't make up my mind before the word needed to come out of my mouth, so the tongue was on its own and you get mumble-mumble. As usual, only very rarely I can distinguish the names in the audio.

Japanese arquebuses of the Edo period

The Jesuits brought guns. Lots and lots of guns, which they apparently sold to anyone willing to pay. 

Oh, let's not forget about the invasion of Korea. What a good idea.