Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan

This is a proper doc, polished too the nines. The problem with its polish is it glamourizes and dramatized the period to a Hollywood standard. I am not sure how historically accurate the scenes are. Looks like Last Samurai. But it all sells the story and you def need to stay on top of it because the names will throw you. I would love to now go and read a book about the subject for further details. I am no expert so I have to take the information as factual and thank the producers for one polished historical production. Very similar to the one on Rome which was epic!

Personally, my knowledge of Japanese history in the XVI century equals to not much, therefore I was interest in this documentary. I vaguely remembered the names of Hideyoshi and Ieyasu as the men who reunited Japan, but I missed a large part of the history.

The structure of the documentary is the usual: historians narrating the events, interspersed with acted battles and daily life scenes. The interior design and costumes look OK, but the narration (and battle scenes) go very much in the direction of "this strong samurai fought bloody battles" followed by even bloodier ones, won by the next fierce samurai.

I get that the point is narrating the reunion of Japan under a single ruler and that part of history is mostly the succession of samurais that it took to complete the task, but all the battle scenes look pretty much the same. Still worth to watch.

PS as to the criticism that the historians are mostly not Japanese... since when one should study only the history of one's own country? Which level of crazy is that even if I am interested in Japanese history, I should not talk about it because I'm not Japanese?

Well made re-enactments and relevant interviews. The episodes had good flow and kept an even pace. The subject matter was interesting and easy to digest. Interesting to learn about an era of samurai.

All Japanese history is new to me so everything exposed sounds truthful, as a starting point it was an interesting show and a more dramatic approach, mainly focused on iconic people and their motivations. Context and culture are underdeveloped in my opinion and just linked to war and conquests. It doesn't go deep on samurais persona. It could be any other soldier executing the same wars and it would be irrelevant to the show. When they faced japanese an chinese armies it felt the same, they were just more experienced warriors.

Considering there are big differences in the strategic approach of some japanese clan leaders it also doesn't go deep on why they took their approaches. It is reduced to something like "there is an opportunity to take control, i want to take control to be the lord of Japan". I think one of the things that make the show feel flat is that, the motivation is kind of always the same, and even when there is a more stable approach, it doesn't explain how that specific warlord came up with his view and his strategies. There's a few times where education is mentioned but not a lot on what are their principles or logic. In the China's invation campaign, some other great warlords/emperors of other continents were mentioned, but not if the japanese warlords had some prior knowledge about their history or if they were some motivated by them. It was an open reference, and the only concrete one was that China was always a big goal. So i would say the show is a review of wars and control shifts monstly in the XVI century. The biggest principle to feel connected to the characters is the general sence of constant war, as a defensive nature, so they eat to not be eaten. It might be that way, so that is not something i consider so much to base this rewiew.

I enjoyed the show mostly (as a war documentary I think), however I didn't like how many times battles, decisions or anything important is stated as the "ultimate", "greatest", "biggest" and a lot of other flashy words. At some point we started joking about this with my wife because we actually got confused, to the point we couldn't compare turning points or battles. Is not a history class but as an informative piece it kind of takes away the importance of some historical moments trying to expose everything as epic.

While it is easy to get swept up into a sea of negativity and pick apart the fine details of a series, the reality is I feel this is a good gateway show. Could there have been more? Yes, always. However the director and production were not looking to create a flawless recreation, and openly state that they used creative costuming and sets for many scenes. The creative costuming and set designs were based on period accurate research, and then given a creative spin.

There are Japanese historians who appear in the series and speak, and a number of professionals who provide great quick info about the various events and battles. In truth, there was so much that happened in this period, a whole series could be made about just -1- historical figure such as Oda Nobunaga. Instead there was a broad review of the period that touched on many points.

I hope that the success of this series will prompt studios to take a more serious look at Japanese historical productions, and properly budget and dedicate more research and resource to them. This period in Japanese history, as well as many others, is ripe for film and deserves to be taken seriously.

So, if you enjoy Japanese history and want to quickly sink your teeth into this period, or introduce someone to this period this is a great series for you. LEt's hope that Hollywood in the future will take a serious approach to this kind of topic, and better fund and research their work.