Anyone else addicted to taiga dramas on NHK? I started with Hideyoshi years ago, then Musashi, now I'm watching Furinkazan.
Anyone else addicted to taiga dramas on NHK? I started with Hideyoshi years ago, then Musashi, now I'm watching Furinkazan.
I'll take that as a big ol' NO. Too bad. You can get an awful lot of historical information in a very short amount of time, and actually have it mean something to you.
They are entertaining, but fictionalized.
I watched a little of the Shinsengumi one when I was over there, but my japanese isn't very good so I stopped. I'd like to find some dvd's with english subtitles. Haven't tried looking for a year or two, maybe I'll have more luck this time.
The Musashi one was very popular. They all are I guess. I was struck by all the merchandising tie-ins available during the broadcasts. That and the ephemeral quality of historico-transcendent popular trends. Or something.
In a way I suppose it made explaining my interest in Iaido easier to Japanese who didn't do martial arts. I didn't exactly say, "I want to be like Musashi!!!" but that is probably what they took from it.
J. Nicolaysen
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"I value the opinion much more of a grand master then I do some English professor, anyways." Well really, who wouldn't?
We're all of us just bozos on the budo bus and there's no point in looking to us for answers regarding all the deep and important issues.--M. Skoss.
I used to watch these but don't anymore, no time really.
One thing I want to emphasize is as Nicojo said, Taiga are fiction. Loosely based on history but still fiction. If it inspires you to look into more history research, great, but don't take what you see in those for what things were really like.
I think there are plenty of subtitled dramas at d-addicts.com. I agree that there is no point watching them if you can't understand what is being said...
As far as historical accuracy - I don't think that anyone who watches these is missing the fact that they are fictionalized. The Yoshikawa Eiji novels are also fictionalized. For that matter, so was "North and South", but that didn't diminish the wealth of Civil War historical information in it.
Oh, incidentally - these dramas are usually a bad way to try to learn the language. A lot of the words and phrases they use are 400 years out of date. It would be like a Japansese guy learning English by watching Shakespeare. But it would be funny!
It happens - I've seen people try to parrot some of these phrases, much to the confusion of the modern Japanese. My original Japanese instructors at the Defense Language Institute let us watch Shogun once, which confused me to no end.
And it happens to Japanese, too. One of my best friends in Japan was told he'd be the military attache in Burma / Myanmar, but that he'd need to brush up his English. (The educated Burmese military speak the King's English, don't you know? ) He asked me to help him, and since he'd spent untold, painful hours listening to me learn Japanese, I told him I'd do whatever. He wanted to use movies to increase his comprehension. I told him to bring the movies, I'd supply the VCR, popcorn and beer.
He showed up, popped in the movie while I made the popcorn, and next thing I know it's 'The Color Purple'.
I stopped the movie and tried to explain that Oprah Winfrey mimicking antiquated, poor, rural Southern black dialect was almost impossible for most native Americans to comprehend, much less Burmese generals, but he kept saying 'It's a great movie!' so we watched it anyhow.
Regarding NHK, it has a staggering amount of great programming with incredible production standards in its library, but as long as NHK is sheltered from commercial imperatives they'll never have the need to make money off it. When they finally wake up, maybe they'll allow someone to use that library, put in subtitles, and get some revenue from it.
I'm convinced they're sitting on a mountain of martial arts films alone that would be great to edit and distribute.
Lance Gatling ガトリング
Tokyo 東京
Long as we're making up titles, call me 'The Duke of Earl'
Maybe I haven't seen enough, but every taiga drama I have seen via NHK over satellite has been subtitled. Is it only in Japan or over US cable that they are not? Maybe I just got lucky.