Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 321 - The Invasion of the Ryukyu Kingdom

Episode Date: July 21, 2024

GET YOUR TICKETS FOR OUR BELFAST SHOW: https://www.universe.com/events/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-belfast-tickets-83V5QD Vote for us to win a podcast award: https://www.podcastawards.com/ The Satsuma Domain launches an invasion of the Ryukyu Islands leading to a battle of samurai, muskets, and barrels full of snakes. sources: Stephen Turnbull. The Samurai Capture A King: Okinawa 1609 MG Haynes. Samurai Invasion: Japan's 1609 Conquest of Ryukyu https://en.tabi-samurai-japan.com/story/event/562/ Yuan Jiadong. Satsuma’s Invasion of the Ryukyu Kingdom and Changes in the Geopolitical Structure of East Asia

Hey everybody, if you ever wanted to see us live but you missed the other shows, well, you have another chance. Me and the boys are hitting the road once again. The Lines Led by Dunkys podcast is coming live to Belfast at the OYE Music Center Saturday, October 26th. So get your tickets while they last. You can find the link in our show notes. So get them now. Do it. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the lines of by donkey's podcast. I'm Joe. And with me, I got everybody. I got Tom. I got Nate. I have almost certainly bad weather in both London and the Netherlands. Folks. How are you doing? I'm doing good. I had a nice day yesterday.

Got to go into John Lewis, which is a very posh kind of all in one shop in London wearing a very, very anti-police t-shirt. I got stared at a lot. Is John Lewis considered posh? Because they're kind of like, they're like a co-op, but like they're, they're not necessarily as cheap as like say if you were buying appliances as like Curry's But I find it so hard to gauge because like Brits Basically their conception of class is just like middle class means guy who shops at waitress who I hate But like it doesn't mean anything else than that

And so it's like every time I look at John Lewis I'm like is this supposed to be am I supposed to be like David Baddiel if I go to this tour It's just a shop for people who don't know how to use Amazon. Is Waitrose like a posh thing? Because like I only know of Waitrose because when I went to London for the live shows, there's one right next to my hotel and the food in my hotel is fucking vile. So I lived out of Waitrose between running back and forth to the venue. But there are times when Waitrose is cheaper than Tesco.

Like that's the funny thing. Like Brits love they're like dogs sniffing each other's asses trying to figure out class, but it's about what grocery store you shop at. And like, but the thing is, is that none of the weird sort of notions and prejudices really apply except for Marks and Spencer. It is actually expensive.

That's the only one. I'm not sure if something like that exists in the Netherlands in the regional turf war between Albert Heine and Jumbo. I just know Albert Heine fucking sucks because they refuse to accept like the two largest debit cards in the world. I'll just say no other country in Europe has as fucked up of a conception of class as Britain.

It's a complete outlier. It's like when you look at like the haplogroups of Europe and the Finns are just like out on planet X and everyone else is basically interrelated. That's how it is with Brits and their conception of this stuff. Sorry, British listeners, but you know I'm right. And nothing makes them fucking angrier than a foreigner who's actually correct. They fucking hate it. Tom knows this.

But, uh... I feel like they probably hate hearing it from Tom Moore because of how he sounds, name. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'll never forget what happened the night the Queen died for me. I was in Armenia and I was sitting at a table with a British person and I started playing that song, the football fans were chanting like Lizzie's in a box. Yeah. And I was playing it to him over and over again and he started crying. It's like the story about the guy being like I tried to show my grandfather who was a World War II veteran in this anime and he just went outside in the backyard and just stood there silently for an hour. Speaking of anime. Oh!

Oh, was that an unintentional segue? Kind of. It's an unintentional segue for people who've watched one specific anime. Speaking of people who hate Americans. We're talking about Japan today. And more specifically than just talking about Japan. We're going to talk about the Japanese invasion of the Ryukyu Islands. And the reason why I said anime is the only anime I could think of as anything to do with

the Ryukyu Islands is Samurai Champloo because one of its characters is from there. That's all I got. That was my second way. If you haven't seen it, well, it doesn't work for you. Best depiction of a gay Westerner in Animo. Yeah. Yeah. Dutch gay westerner.

And also, woodcut porn, which for some reason we continuously talk about. We talk about a lot, but I mean, it's just one of those things where it's such a disconnect between kind of like casual observations, outsiders view of it and reality in the sense that like It's not just that there was you know, there's a few here and there examples It's like the absolute greats the absolute titans of ukiyo-e would cut printing also basically did porn Like it's just a ubiquitous thing now. You can't even do that because they've all been replaced by AI. It's ridiculous But AI cannot very painstakingly and lovingly carve the wood block and paint the individual colors on to make a pressing illustration of like, what if this story of Japanese history involves a guy fucking a horse for some reason? I will say the AI is created for some some of it because if you're making tentacles

you don't have to worry about the fingers all blending together. That is true but what if AI's predilection for giving people extra or too few fingers just extended into a weird kind of mismatch on tentacles. What if it decided that all tentacles had teeth for some reason? It does love giving things too many teeth. AI is going to completely wipe out the, you know, aero manga section of waterstones that like all the smelly people shop in. Is there a manga section of waterstones? Oh yeah.

Is there a porn section in waterstones? Porn is weird in Britain in the sense that like it's legal but kind of not like it's strange like. You have to be treated like a Benedictine monk going in to buy your copy of Nuts or Zoo and it's wrapped but kind of not like it's strange. Like you have to be treated like a Benedictine monk going into buy your copy of nuts or zoo and it's wrapped in black plastic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got a license for that pornography mate. Please scan my shame bag.

This was a thing too. And like up until relatively recently because Britain on one hand is like, yeah, weirdly like puritanical about it. But then also like it wasn't done. I'm pretty sure it was within our lifetimes that they changed the law so the page three girls had to at least be 18, because before they were 16 in some cases. So like, because I mean, the age of majority in the UK is 16.

Yeah, it was bad. So you'll, you will, I mean, Milo has pointed this out to me before, like the disconnect in British culture where you'll read a magazine and it'd be like, like a tabloid in the 2000s or something. And one is like death sentences for pedophiles. The next one is like countdown until this teen starlet is 16 or something like that.

And it's like that's kind of British culture. I mean America has it too, but in Britain it's just, if you can find a place that sells porn in America, they typically don't have, you don't have to wear like the extraordinary rendition black bag over it. Who the fuck is still buying porn from a store? Grow up. it's 2024. You don't have to do that anymore. You can keep your shame securely where it should be,

in your home. I mean, like to be fair, you can shock any man from Britain in his 30s into the kind of Proustian reverie by just saying the Manchurian candidate activation word of Lucy Pinder. Look, nobody has ever shocked anybody with porn more than an Iraqi or Afghan soldiers showing you the most fucked up shit ever on the cell phone.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's one of those things where it's like, you can't even really joke about it because you really don't want it to come across. Like you're making light of it, but it's deeply fucked up and it's like an ambush. It comes out of nowhere in a part of the world where all porn is technically illegal. That means basically all porn is legal, whichever kind you want, and like, you can just use your imagination there. I will say though, something that is interesting about the United Kingdom is stuff that's tasteless, but still technically legal

in a lot of countries in the world is completely illegal here. And so, for example, like, I don't want to incriminate the person, but somebody I know got sent a gag gift from a friend in another country that was like a bestiality DVD, and he had to immediately throw it away because that you'll literally you can get sent to prison for that year. Like it's completely illegal. Like it's felony illegal. I'm glad that they're respecting Washingtonian culture and enumclaw. Now anyway, these laws make sure that there's no weird perversion in this country. Similar country that has this Japan, which you're going to talk about. Hopefully.

So I was teeing you up right there. I was doing the fucking, I was giving you the softest honk ball pitch and you just whiffed it because you're not a true Dutchman. Like I'm trying really hard to get my hoof to class on it. I keep getting stuck in Okinawa. This is such a, this should exist. They're probably better at baseball in Okinawa than you are. It's not a percent. I'm fucking terrible at baseball. I'm terrible at it too.

I know I lie. I can't throw. I can't catch it. I can't hit. I should be gayer than I am. Usually being gay means you're great. When I say Okinawa on this show, when I say Okinawa, I'm moving the fuck on. When I say Okinawa on this show, there's probably one event that comes to everybody's mind and

we're eventually going to talk about that particular thing at some point, but not today. We're talking about hundreds of years in the past and that is the invasion of Ryukyu. And if you remember back during our series on Saigo Takamori and the Satsuma rebellion, we pointed out that that Satsuma clan was so powerful it once had its own colony? Well we're talking about that. Back when Okinawa and the surrounding islands were its own independent kingdom in 1609. But we do have to talk about the kingdom of Ryukyu and how the fuck it existed in the first place.

Because it's kind of in a strange crossroads in the Pacific. The islands that make up Ryukyu were first held around 35,000 years ago, and their separation unique placement around China, Korea and Japan meant that over time, people from all three places slowly ended up there and stayed. They married one another as well as the indigenous Ryukyuan people whose origins

are still quite heavily disputed. I'm really not going to get into that. Some say that they came from like a land bridge from China, while others say they originated in Micronesia and settled there. Either way, eventually all these different groups of people got

their fuck on and merged into one very distinct culture that was very different from all of the original places that they came from. Yeah, you never want to get into like pop ethnography slash genealogy when it comes to

minority groups and ethnic groups in Asia because invariably like the sources that you have read that are translated into English are either going to be like 19th century skull measuring guy from Britain or like even worse version of that by Japanese people. Yeah. Yeah. Like the like Japan's long and kind of sorted history of the annexation of everything around it. Like, and not to defend Japan here or the, or the UK, but in this particular context, if you're reading a weird ethnography thing about this, it's almost certainly Portuguese

or Dutch. I was going to say Portuguese or Dutch because like if it's, if it, depending on how long ago it was, they were the only people that were really having serious contact with Japanese Japanese culture really. And also South Chinese to some extent. I mean like there's a reason for that but Joe will continue. I mean like so much of Japanese culture like kind of maybe for about 150 years prior to like the major restoration was like straight uplifted from China like the Suikoden which

is like the canon of Japanese gods is like straight uplifted from China. I mean that happens pretty frequently. I actually have a little bit of an anecdote from that because there's an author that I read when I was in college who's a Chinese immigrant to France and he writes in French and his name is Dai Siji and he had a book called... It's hard to translate. I don't know how you would translate it because the name is kind of a pun in French but it's the complex de D. And one of the jokes was like weird, like kind of funny things that Chinese people

tell each other about the Japanese. And that like the Japanese basically are like, oh yeah, we sent spies to copy all of the high culture from China to bring it back to make it Japanese. And so, you know, we stole their flag and made it our own. But like the flag that they stole was the sort of like bed sheet from the consummation bed went after a bride, a virgin bride is married off.

You can use your imagination. And it's like, that's kind of thing that like you and your uncle sitting around drinking by Joe We're like, yeah, that's fucking hilarious. It's pretty common in any like society like oh we have you know These gods and these culture and you glance somewhere else nearby like now these awful. He's right, you know, it's Necessarily stealing as much as that's just how people move Yeah, also just that it's it's funny to you. For example the way to a native in your win like the group that generally is considered the the originator of that has like some form of Supremacy based on it like obviously you see a lot of this fucking everywhere But also specifically here and over the, despite the landmass being pretty small, three different kingdoms formed

within the Ryukyuan borders, the Hokuzan, the Chuzan, and the Nanzan, during the period known as the Sanzan, or the Three Mountains, obviously each kingdom being a mountain. And they were eventually united by the king of Chuzan under his banner in 1429, and from there the kingdom did pretty well. And because of its unique location, it was naturally a shipping powerhouse that benefited massively from a strong Ming China. Also, because of the reputation as being pretty even-handed and not someone anyone saw as a military threat, the kingdom was often brought in between powers of the region to act as something of an international mediator in disputes.

This happened frequently between China, Japan and Korea or Chosun at the time. Let's say something of a complicated relationship which thankfully ended there. And like not also not to understate the importance of the Rikyu Islands in terms of like maritime trade between like China and like other surrounding like kingdoms or not? Yeah, yeah, of course. Like it was literally a loophole. Yeah. So it's like, you know, Japan, obviously very strong maritime power in that sphere. And yeah, if you have like a island, that's like an incredible stopgap to going to like

Indonesia. It's like, oh yeah, we're going to take that. I was thinking about that when you brought it up, you're like, oh, hundreds of years ago with this maritime kingdom in, you know, basically the greater East Asia region. I was like, that's the last fucking thing I want to be is a prosperous island kingdom in the greater East Asia. It's not a good place to end up. It's like being caught in like between Russia and Turkey. You're going to have a bad time. But this is like, Nate, we've talked about this before, like trying to make analogies for

transplanting. Who is the Britain of Asia? Yeah. I mean, it's difficult because I mean, Britain is the Britain of Asia. Yeah. Britain is the Britain of everywhere. That's the problem. Because when you transplant Japanese things, like I've made comments before that Switzerland feels like the Japan of Asia, but then also Britain does too It's like you can't really one-to-one compare them, but I will say good lord. They love their boats. They love their fleets They love their turtle ships. They love invading shit out of everything. You're kind of preempting Japan as a naval power here They're not exactly known for that yet China on the other hand

they have some force projection going on and China, on the other hand, they have some force projection going on. And the relationship between the Ryukyans and China was not exactly without its problems. For example, Ryukyu was kind of forced into being a client state for various reasons. Namely, they could obviously hardly fight China. And there's a Chinese policy of effectively a trading ban via the sea against anyone not an Imperial client. It was good for business to become a Chinese client, like you can continue trading with them.

Don't fuck with the bag, right? To become a sort of candidate, almost like a Manchurian guy. All this happened within an era of relative peace with the kingdom, outside of a few small spats with Japan, as well as some pirate raids. However, just because the kingdom was peaceful did not mean everyone had peaceful intentions toward them. Namely, the Satsuma domain of southern Japan.

The domain had claimed the Ryukyu Islands for centuries. As early as the 1200s, the ruler of the domain gave themselves the official title of Lord of the 12 Southern Islands, a claim which included the Ryukyus. Though the Satsuma never actually had control or lordship over those islands. They never had the strength to do it. They just kind of said it. Once again, Britain of the East.

And once again, Britain is Britain of the East. That is one of the problems with Britain. I'd also say that Lord of the 12 Southern Islands sounds like it could be like, you know, a sort of epic historical tome or a very, very strange dessert made with like the weirdest citrus fruits you've ever encountered in your life. Or alternatively an incredible lost Wu Tang album. It's the next Wu Tang album that you have to bid on against Martin Shkreli to be able to listen to once.

I love that Martin Shkreli is like now just like posting on TikTok. He's like, I got an apartment and a party if any hot chicks want to come. I just happened to notice a thing recently where someone was doing some weird sort of pyrotechnics demonstration. This is like this Katana bursts into flame when unsheathed and someone's like, this just sounds like what RZA raps about Now the set summa along with the rest of Japan had gotten caught up in the Warring States period right and this lasted a very long time until Toyotomi

Hideyoshi unites Japan and this is things get kind of bad if you happen to be a tiny kingdom to the south. You see, the Shogun was now in power in Japan and it made the Setsuma answerable to them as a vassal. And when Japan launched multiple wars against Korea in 1592 and 97, the Setsuma were ordered by the Shogunate government to supply them with 10,000 soldiers for the war. Of course they did. But the Setsuma attempted to make their vassals do the same thing. Conscription rolls downhill. Yeah, it's like we're doing like pyramid scheme, you know, just like trickle down, you know,

get your, what's the fucking term when they pay up the pyramid? I don't know. I don't know. Kicking up? When you know like your underlings kick up. Hey, oh, you kicked up to me. Just an Italian guy becoming the show I mean all I can say is it's a stupid association

But I'm sure I'm not the only one making it that every time you talk about the satsuma kingdom all I can think of is Just like every single one of these guys is carrying a barrel of tangerines at all times What I'm sorry satsumas. It's a kind of fucking tangerine. I'm sorry you guys are goddamn Philistines. Oh, oh, oh, here comes Nate complaining about British class shit and now he's going to become the fruit king. I already am the fruit king, but for different reasons. And you're orange as well. I am.

Yeah. My Lord, I brought you a tangerine. You just becoming Mao with mangoes, but in your podcasting video. Mango man! That would be fucking sick as hell. Tangerine Nate! That's definitely going to be the sickest vape flavor that's going to exist after the revolution.

Mango Mao is the only reason why a British guy can move to Sri Lanka for not perverted reasons. I really love, you know, let me hit this vape. I can really taste the citrus and the sparrow. Pig iron flavored vape. That's what happens when you modify the coil and it explodes and kills you. After the revolution, we're going to have a mango, Mao, Lenin, lemonade. We're going to have lemon. Yeah. Pole pop passion fruit.

The only vape that kills you if you smoke it immediately. I mean that's every vape. I said immediately, it's the important part. Every genocide museum in the world is preparing a statement condemning our podcast right now. This is why I no longer work in academia. Now so obviously the Satsuma is saying hey I had to give conscripts to this shit rolls downhill. We've entered the pyramid scheme of peasants being murdered. I need soldiers from the Ryukyu Kingdom.

Yeah, they got to kick up to their Japanese capo. This put the Ryukyu's in a very bad situation. Before now, they could pretty much just ignore the bullshit that summa toss their way. Like, oh, they're saying we need to pay taxes, fuck them, who cares, right? Because they never had the ability to actually press their claim over the kingdom. They never bothered. But now Japan was unified and strong

and was dispatching tens of thousands of soldiers and samurai and whatever else to invade Korea. The kingdom could no longer ignore the Setsuma. However, they were still a trade-based mercantile nation, completely dependent on striking a middle ground through the entire region, never pissing off or favoring anyone, so they could continue to do business with everybody. This included Korea and China, who would obviously be very pissed off if they supplied thousands of soldiers to the Japanese to invade Korea.

Not to mention if they did send soldiers, they would be screwed twice, right? Because not only would they be recognizing the Satsuma control, they would be violating their agreement with the Chinese that made them a client kingdom. They would be fucked. Shonai, the king of Ryukyu, was caught between a rock, a hard place, and a lot of samurai swords. He needed to find a way to navigate this mess without imploding his diplomatic relationships with everybody around him. So he pulled off a masterstroke of playing up to his enemies.

He answered the Setsuma demands with a letter, saying, The Japanese military strategy and their soldiers were just so advanced, so much better than everything to do with that we have in Ryukyu. If we sent soldiers, they would just be useless to the superior Japanese and set sumo lean back in their chairs like, yes, that is correct. We are so great. We're so great. And you would be useless to us. And this worked. They agreed that, okay, instead of saying soldiers, you can send food. Ten months of rice rations. And everybody agreed to this.

Shonai waited for the Japanese invasion to start and then promptly barely sent any rice at all. Yeah, you know, all the Ryukyu Island bodybuilders, they need their carbs, their macro loading, it's bulking season. We can't send them the rice. They got too many goddamn t macro loading, it's bulking season. We can't send them the rice. They got too many god damn tangerines. It's simple sugar. It's not good for fucking big gains or big gains if you're going to swing the hugest samurai sword on earth.

Yeah. They're like doing, you know, Eddie abuse stuff was like, Oh, do you know, like the macros in these oranges, it's like fast acting glucose. It's not really conducive for building muscle or energy. We don't have bananas yet. So we just have to eat the tangerines as pre workout. I was going to say that they have only half of the ingredients of the greatest post workout smoothie of all time. And so they're going to establish economic hegemony in order to get all of those brown rice protein, maybe cutting it for now, but there is something better out there.

Wait, so you're saying the Japanese imperialism was simply based around creating ye olde you will What if the job what if the Japanese invented the Terry's chocolate orange? I'm trying to think of the of like the brand names of like the terrible pre and post-workout stuff that we used to get For sure is on the top of the list the one that made everybody pop No, that was Jack 3D that made everybody pop. Yeah, because you used to buy this stuff because like bodybuilding.com shipped to APO addresses. And so like that was the stuff that was giving my soldiers kidney stones because they were drinking pre-workout and like fucking Red Bull but not water.

I once mixed three scoops of Jack 3D together with Rippets. And I believe this is in my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar plug. How do you get pre-workout to stop being powder and go into liquid? You shake it, right? I shook it. Mind you, for people who don't know, Rippet is a carbonated energy drink. Sure is. And the science, the pure chemistry of Jack 3D mixed with two cans of Rippet,

because they're the little shitty small cans, exploded my shaker cup apart like a fucking IED and just spread this weird pink mixture over half of my tent and killed my laptop in the process. So I love it when my pre-workout turns me into the Nazi guy from Indiana Jones and the last crusade. Just fucking face melted, aged, you know, it's probably would have done that to my insides if I got far enough to drink it.

So don't don't do that. There's your lions led by donkeys PSA for the days. Don't melt your insides with chemistry. But that's what didn't have to worry about this because they didn't have the ingredients of Jack's treaty. And if they had, then we would be the same. I just tried to steal their defenses. they didn't have the ingredients of Jack 3D and if they had, then we would be still through their defenses to samurai super soldiers, you know, centuries later, not even using

fucking swords. They're just doing chops with their hands. They've got Kendo swords, but like they're able to just, they swing them so fast. That's just traumatic amputations. Ruroni Kenshin fucking burst through the castle wall, leaving a perfect imprint. Loading up Ruroni Kenshin on like Jack 3D, fucking beta carnitine and fucking like lysines, just loads of samurais that feel like they have spiders under their skin. I can't certain fight a man with this kind of vascularity. I think if you were to, you were able to create early modern Jack 3d, then you would have been able to replicate this experience that's been transmitted through cultural memory known as going super cyan mode.

Like that's just actually representing an experience people did have. So we can, we can say someone must have invented it because that's how Japanese culture, you know, derives the concept. This motherfucker just say cyan. Yeah. He's like, he's focusing, he's focusing really hard on turning yellow. That's how Japanese culture, you know, derives the concept. Does the motherfucker just say Saiyan? Yeah, he's like, he's focusing really hard and turning yellow. It's super Saiyan. I'm sorry, I'm not a fucking weeb.

I'm a weeb for tangerines. Goku's just really into fucking registration marks and printing. A saiyan is just like a midwestern saiyan. He's like, he doesn't fight anymore. He just runs a corn farm. Just a guy from Minnesota saying, oh I'm going super saiyan. Can I just say though, Joe, I'm just gonna ask with humble humility and love Are you really giving me shit for mispronouncing something? When you enter my territory, you got to be ready. Do you think that's a route from which you can escape?

Hey fuck you Going super sly on a eigen Look when, when I need opinions on bands with six spans or like weird anti-Semitic French literature, I expect you to pronounce them correctly. When you step into weeb shit, all me baby, all me all day. That's all I got. I can't pronounce half of Armenian shit correctly. All right. And yet somehow he's driving with Dutch. We don't get it. It's because Dutch is English with head trauma and what does Joe have quite a lot of. Fair enough. True. I'm not going to debate that. Thankfully for them, this worked because the

Satsuma and the entire Japanese army got crushed in Korea, losing thousands of men and nobody was left with enough power at the end of the day to try to start some shit with them over ignoring demands. Shunai then laughed his ass off as Japan once again collapsed in on themselves in the Civil War as different domains found themselves on different sides after the death of the Shogun. Satsuma found itself at the losing end of the stick against Tokugawa Ieyasu at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. Once the proud and powerful clan had gotten their ego bruised time and time again, they

eventually bent the knee to the new Shogun and then again turned towards Ryukyu to demand they do the same thing as a vassal. Shonai didn't even bother playing the game anymore. Japan had bled itself dry in Korea and against themselves again and the domain that kept bothering them had just gotten their teeth kicked in. So Shonai didn't even bother to answer the letter this time around. It must be so relieving when your haters falter and stumble like this. That is an incredible lie.

Leaving Setsuma on read. Just like I don't even have to respond. I know how much of that thing got you fucked up right now, you know what? You're busy with other stuff. Shonai is doing that Donald Trump thing, like happy unification to even my haters. You know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, haters and losers.

Finding the calligraphy script that reads, Jel-C is a disease, get well soon, bitch. The Ryukyu Islands just dropping fucking diss tracks like fucking Fat Joe and Big Pwn in the 90s. Forgot about Fat Joe. I gotta throw this one in there really fast. If you watch the video for Fat Joe, the shit is real. There's a line where he talks about how he hates the cops. And he says, and all those N words ever do is harass. That's why I get glad when I hear somebody smoke that ass and in the video you see this weird

Very 90s clip of a guy with a headline newspaper that says cop shot He's just like laughing in an overdramatic way and sort of like guys you really like the men teth of 90s rap It's incredible. I'm impressed that you remember a fucking music video from back then. He's podcasting Paul Wall I've said it before. I like what I like. What can I say? Apparently, it doesn't include Dragon Ball Z. You know what?

I'm fucking out the goddamn Cool Kids Club. Sorry. You know, in the fucking at the lunch table of us at age 12 across weird temporalities. I can say something with all confidence. None of us ended up here by being part of the Cool Kids Club at any point of our life. Yeah, Nate, you just have 50% of the way there to being a member of Wu Tang Without the Dragon Ball knowledge and anime knowledge you can never be a member of Wu Tang They'd probably settle for deep knowledge of kung fu cinema. Kung fu movies from the eighties seventies and eighties

That was kind of the thing is yeah Because every time you're talking about like what was happening to Japan, like all I could think of was like, it was a bad time for the empire. The Shogun just stayed in his castle and he never came out quoting a line from the opening of the RZA album liquid sword or JIZA album liquid swords. Anyway, I'll stop interrupting. Honestly, it's just amazing. It's like watching a painter at work. The problem was for all the correct reason that the Satsuma looked weak, and they were, it also made them desperate. They lost battles, they lost respect, and now the government in Edo looked down at them

like they were part of a bygone era. The power of the Satsuma has long since faded. They'd been the losing side of a war, and at the time, they had little to prove to the government that they could still be important because this is still the era of warlords and whatever. The power of your domain meant how important you were in the shogunate government. And now they were, you know, a bit of a relic. They had to get some power back.

The Ryukyus are comparatively rich and wide open with trading ports, the entire region, but specifically also with China. Ryukyu Islands are just sending letters saying post money spread bitch. It's the thug.com fucking album cover over and over and over again. I'm just imagining like a like a fan camp for the Ryukyu Islands where they're like the geography like the map is like all cutesy and it's just like look at my bus default up she was ports.

Dick ah ports. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha to force into control. It would give them prestige and glory, but most importantly, it would give them money which they could then give to the shogunate government in the form of increased taxes. In short, they saw that enforcing their claims in Ryukyu as a solution to pretty much all of their problems. I have to say this, and I know it's derail, but I can't think of a truer representation of modern Japanese culture than the image of an anthropomorphic tangerine and a love affair with an anthropomorphic trading port If it was the Korean version there would be an acoustic guitar ukulele playing music in the background But this is just a thing that could exist if you've ever watched K dramas

They always take place in front of a fucking subway for some reason You got a tangerine you got a port they're having intense eye contact in front of a subway. We've done it. We've solved the problem. Yeah, and it just has like an extremely long title. That's like two sentences long. You mean like a light novel? My Life is a Romantic Tangerine, aka How to Get the Subway in Seoul.

Either that, it's either set in the modern day or for some reason sent set in like the early Chosun period. Like those are the two kinds of K dramas that exist. But also I was just thinking to myself worst or best light novel of all time. I'm not sure which. The tangerine pouting and saying I gave you friendship and in response you gave me bullshit. They would know this is just persona like these. This is just me bullshit. No, this is just persona. Like this is just a persona. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

The social link between that tangerine and that port is very important. Anyway, we're tangerine maxing. Got a tangerine max. You gotta get your courage up to six before that tangerine doesn't pay attention to you. Normally none of this wouldn't matter. The Satsuma couldn't act without approval from the Shogunate. It would take a lot in order for the Shogun to green light another war after everything that had just happened.

The Ryukyans, unfortunately, would give them the excuse that they would need by simply trolling a bit too hard. For example, Japan was notoriously closed off as a country at the time. Even accidentally washing up on its shores could mean a death sentence. A Rukyuan ship crashed outside the designated train zone in Japan, which would normally mean bad things. However, the Shogun demanded that the Sendai domain, where they had wrecked, leave them unharmed and send them back on their way home.

Now when Satsuma heard about this, they told King Shonai that he needed to come to Japan, bow before the Shogun, and show his thanks. Shonai again just ignored them. Shonai's just like posted up like fucking Cameron in the pink outfit. He's just waiting for the banquet because he knows that his haters will become his waiters at the table of success. You know, when we started this, I kind of liked Shonai, but we've turned him into the worst hustle grindset motherfucker on earth.

Yeah. He's selling like online university courses. How to get your paper up like the Ryukyu Islands. Yeah, I was going to say, you know that he didn't respond, but you know, he read the message and his response was just what was it? Cameron on a, on bill O'Reilly. He's, but you know, he read the message and his response was just what was it Cameron on? On bill O'Reilly just like you mad you mad Show nice like tagline is like show up or show out like I get the fuck out of here now

This finally seemed to piss the Shogun off to the point that the head of the set summa domain Shimi you taught to the Sun a thought that he would approve military action against them and he did in 1609. And this was, in short, very bad for the Ryukyans. The Setsuma may have eaten shit repeatedly over the last few years, but in comparison to the Ryukyu Islands, they were a military powerhouse. They have thousands of samurai, musket men, archers, horsemen, countless Ashigaru levies that had been hardened by years of constant conflict in civil wars and also in Korea. Most importantly, they understood the use of mass gunpowder weapons and were well supplied

with the most modern available in the region at the time, sourced from the Dutch, the Portuguese, as well as some that they built themselves. They had a fleet of hundreds of ships crewed by able and experienced crews. And all of this would be under the command of a single person and a well oiled chain of command. Running around with that Portuguese tech nine. Give you like Kuiper pass replicas, but in Japan. Because that's kind of what it was like, like the Dutch and the Portuguese sold them weapons and the Japanese of course had the right idea of like we don't want to become slaves to

their logistical system. We're going to build them ourselves. And a lot of them blew up in their faces at first much like buying like a 1911 Kiber pass replica but they also work from time to time. I'm just imagining a woodcut of Shonai and he's holding like a Portuguese blunderbuss and an Elmo doll. Like the supreme ad with Rayquan with the Mac 10 and the Elmo doll for some reason. They're just emerging out of the ocean in a wooden Edo period version of a fucking ghost

in the shell like make. Yeah, Supreme X Shonai collab from the 1500s. Like weird dirt farmers from Sweden are lining up around the block to get the new Street Breaker. Sorry, I've seen the Supreme store in Lower East Side. Like I've been there a couple of times before. It's always dudes from like Sweden. I don't know why. They just, people from Sweden come to New York to get disrespected by the rudest staff in history because that's

what they're recruited for and by Supreme shit. And I assume it was the same back then. Like sometimes I will say that fan bases get what they deserve. Poor farmers from the London ium lining up on fucking Brewer Street in London. Meanwhile, the Ryukyans, well, they didn't have any of those things that the Japanese had. They lacked a professional or experienced military or a warrior caste system that, you know, would pump out legions of dudes who would write poetry about dying and pointless battles. The Ryukyans hadn't fought an actual military campaign in lived history, outside of a few battles against some pirates and some smaller raids against nearby islands. Maybe they are the British of Asia.

They lacked any kind of professional military education, training, or standardization of weapons. Instead, the system he had in place was mostly a control method towards his own warlords, rather than an efficient form of military defence. Much like Japan, Ryukyu had a system of warlords with their own armies, all hypothetically centralised under the king. And they're all rocking like the primordial version of Nigo's babestas.

What? That just, I'm sure Joe you felt like you're having a stroke when I said that sentence. I mean, all I can say is I too was wondering is there going to be some kind of like a ceremonial or combat monkey involved who's going to take a bath and I can make a joke about the original bathing ape. Is that going to happen? What bathing ape was a streetwear brand from Japan. It's still around.

It was really popular in the 2000s, specifically amongst like rap fans. But like it had a brief moment when you think about like weird technicolor fucking camouflage patterns and stuff like that. Remember that era? You probably see it in Armenia because the fucking Russian fashion never got away from Bape. Three stripes on my heart, motherfucker.

Like big puffy North face jackets that have been screen printed with like weird pastel color like bright neon color But in a camouflage pattern, that's what that's what it is Ah, okay, and they cost two thousand dollars like yeah standing I went to the original vape store in Tokyo and you had to take a ticket to get your time to get in line to Get into the store. Yeah, and like the only thing I could afford was a fucking keychain because a t-shirt was $200 Yeah, like yeah anyway get your money up, not your phoney up. Well, I wish I wish there was an opportunity to make a serious Bape joke.

But now you've been edified, Joe. You know what Bape is. Unfortunately, everything I've learned about Bape has been against my will. That's kind of the point of the show, isn't it? That's true. That's supposed to happen to me, though. You come for the hip hop references, you stay for the street wear knowledge, and you endure the history.

And it's my job. And meanwhile, like poor farmers in Londinium are queuing up outside Supreme to get the fucking Nike X Pope Clement the seventh collab. Yeah the weird like flax linen gunny sack, but it's got like a sick screen printing on it of like, I don't know, fishnet stockings. I'm trying to that exists back then. We're really, we're really mixing our metaphors. It's getting confused. It's getting, it's getting real bad. Shonai had developed a system to centralize them under commanders of his choosing rather

than just allowing his warlords run wild. However, soldiers had no standardized training and they were organized more as a militia police force to rapidly respond to piracy rather than an actual invasion. They were conscripts armed with whatever weapons they happened to be issued, mostly swords or spears. As for armor, they didn't have any, though they might have a shield made out of wood. They did have some incredibly obsolete Chinese made three-barreled hand cannons which were inaccurate, dangerous to use, and very slow to reload even for the time. And that's when they didn't explode in your face.

All I can say though is if you could get the one working version, where to cop? Right. Again, get that Kuiper Pass copy baby. I can't kill Weezer, but I can fucking kill Green Day. Every power trio, we're coming for your ass. Blink 182 doesn't stand a fuck... Actually, that's not true. They have the aliens on their side.

They do, yeah. Yeah. Shonai also seemed to fundamentally just not understand what the Setsuma goals were. Despite the years and years of them insisting that they were the rightful owners of his kingdom, he thought the samurai were just coming to invade the northernmost island, Amami, which lies directly between the Setsuma domain and the main Okinawan islands. He thought it was a punitive mission, he didn't understand that they were actually coming for that ass.

The directives given to Setsuma commanders were pretty blunt. Leave normal peasants alone, do your best not to piss them off and just crush the Ryukyu government and military. And they were given 5 months to do it. I'm gonna guess that they did they follow those orders? They left everyone alone? It was just a very peaceful takeover? For about 5 minutes, yeah.

Yeah, this is Japan we're talking about. If this didn't work and the peasants still got mad at them for the invasion, which like, why would you ever get mad at me for invading your homeland? The idea was like just kidnap their local leaders and hold them hostage until we got the local leaders that tell normal people like, hey, there are heroes, it's fine. Also don't engage in any protracted battles because there was a lot of castles in the Rikyuan Islands and the shogun's like, don't lot of castles in the Ryukyuan Islands and the shogun's like don't want the castles, don't besiege them, just burn them to the

ground and move on. So with that on March 4th, 1609, the fleet left harbor and made for the kingdom, bringing with them a little over 3000 different kinds of soldiers from samurai to ashigaru to musket men and sometimes ashigaru were musket men It's kind of fluid in there But over three thousand people the invasion of the Ryukyus is often portrayed as a triumph of the samurai and while that is kind of sort Of true. It's not the whole story because when the invasion force landed on umami they were confronted by prepared Ryukyuan defenders armed with bows behind

wooden fortifications and put up on top of mountains and hills. Assaulting them would have required the samurai to charge out from the breach, climb nearby mountains and attack them on foot. It probably could have been done, but they would have absorbed a ton of casualties in the process. Instead, they had learned the power of the musket during the last civil war. And the samurai just sent their gun wielding soldiers forward to shoot the piss out of the defenders

and the resistance on the first island collapsed within a matter of hours. Now, the Ryukyans were familiar with the concept of guns to some extent. They had some, right? But what they weren't prepared for was the concept of lines of musketeers pouring sustained volleys of gunfire on them.

They had never seen some shit like that before. And this thing terrified them. Because the only guns they have are some old, old fucking cannons in a harbor and some really shitty Chinese guns that were badly out of date. You weren't going to stand in a line and exchange volleys with those things. But then they saw these guys come forward and clap them with sustained gunfire, and they did not want to stick around for a second bit. It normally took one line of gunfire of muskets for the Ryukyus to be like, fuck this, we're

out of here. Yeah, I mean, like if you've never fought that before, you're kind of like, what do we do? Maybe let's retrieve. It's always interesting when they try to do these weird anachronistic mashups like Deadliest Warrior when you have a great example in a contemporary example here of samurai versus guy with a gun. And it's like, who do you think won? Well I should point out that Ryukyans did not have samurai.

I realize they're not samurai but in the same kind of style of combat of the time. Yeah, and what was interesting is the samurai and the muskets, the musket-wielding ashigaru, kind of had this down to a perfect science because of the last civil war where gunpowder weapons were widely used. And it was kind of interesting in that the muskets would fire, which would, you know, either neutralize the enemy musketeers or pin them down, right? And then you charge them with samurai. Like, they actually worked pretty well together.

And that would happen during this war as well. It's really embarrassing, but I realized something just clicked because I realized that having played a lot of Age of Empires IV, the Sultan's Ascend DLC where you can play as the Japanese and you have their gunpowder units. Yes, that's exactly what I do. I use the gunpowder units and then mounted samurai to clean up. So you know what? They got it right, which means the tactic reigns supreme.

Shogun war tactics undefeated from my personal save file. And Shonai looked at this battle at the Amami Island and he still wasn't worried. His attitude was based on practicality. For starters, he had pulled his reinforcements away from the island knowing that the Japanese were going to take it and not wanting to put up much of a fight and lose people. And there wasn't much in the form of fortifications built there. They're mostly temporary wooden structures. And this would give him more time to learn

about the enemy invasion force and prepare for it in the other islands. And if you notice, they didn't bring that many men with them and certainly not enough, at least not according to Sho and I, to continue their invasion any further towards the main islands. A network of stone castles stretched 40 miles north

and south from Nakijin to the palace in Shuri where his government was. In between them there are several more stone strong points built into the hills. Naha, the main port, was heavily reinforced with stone forts on either side of it as well as an iron net that had been constructed between them that could be dragged up during times of war to close the harbor of any invasion force. He felt comfortable behind his walls that the Japanese would have no choice but to fuck off and go back home after showing them how angry they were.

Then the Japanese loaded back up into their fleet and invaded a different island, Takuno Shima on the 24th, which at this point Shonao's travel like, fuck, I have played my cards wrong. Hahaha, I should have put the iron net over there. Why didn't we turn the entire thing into an iron net? There they faced their first organized Ryukyuan defense of around 400 men under the command of Shonai's son-in-law, one of the three closest advisors to the king. Now these soldiers lined up in a normal line formation for their day with you know swords and shields and spears and with bows and arrows behind them. The

Japanese then rocked up formed a line of muskets and shot them to pieces, utterly breaking them with one volley of gunfire. And this is also when the Japanese completely started ignoring the whole thing about not pissing off peasants, they began to try to loot villages of the island only to face more resistance from the civilians and they had from the Ryukyu and military peasants hid within their homes until samurai or Ashigaru stepped inside and then they dog piled them, stabbing them with kitchen knives or beating the death of pieces of wood. Other people waited for samurai to walk into their houses, barred the doors closed behind them and then burnt their house down on top of the samurai.

There's just like one Okinawan like bodybuilder who's sent out to the front. He's eaten all the rice rations for everyone else. We must deploy big steam. I mean it really is kind of like you talk about this and we have different examples and we jump off of each one And it's like but this story is really like a mandala of every single instance of your haters getting their comeuppance But then it's like recursive back on itself that the haters who got their comeuppance now become the people watching you get Hated on etc Like the Japanese, you know, the Ryukyu ins were able to basically thumb their nose the Japanese now

The Japanese are whooping the shit out of them. But then periodically the Japanese get stomped on by, you know, men with large bone from feast or something like that. I'm basing this on a Korean movie I saw where one of the fight scenes involves dudes beating each other with bones. And it's just one of those things like everyone basically stumbles and gets their spot in the pantheon of haters who fell off.

Yeah, it's the perfect example of the Shinto karmic cycle just like coming fully back around and now we're at the point where they've deployed a giant Okinawan dude who looks like Broly. But also it's kind of frightening because like all of this operates under the principles of haters being waiters at the table of of success So you're basically saying that like within the Shinto conception of the world, but Eric Adams reigns supreme In the world of waiters Eric Adams He's the mater de of the restaurant where your haters are your waiters At this point the civilians were joined by remnants of the military and soon an alliance between the peasants and the military launched hit and run attacks against the Japanese

as they kept trying to steal ship from people's houses over the course of the next four days. Other parts of the fleet rocked up to small nearby islands and were met with resistance not from the government, but from regular people. And one place their ships pulled up to their landing spot and found it to be blocked by a thousand ordinary people armed with whatever they get their hands on. The Setsuma army simply opened fire on them with muskets killing dozens, got back on their ships and left, only for the same thing to happen on the next island and then they did the same thing again. They effectively were doing a series of seaborne samurai drive-by shootings.

This is just what the average British voter wants to do to just stop oil protesters. Yeah, once again, not really beating the Britain of Asia allegations, but it's weird how it just kind of metastasizes all over the place. Is natto on rice the Japanese equivalent of beans on toast? It's just Marmite. It's like beans on toast mixed with Marmite. Yeah. Yeah. They're not beating the allegations. You ever had you ever had natto Joe? I actually didn't think I don't have no idea what natto is. Natto is fermented soybeans. It's got a very I do not. Kind of like I do not like it. It tastes like a fart. I mean there weren't really

any foods in Japan that I thought I mean Every now and again you get something with a big hunk of turnip in it and you're like no not for me, but by and large, no. The German part of my bloodline craves turnips, I can't help it. Just Okinawan Broly just rocking up eating a turnip like an apple to a bottle. Finally after all of this, the Setsuma fleet made for Okinawa Island, dropping their anchor on the northeast side right within eye shot of one of the kingdom's castles at Nakejin, which was under the command of the king's son and heir to the throne, Sho Kukushi. Freaking out, he sent word to his dad, who was holed up in Shuri Castle, requesting reinforcements.

Now one of the few good things Shoonai did when all of this was unfolding was when he realized that the Satsuma meant business and they weren't gonna go away, he pulled all of the troops he had available into one central space, so he could then dispatch them to wherever the Japanese had popped up, effectively creating a Ryukyuan quick reaction force,

rather than attempting to defend all of the different castles and beaches because he had no idea where they were going to show up. He immediately sent his reserves 1000 men to the castle in order to hold it no matter what and it did not go great. Yeah. He was posting on his close friend story. So like the lurkers from the Shogunate couldn't see it. He was like, who's getting active? We need to go here. We need to go here. Pop up here. Can you imagine 16th century Instagram? Damn, look at these sick new sandals. I got exactly. I mean, it's like, there's so many things you could open people's eyes to, but then you also have like in a flash, an entire generation,

an entire world culture learns about being able to DM nudes and it's just like Chaos man. We have no idea how history was shaken out My DMs are just full these weird woodcuts these guys keep sending me No, they won't stop posting like a giant orange you found suddenly you broke bitches could never I do have to actually update a correction unfortunately, which is that technically speaking satsumumas are Mandarin oranges and not tangerines. So this is untenable. I spoke definitively and authoritatively while being wrong. So I have completely assimilated into British culture. But yes, for the record, tangerine heads devastated. Mandarin cells are absolutely elated. That wasn't intended to rhyme. Sorry. I am a fraud. I don't know anything about citrus.

And I'll just be silent. For those at home, you can't see a CCP agent just rocked into like Nate's house and has a gun to his head. They're like, they're called mandarins. Don't fucking say tangerines. I was thinking about this earlier that it must be so annoying if you were like a deep state political operative with an activation phrase, but you weren't from northern China. So like you're technically the Shanghai knees candidate, but everyone always says Manchurian candidate. Like I'm not fucking from there. Do I look man shoot at you? I'm a different kind of triggered secret assassin. You fucking as long Joe candidate.

All right. Where's if you're from like Toronto, like no one ever, no one ever hears about my secret activations. Always a man. Sure. You've been a man. Sure. Yeah one ever. No one ever hears about my secret activation. It's always a mystery of this mystery. Yeah. No one talks about the Bloor Street candidate. OK. My activation phase is it took me 30 times longer to get somewhere in a street car than it would by walking. But I did it anyway out of a sheer dogged determination that Toronto is a real city and not just well, you know what? I'll leave them alone Toronto They're suffering enough Drake is humiliated. Yeah, they have the maple leafs as a hockey team. Leave them alone They've been through enough the problem was

Nakajin Castle was not built for modern warfare and that is exactly what set summa brought with them for starters The castle had no firing slits in its walls. Now you might see these as like the little notches on the top of a castle, so you can fire down onto an enemy without completely exposing yourself over the top. This also allows you to be protected while an enemy is shooting at you, right? Didn't have those. And the Japanese quickly discovered this little weakness. So they discovered they could just open fire with their muskets on the top of the castle.

The people garrisoning the castle had no way to fire back because there's no firing slits. And while they had them pinned down, the samurai just ran in to effectively kick down the castle doors. In one case, one samurai, Hikita Juzomon ran forward and smashed the castle gates with a cartoonishly oversized acts. I was going to make a comment that they just, they happened to have guts from fucking bros.

And you just vindicated me. Kinda. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's just one samurai who's like, man, I can't kick these doors and don't want to scuffle up my babes. I just got them. Do you know how much grain I had to trade for these? You know, it's one of those things, man. Deep down, if they could have worn day glow camouflage, they would. They didn't have it yet. It's not. I love the idea of like a samurai in the 1600s dripped out, had to tow in the most obnoxious street where on earth, still

going to battle. Either that or there's a dude dressed in full Harry Juku Lolita stuff, like all the bangles are just rustling when he's running up the beach. I can hear this motherfucker coming from a mile away. I was once waiting for a connecting flight at Narita airport to Seoul and I saw people boarding a flight to Vladivostok and that's basically what they were dressed like. Just like Russian Harijuku style is it? Bape shit never died in Russia but it was always counterfeit.

That's the best way I can describe it. Especially in Far East Russia. What if Bape was also Adidas? You see I'm a big fan of this man called Ningo. He makes these cool camouflage shoes. While all this was going on, King Shonai sent an emissary to the Setsuma fleet, which was sitting in the harbor. It was a Shinto priest in his court named Kian who was Japanese and had served the Setsuma

court years before. And Shonai told him to get on a boat, row out to the fleet and try to talk to them. Now this is all going on while the battle at Nakajin Castle was still going on within eyeshot. So when the priest floated out on his boat to the Setsuma fleet, the Setsuma opened fire on him, all while Kiana was waving around a fan trying to get their attention. And it after became clear that if he hung around he would get fucking killed, the emissary got out of there.

Not making contact with the Setsuma fleet, any kind of Setsuma military commander at all. And as he paddled for his life, the castle fell. The Setsuma troops set it on fire, destroying the castle that the Ryukyons thought impenetrable in less than a day. And also they killed the heir to the throne. From there the Setsuma boys loaded back up for another landing, all while Kion and his little boat chased after them, still armed with only a fan, trying to get the Satsuma

commander to pay attention to him. Whether through luck or pity this time, they didn't shoot at him this time around. However, a storm hit, forcing his boat into the cliffs. He barely got out of there, but was forced to run barefoot over sharp rocks, tearing his feet to shreds. He took refuge in a nearby village, just in time for Setsuma Troops to land right behind him and begin burning everything to the ground. This dude is just like doing an equivalent backstory of like Jin Kazama from Tekken.

Kyan again was forced to run for his life and he did manage to get away as that summa troops marched towards both the port at Naha and Shuri Castle, the seat of Shonai's government. Kian got back to Shuri and the sight of him terrified the royal court. He had left wearing all white and returned wearing all red because they had been stained with his own blood as well as his skin is effectively pitch black from all the smoke he had to run through from the countryside burning or he was doing blackface. We're not entirely sure. Yeah.

Yeah. She's coming back to Dutch Kabuki. You must forgive me on my way here. I stopped by the Dutch trading port and you know, it's that time of the year Yeah, it was like there was a deal you get like some bitter balling and some boo polish like, you know It's a two-for-one. You can't turn it down. Then the set summa troops took out the last castle between them and shuri They surrounded it set everything on fire pin the defenders down with musket fire and then rushed the gates with samurai It fell within an hour. There was one last

obstacle between the Satsuma troops and Shuri Castle. A single bridge. Shonai ordered it defended to the last man but could only scrape together a hundred men armed with swords spears and bows. You can already guess what happens next. Yeah, pretty, pretty plain. Yeah, get impression of what's gonna happen. The Satsuma gunners marched up to the bridge and fired a volley. Like before, this immediately made most of the men begin to waver, even if it only dropped a few of them. But it did wound one of their officers.

And as the group of 100 men pulled back, they left their wounded behind, including their wounded officer. A samurai walked over, found the officer, cut his head off and chucked it at the soldiers on the other side of the bridge. And that was enough to make them run like, you know what? Fuck this. Fuck this. We are so out of here. We are done. That is such an incredible arm to throw in a human head across a bridge.

Maybe he had long hair, you know, you can kind of get the centripetal motion going. He's doing like fucking show hey you Tom, you know, you can kind of get the centripetal motion going. He's doing like fucking show-hay, you're talking fucking shit. It's just embarrassing that these people were like centuries away from baseball and they're better at baseball than me. It's because you didn't... the secret training technique, instead of practicing your throwing with a baseball, you do it with a human head. I also was thinking relative to Tom's comment about Tekken that like, I could imagine that if you had a woodblock print of the character

King in the costume from Tekken 3 that it would fit into the mythology of all these cultures combined That a man in badass streetwear with a jaguar head could be a figure recurring throughout the you know, the sort of Mystical world the spiritual world if you will jag Jaguar has many functions. For one, keeps you warm. Two, scares your enemies. Three, if you're hungry you can eat it. If I'm not mistaken, jaguars are new world creatures so this would also imply that there was

a Mormon style contact between the new and old world. I mean that Mormon style contact would just be Mormons. Instead of Jesus visiting Native Americans it's a character from Tekken 3 introducing them to badass high-top snipers. I know the Mormons weren't around yet, so it probably had to be Portuguese or Dutch.

We have brought you this sick head that you can wear on top of your head. We call it hat. What you just described in terms of the the the the world's most effective non explosive hand grenade, it could kind of fit in that same world. Like heads obviously have some currency. It's true. It's true. Though not every battle was a defeat for the Ryukyans. They did have one shining example of a victory. The set sumaphores heading towards Naha port was going by sea and they ran directly into the massive iron net and the fortifications arrayed around the harbor.

And it did not matter that the Ryukyuan's only cannons were incredibly obsolete. What mattered was they had a lot of them and they opened fire at nearly point blank range on the Tsitsuma fleet, forcing them to retreat. The Tsitsuma commander abandoned his plan to try to land at Naha and instead deployed his army overland a ways north. However, the samurai were pissed that the Ryukyuns had defeated them in even a minor skirmish and they took their anger out on the civilians that they found after being repulsed. Also, their defeat at Naha did not even matter because the army was already at Shuri Castle's gates. Shuri Castle was in fact constructed the same way as all the other ones were, it had no

firing ports for its defenders. However its walls had something of a problem, they were more ornate than practical. You see instead of being straight up, making them a real bastard for attackers, they sloped gently upwards making them more of a hill than a cliff. I thought we were going to be walking into a kind of Potemkin castle situation. I mean, it was more for decoration than defense. So in a way it was kind of a Potemkin castle. But they did have one trick up their sleeve.

Probably my favorite part of this entire thing. The Satsuma soldiers approached the castle walls and the defenders got to the top of them. And then they hurled buckets defenders got to the top of them. And then they hurled buckets of venomous snakes down at them. We're doing Tekken shit once again. Giant iron net catches you. That's a Tekken move. Huge snakes dumped on you. That's a Tekken move. Like, I mean, I also am laughing at the idea of guy who has just published his, you know, 1600s thesis.

Decorative cornices on military defenses are a really good idea. It's just like, I'm going to pretend this battle didn't exist. But yeah, like as a fucking like, you really need to know like the weird button code to make the move happen. Dumping snakes on people and they're all venomous. That feels like a nineties fighting game. So what a shitty job to have in the military. Like, Oh, oh, I'm a swordsman. I'm a spearman. I'm a bowman. I'm the snake guy. I'm a military snake handler. It's like being a fucking dog trainer, but way worse.

And meanwhile, just like just off screen in a perfectly shaped fighting arena, you have the Shogun of fucking Broly Berserk Guts character versus a fucking Mexican luchador wearing a jaguar head. I mean also can you imagine like a 1600s charity to like adopt retired military working snakes? I didn't rescue him, he rescued me. Oh god he's biting me again. For just one pound a month you can find a safe home for retired military venomous snakes. Cause we all know like a python guy, like we know a snake guy.

Imagine the military has an entire core of them and they're just like carrying buckets over their shoulders like, careful this one's angry. Like, well I hope so. Steve that's the point. But I know full well that fucking like battalion crest would look so cool. Fuck yeah it would. Now as metal as this whole thing is, it didn't really do much. Now despite the fact this plan is kind of the idea of a child drawing a castle on your

trapper keeper or whatever. 100%. Like nobody involved in this had ever obviously dealt with wild animals because yeah venomous snakes dangerous they'll kill you, whatever. But venomous snakes are much like any other kind of wild animal. And that is they will run away from you if they can. Well, that was exactly what I was thinking is that you drop them like hell yeah, fucking limit break. And then there was like, we're free.

It's pretty much what happened now. Like the snakes just kind of bounced off the samurai and slithered away. But imagine how fucking terrifying that still be if you're a samurai and like, what is that rocks boiling pitch? Oh, fuck snakes. You filling your like, like lacquered armor with so much shit so rapidly. It's up to your tits. It's basically like you asked Cameron to design defense in depth. There's just like one guy in the unit who was like, now is my time to shine.

And he just happens to be an Egyptian guy with a flute. I did a year abroad. Let's see if I can still remember how to do this. If we've learned anything from all of our voyages through history, it's that the Egyptian guy with a flute is actually a random Irish dude. It just happens to be there. And the snake handler also an Irish guy. Yeah. He had to keep. There's no jobs in Ireland these days. I have to work abroad.

They call me a digital. You know, like the fucking Edo period, Celtic tiger crashed, you know, my Lord took away my, you know, all my like small plot of land. I don't know. I couldn't. Australia wasn't discovered yet. Might as well go to Japan. Berlin was still a bog. They didn't have techno. They didn't have ketamine. Yeah. I mean, they probably had some version of fucking ketamine and techno. Just these this sick four four beat played on a lute. The Hague wasn't the city that could just be full of Irish bartenders yet.

It was still underwater. Guys I'm gonna buy some land over there I feel like in a few decades. I'll make my money back. It was the same financial decision of Irish people in like the 2000s buying apartments in Bulgaria. Then the Setsuma did what worked for them in every battle, clapped the defenders with musket fire and then the Samurai's advance. They got over the walls so quickly that the castle administrators and court of sans were

still in the yards, going about their daily business. Some ran, others tossed themselves to the ground in mercy and either way it didn't matter. Everything was collapsing so fast that the samurai burst into King Shonai's command room before he even knew that the walls had been breached. He surrendered immediately and was taken prisoner along with his inner circle as the kingdom was firmly put under Japanese occupation. In 1611 they were brought to Edo to meet with the shogun Tokugawa Hidetada and these were

not negotiations. It was amounted to a formal but official surrender and the acceptance of not just Japanese occupation, but fealty to Setsumo once and for all. Shonai accepted this, not that he had any other choice in the matter. However, one of his advisors, a commander who had won the only victory of the war at Naha refused. He was immediately beheaded in front of everybody else. And then anybody else who was like, well, sounds like this is a business arrangement,

folks. Do you, do you want, do you want snakes? We have, we have some extra snakes laying it. No. Okay. That's fine. We got, we got an Egyptian guy out back. Who's like really good at telling them what to do. We also have this Japanese guy called new, uh, new job is who does like sick beats. If you're interested in any music. I remember from 2020, there were protests in, you know, in support of, of of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and there's one in particular

I believe it was in New York where it was the Chinese community came out protested in support of protests basically in support of civil rights and you know social justice and the Chinese guy had translated verbatim of Chinese Proverb and it was holding up a sign with Chinese characters and then we said it said an eye for an eye immediate decapitation It's like there might be some context missing there from the literal translation, but that's the first thing that came to mind. That was the Shogun's policy. Yeah. No, I take it again.

It was a life for a life immediate decapitation even better. And with that Japanese rule was cemented. You might be asking what, where was Ming China and all of this? Remember they're a client state. Why didn't they get involved? I mean, it was a tributary state of the empire and they just kind of sat back and let Japan take it over. And that is, yeah, that's exactly what happened.

In one of the weirdest parts of this whole thing, despite China and Japan refusing to trade with one another directly, they found a loophole. You see, Ryukyu was allowed to do business with both of them. Ming China, not really wanting to get involved with a war with Japan at the time, let Japan take it over and they struck an informal deal. Ryukyu can still trade with China and still trade with Japan. We can just pretend this whole thing never happened. They were allowed to continue as this free unspoken grey zone trading post between the two countries. Ryukyu wasn't

annexed, it was still technically a kingdom of its own, though under the boot of Japanese occupation who stationed soldiers, samurai and administrators of the islands to make sure things ran smoothly. However, in order to keep the facade up, whenever Chinese ships rocked up to Naha, the Japanese administrators would leave, Ryukyu administrators would walk up and do business like they always had, and everyone would pretend that all of this is completely normal. We just love special economics though. Yeah, we're prefiguring Hong Kong.

We're prefiguring the Emirates, we're prefiguring the Maldives. Japanese UAE. We're prefiguring Shannon Airport. The Japanese wouldn't be officially trading with China, and the Chinese would not be officially trading with the Japanese. It was the kingdom of Ryukyu doing all of it, you see, because this is all totally different. Success! Hilariously, we have an even more contemporary example of this, which is now Northern Ireland,

which is technically in the EU and also in the UK and not in the EU. So yeah. Yeah. Well, it happens sometimes. Ireland is China. This is what this is why there's a large garrison of samurai station in Belfast. Yeah. I was going to say, you know, there aren't any snakes in Ireland, but they're working on it. Ulster says no to the Tokugawa Shogunate. I was going to say, yeah, the six occupied counties of the Ryukyu Islands. If we were not happy enough with the R.U.C. in Belfast we will not tolerate samurai. This unofficial but official agreement went on for 30 years until the Ming dynasty eventually

collapsed and was taken out by the Manchus. Then in 1879 the kingdom was officially annexed by Japan. The end. Deep down, I never want to be the guy doing Buster Sword guts moves on the door. I want to be the guy who's like sick. I can get around the laws and do trading between two warring kingdoms in my island paradise. Yeah. That's who I want to be.

Securing the bag like you guys can fight each other with swords and poisonous snakes and shit. You know who really wins this war? The dude doing accounting down at the port. Yeah, exactly. Fuck, that's every war ever. I'm also thinking members of the Orange Order truly are the last political Ronin because they are a wandering class of people that nobody cares about.

Every satsuma farmer just pricked up their ears and be like, ooh, an Orange Order you say? Oh fellas, we do a thing on the show called questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question, you can support us on Patreon. You can ask us a question through Patreon or our Discord, which you'll have access to. And we have a channel for these questions. Our question today is, what is your favorite goofy military prototype that never caught on? I have an answer.

Joe will know this one too. I don't actually remember the name or the nomenclature, but outside of the armor museum at Fort Knox is a prototype of a self-propelled howitzer, a double-tracked self-propelled howitzer. And it was, might have gone into production except for the fact that it was being developed very late in the war and stopped.

And what's very funny about it is, beyond being like next to like a Soviet artillery train or like Trotsky's fuck train It's the most ridiculously large huge land military thing. It's huge. It's it's it's like a Self-parity oversized thing from warhammer 40k It's so oversized but the funny thing about it is is that it was found in a Middle of a field in a training site in Fort Benning in like the 70s. That happens so frequently with these weird dead old designs like oh yeah we designed this thing you know we put all this money into it and then it vanished and some farmer found it in a bog somewhere. Kentucky, but they basically, it was more or less erased from military lore between 1945 and like 1974 and then randomly like happening upon it like it was a, you know, like a, like a Aztec temple. They found the biggest stupidest tank. I know it's not really

a tank and it was just there. I believe it wasn't a howitzer. I think it was a tank destroyer. Like it was. Yeah, I can't remember. I thought it was a self-propelled howitzer just because like the style of the barrel and also like I mean that Was sort of the the way it was described because part of me wonders It would just be impractical as a tank because it's so goddamn big It's just like world's biggest aim at this thing and hit it, but we'd have to figure it out I'm not quite sure there's also dumb vehicles. I don't know the Paladin It's stupid that That went into production.

Technically that wasn't a prototype, but it was dumb. Same with the Bradley. I think my favorite prototype that never went into production ever caught on. It has to be the PyCrete aircraft carrier. During World War II,

the UK decided to build an aircraft carrier out of a mixture of wood chips and ice and it was called Pycrete. And obviously it did not work. Is this one of those things like the World War II was the cold war period. If someone said like, I have something that will help you kill your enemy and like, yep, sure. Don't care if you're not an engineer or even sane.

Here's a blank check. Go build it. Yeah. It fucking rules. And then another one is the Canadians attempted to build a flying saucer called the Avro Canada VZ nine Avro car. And it was a flying saucer and it handled like absolute shit and almost killed everybody who used it. But yeah, those are the two that I can think of off the top of my head. Yeah, those are the two that I can think of off the top of my head. I will say there's a very funny one really quickly before you say yours Tom that is real. It's not a prototype, but I just remember because I was I got I got injured in Ranger school. I passed but when I wasn't able to do a following course I had wanted to do which was reconnaissance and surveillance leader course. But while I was determining whether or not medically I could go because I'd fucked my ankle up

I was doing all the study stuff for this is the funniest acronym in the world to British people because we call reconnaissance surveillance leaders course RSLC or our slick for sure Outstanding, but there is a French self-propelled howitzer the GCT And then it's got some fucking nomenclature and the the mnemonic to remember it in the study packet was giant clown turret And that is what it looks like. Um, I like mine are I've two and neither of them are weapons. They're just like real failed stuff that they never really got to use. One is the CIA inventing Aerochrome film Aerochrome infrared film in the cold war, which is like it's meant to absorb certain types of like infrared light so you can take a high definition pictures at night. And the

only lasting legacy of this existing is that one, now the expired roles cost like $5,000 a role and two, it's on the cover of Frank Zappa's Hot Rats album. And the other one is during like World War Two and in the post-war Cold War that Russian honeypots just did not work on French spies because their wives just assumed they would have mistresses. Yeah. That's I do like that one a lot. Like, oh, we're going to tell your wife you're cheating on it. Okay. Fine. Have you ever met a French person? She's currently in bed with Jean Pierre. Like do I care? Yeah. The prototype that didn't work. The monogamous French spy

fellas. That is a podcast. You have other podcasts. Plug your other podcasts. I am the producer and cohost of what a hell of a way to die show about why you shouldn't join the military. I am the producer and cohost of trash future, a show about why the tech industry is just a three labor law violations in a trench coat. And I am the producer but not co-host of Kill James Bond a feminist film criticism podcast that is extremely funny. So check those out. They all have public presences, public feeds and Patreons where you can get bonus content. So if any of those sound interesting, they're out there. I am the producer and co-host of beneath the skin show about the history of everything

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you guys for joining me until next time. Join the snake battalion. They need recruits. They keep running away.