Shownotes Transcript
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And we're just popping up here to tell you some insider info. If you would like to listen to Gone Medieval ad-free and get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries. Such as my new series on everyone's favorite conquerors, the Normans. Or my recent exploration of the castles that made Britain.
There's a new release to enjoy every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe or find the link in the show notes for this episode. How do you make an Airbnb a Vrbo? Picture yourself in a vacation rental. You're wondering why you earn loyalty rewards with hotels, airlines, coffee shops you visit, even your local ice cream spot. But this vacation house gives you nothing when all of a sudden...
Look at that. You've earned loyalty rewards. Now it's a Vrbo, where each stay earns you rewards towards your next stay. Want a vacation rental with rewards? Make it a Vrbo. One key cash is not redeemable for cash and can only be used on Expedia, Hotels.com, and Vrbo. A role that feels like paradise. In hallway, heavenly prowess. AngelSoft. AngelSoft. Soft and strong, so it's simple. Pick up a pack today. AngelSoft. Soft and strong, so it's simple.
Our skin tells a story. Join me, Holly Frey, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin,
You'll find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on Our Skin. Listen to Our Skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, you can keep a secret, right? You might know me as Matt Lewis, presenter of Gone Medieval, but you've been tricked. ♪
I am in fact a ninja, a shinobi, a secret agent from another podcast, Echoes of History, which dives into the history behind the worlds depicted in the Assassin's Creed games. Last week, Ubisoft launched their most recent game, Assassin's Creed Shadows, which is set in feudal Japan, and it throws players into the fierce worlds of the samurai and the shinobi. Yes, ninjas.
Over on Echoes of History, we've been exploring this fascinating world in some real depth. One of the brilliant and surprising conversations I had was about Hattori Hanzo, one of the most feared samurai of the Sengoku era, who was also a shinobi. I was thinking, who else loves a legendary historical character?
And naturally, I thought of you guys, those who have gone medieval. So I adopted the shinobi tactics I've learned and infiltrated the Gone Medieval feed to insert the story of a man known as the Demon Hanzo. So before they catch me, here's just a taste of the riches Echoes of History has to offer. I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, you can listen to the back catalogue covering a variety of games, periods and places
and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Right, I'm off. Welcome to Echoes of History, the place to explore the rich stories from the past that bring the world of Assassin's Creed to life. I'm Matt Lewis. For the next five weeks, join us as we return to the heart of medieval Japan, to the late Azuchi Momoyama period, the tumultuous setting for the eagerly awaited Assassin's Creed Shadows.
With only weeks to go before the release of the game in February, we'll be delving into the era's intricate landscape of power and ambition, myths and legends, preparing you as a player to experience it all for yourself in Assassin's Creed Shadows.
Later this week, I'll begin a special series of episodes that take a close look at samurai and shinobi, the weapons they wielded, the battle tactics they used, their politics and culture. No stone will remain unturned as we discover just what separated and united the two iconic warrior classes of Japan.
But first, what better way to dive back into the era of samurai and shinobi shadow warriors than to meet the embodiment of both cultures, the legendary Hattori Hanzo. He established himself during the Warring States period as a loyal retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu, playing a vital role in Ieyasu's rise to become the first shogun of a united Japan in 1603.
How did Hattori Hanzo reach such legendary status, earning the nickname "The Demon Hanzo"? How were his loyalties tested as both samurai and shinobi? And what does his story tell us about the late Sengoku period?
Joining me to answer these questions and more are Hiroko Yoda and Matt Ault, authors of Ninja Attack, True Tales of Assassins, Samurai and Outlaws. You can keep up to date with both their works on their blogs, Japan Happiness and Pure Invention. You can find the links to both in the descriptions for this episode. Hello Hiroko and hello Matt, welcome to Echoes of History. Thank you. Thanks for having us.
It's great to have you here. I'm really looking forward to this because this is a name that I know, but I know nothing else about this. So I'm really looking forward to finding out more. So we're going to be talking about Hattori Hanzo. I wonder if you could just start off by setting the scene for us in terms of where and when is he born? Okay. Before we're going to talk about Hattori Hanzo, Hattori Hanzo is not a personal name. It sounds like a personal name, but it is actually a job title.
So if you talk about, let's talk about Hattori Hanzo, the next question would be, which one? And then Hattori Hanzo, it's a title. So the D Hattori Hanzo that all of us know, it's Hattori Hanzo II. And I'd like to talk about Hattori Hanzo II here. And then anyway, so Hattori Hanzo, his personal name is Masanari.
And he was born in 1542 in the province of Mikawa. So Iga province is something that we have come across in terms of Shinobi before, the Tencho Iga war and things like that. So presumably if he's born in 1542, he's in the midst of some of those events that are going to crop up during his life too. Exactly. Because Iga is the village that locates in the mountain valley and it's a hidden village.
and that's where the ninja technique was flourished. The time period is warring states era, so there's battles everywhere. And then so the people who live in the Iga are the professionals of the asymmetrical warfare.
and using surprise attack, girlie-type warfare. And so that's the background where he was born. The background where he was from. The Sengoku Jidai, the era of warring states that Hiroko is talking about, is a period that lasted about 100 years in Japan, and it was a time of...
Great social unrest, political strife, military strife. It is a sort of romantic period, I think, for a lot of Japanese looking back, almost fantastical, which is why you see so many jidaigeki, which is the name for period dramas set there, or often set there. So when you're thinking of samurai, and we're thinking of ninja, when you're thinking of castles and warlords and
Game of Thrones style vying for power and unifying the country. That's all the era of warring states. But it probably wasn't that great of a time period for the people actually living through it. So, you know. Yeah. But also, in contrast, probably a great place to set a video game like Assassin's Creed Shadows. You know, you get to go and play in the midst of all of this and see it all going on without the actual danger.
What do we know about Hattori Hanzo II's father and his family? What kind of rank were they? What background were they from? So he was actually higher ranking than...
the strategist, I guess, serving for Tokugawa clan that, well at that time, Tokugawa's name was Matsudaira, strictly speaking. They changed the name later on. But anyway, he was already serving. So when Hattori Hanzo Masanari II was born, the father
father was serving for the Matsudaira clan, later on become Tokugawa clan. And does that put him in conflict with, you know, Oda Nobunaga is obviously a figure who is going to dominate this period. Is he aligned to Nobunaga's faction or is he opposed to Nobunaga's faction at that point? The Matsudairas, well, Tokugawa was an ally. Tokugawa became an ally of Nobunaga.
and was up at the end of Nobunaga's life to the point where when Nobunaga was assassinated at the Honnoji incident,
Tokugawa had to go on the run because he was worried that the same factions that had targeted Nobunaga would be targeting him as well. There's a lot of shifting factions and things happening going on. It really was a game of thrones. It was a dog-eat-dog world, and there was not a kind of absolute loyalty. There was a lot of shifting alliances and things going on.
Masanari, the son, was absolutely aligned with the Tokugawa side. Leading up to that, I don't think we're 100% clear on how the history played out there, but by the time Masanari came of age, and quite young because some of his first battles are in his teens,
He was very much allied with the Tokugawa side. It makes sense because even though there's not much historical story when he was a kid, but still it's easy to understand or it's easy to imagine that because his father was serving Tokugawa clan, so he was actually fighting along with the father. But the turning point for Hattori Hanzo II, for him, was the battle
when he involved at the age of 16. So he actually fought so well in terms of the night surprise attack that Tokugawa Ieyasu, the warlord, he saw how well the Hattori Hanzo Masanari 16-year teenager fought well. He recognized that and he gave spear
and then sake cup, the Hattori Hanzo. Yeah, it's like, okay, what's the deal with the sake cup, right? But the sake cup in that era, it's actually a symbolic action. It's tying up with a boss and henchman relationship.
So that was his turning point to becoming Tokugawa Ieyasu's official followers. Like a vassal, I guess you'd say. Yes, it's almost like he's gone and watched all of the young men fighting and he's got in the early in the draft and thought, I'm having that one. I'll give him the spear and I'll get him into my side because this guy is clearly very good at what he's doing. So that's his spear.
was his weapon. The interesting thing is that still the spear exists today. And there is, yes, there is... And we've seen it. We've seen it. It's in the temple. In Tokyo. In Tokyo. And it's big. Very long. And so you can even
You can easily imagine how strong he was. He must have been. At 16 as well. I mean, that's impressive. I love the idea of being able to go and see Hattori Hanzo's spear. That's very cool. Yes, and you can see it. It's on display at this temple. But, you know, 16, it's like a... We think of that as like a child soldier now, practically. But that just goes to show you how harsh this era was. There aren't any 16-year-olds in Japan picking up any spears or swords now that aren't on a video game screen.
So times have changed mightily in the 500 years since then. Yeah, it's basically adulthood started very early. Yeah, with puberty, basically. You were an adult and you were thrown into it. And it's obvious that Hattori Hanzo must have been trained, presumably by his father and his family, in the martial arts from a very young age because...
Not only was he participating in this battle at 16, he was excelling at the battle. Like he was racking up, you know, victories for himself that got him noticed by a much older
and more experienced warlord. So that's another thing that's interesting about Hattori Hanzo II is that because he was a leader, he led the foot soldiers from Iga town. A lot of people think that Hattori Hanzo was ninja, but he was more like a commander.
rather than the ninja in Shinobi in his spine work. He's more like a commander. Yeah, like a strategist. A military strategist, a soldier, a talented one. But he's probably not somebody who's stalking around in black, you know, unless he needed to do it very specifically for some very specific moment. He's commanding troops, which is why he's getting recognized. Right, so he's more like the ninja boss fight, maybe. Yeah.
Yeah, well, you know, it calls into question, like, what is a ninja, right? And what was Hanzo doing at this time? Now, it's true that he comes from Iga, but it's not a monolithic place. There were many different families there who were operating kind of under an umbrella of this kind of Iga Shu name. And there was a lot of conflict among them, and they went about things in different ways.
So whether Hattori Hanzo was a shinobi as we think of one now in the modern era, or whether he was more like a kind of, for lack of a better word, a super samurai, somebody who is just very talented with the sword, somebody who understands tactics, somebody who naturally understands the element of surprise, you know, versus what the kind of
the modern conception of a ninja is throwing ninja stars and using all sorts of, you know, exotic weaponry and like taking the enemy out before they even notice what's happening. He was leading actual battles, you know, of the sort that were unfolding quite frequently at that time. And he might have used unorthodox tactics, but he probably, again, wasn't dressed properly.
you know with the mask and the you know the black costume actually didn't exist yeah that black costume okay it's it's a woodblock print the black costume actually is a really interesting thing the the and this is we're getting a little bit off topic here but it's important because the reason that we know and love ninja today all over the world when you think about it it's a little odd because the japanese you
you know, didn't invent asymmetrical warfare. They didn't invent guerrilla warfare. They didn't invent assassinations. They certainly, the word comes from the Arab world. Uh,
And there's a long-- The Art of War talks about things like this. Sun Tzu's book, "Southern China." The Japanese didn't invent any of this stuff, yet we associate sneaky behavior and stealth tactics with the ninja. The reason for that is because in the Edo period, when things had really calmed down and settled down, ninja were some of the first historical characters that became fictional characters.
And there's a whole lot of them in the very early part of the, or the middle part of the Edo period when the publishing industry was taking off. And that's where you get
Jiraiya, the famed ninja who you see in the Naruto series. And it's where you start to see the black clothing. It's actually Hokusai of the wave, the great wave. He had a book called Hokusai Manga, which isn't... It sounds like manga, like modern manga, but he meant it just almost like clip art. And there's a drawing, a woodblock print of a ninja crawling up a rope dressed in black clothes.
clothing and that's believed to be the very first depiction of a ninja that way. Before that they just you know in the illustrated books and things they look just like samurai. Very opulent looking samurai. Yeah and then before that just you know you remind that clock you know back to the war... The war... The warring states. The warring states era. Basically where the ninja came from, how the ninja established was that they were farmers.
And then when the Sengok era started, everything was just basically a mess. The dog eats dog world. And then so farmers decided to arming themselves.
and that's basically the origin of ninja and then um they use everything in a daily life you know um the rake or a hoe or whatever whatever or hot water and rocks it doesn't matter it's just that's a gorilla good gorilla attack techniques and then um so so the one so when you talk about ninja it's it's
Not just the warfare techniques, but also the important thing is the spy network. You know, the whispering and information gathering and stuff like that. In order to do that, you cannot wear the...
I mean black ninja whatever the costume, you stick out. So the common clothes was just basically being farmer or being just a common whatever and then to mingle in and then just basically all ears and gather information. So when we were writing the ninja attack, one of the thing I learned and I found very interesting was that those people are
business people. So whoever bids biggest, they serve. And then, you know, when the other side of the warlord say, hey, you know, I can pay you more. You know, why don't you, you know, why don't you use it? It works for me. They basically just turn, you know, turn them back. It just, it just does how
how he was back then private military because if you lose mercenary force yeah exactly if you lose you die but if you win you gain power along with the warlords and that was the time era and then anyway the Hattori Hanzo the second was it was uh was entire life he served
faithfully to Tokugawa Ieyasu later on who he became Shogun and then united Japan and then that's you know the peace came and then the story goes on yeah
Yeah, I mean, from doing some of these episodes, I very much get the impression that sort of samurai is more like a rank or a position. Shinobi is more like a way of fighting. So you can blur the lines and you can be a samurai who employs shinobi tactics. So the two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. They're slightly different terms, really. Yes, it just basically hired...
and an employee and an employer, I guess. - Also, it's really tempting to see it in terms of categories because so much of the way that we interact with ninja culture is through things like games where Shinobi or ninja or assassins are a class. They're like a character class. But of course, like you're saying, Matt, in real life, the lines are a little bit blurred. You can be an officer and a gentleman. Do you know what I mean? You can be both.
And samurai is actually, you know, Westerners think of samurai as warriors and it was a warrior class, but samurai is actually a caste class.
in ancient Japan. They're the aristocracy, the nobility. And although you were supposed to study the arts of war to be a well-rounded samurai along with fine arts and poetry and things like that, there were plenty of samurai who probably couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag or a cloth sack at the time.
And there were probably plenty of farmers out there who could really kick some ass on the battlefield. But the warriors actually started as farmers too. Because before that, before the Sengoku era started, the aristocrats in the royal palace in Kyoto, they were the ones who had power.
But then, you know, but still there is a power struggle thing going on, Game of Thrones thing going on, and then corruption going on. And then the society, and then Japan got really unstable.
And then farmers started arming themselves, like I said before, and some went to become a ninja, and some became a warrior, samurai. And so Hattori Hanzo II, we've sort of left him at the age of 16, he's caught the eye of Takagawa Ieyasu and entered his service. Does he continue to impress people?
Takugawa Ieyasu, does he continue to rise in service? Yes. So there are three major crises in Takugawa Ieyasu's life. And then Hattori Hanzo actually played a major role in there. And then the one was Ikko Ikki that you brought up in the questions. Ikko Uprising.
And then he fought well. But there's not much information in there about the Hattori Hanzo. There's a historical moment called the Iko-Iki. 1563. 1563. It's the Iko uprising. That's what Iki means. It's kind of an uprising or, you know, a battle of some kind. And the Iko were a group of warriors who were associated with a Buddhist sect, the Jodo Pure Land Buddhist sect.
And it was kind of a holy army in a lot of ways. And the Ico are actually just one of many groups at this time who were not affiliated so much with a warlord or a region, but with a temple.
And there's a lot of examples of this. There's another one called the Negoro Gumi. And there's many, many cases of this. And this is where the concept of the warrior monk comes from out of that era. So what happened was that Tokugawa Ieyasu was trying to unify first the Mikawa area, the province. And then those monks, the equal school of Buddhism, said no to it.
And then the problem was that many of the Tokugawa Ieyasu's followers, warlords, were actually affiliated with that school. So those guys actually left Tokugawa Ieyasu. So it was just like, it was just, it was...
It was a crisis to keep the power or authority for Tokugai Ieyasu. And then there's a lot of battles going on. And then finally Tokugai Ieyasu basically... It was just basically a stalemate. And then he couldn't take it anymore.
So that incident actually taught Tokugai Isu a lot how complicated and how difficult the religions could be to deal with.
Anyway, there was not much information about Hattori Hanzo there. But because we know that many rulers left Togugai Yasu, but Masanari, Hattori Hanzo didn't. He stayed. So basically that means he must have served Togugai Yasu faithfully.
So that's one. And then the second one... Second crisis. Yeah, second crisis. Anyway, the Ikko crisis, the first one, he was only 21 years old. And then the second one, when he was 31 years old, there's a huge battle happened again. And Tokugawa versus Takeda clan. And the Takeda clan had a huge army. 20... Yeah, 25,000 people.
and then the Tokugawa side is just only 8,000. It's so small and the battle was just crazy in losing and then Tokugawa Ieyasu basically lost the battle. He left. He ran away. He might as well run away. Anyway, even though the battle ended in a huge loss, Hattori Hanzo fought well and Tokugawa Ieyasu recognized that and then he, Tokugawa Ieyasu, ordered
Hattori Hanzo to lead 150 Inga foot soldiers, ninjas. And so that's the beginning, the working as a military commander. - So it's interesting that that comes out of the loss of a battle. So they lose a battle, but actually he's performed so well that he rises through the ranks despite that loss. - Yes.
Well, Tokugawa is, you know, he's a pragmatist. So, you know, he can recognize that we're getting routed here, but, you know, we survived or we made it out because of this guy. You know, that could very well have been the case. Yeah, so Tokugawa
His life is very interesting. He became a Shogun in the end. He is the absolute winner in the entire Game of Thrones. But his entire life was just based on nothing but struggle and nothing but patience. He could have died any time.
But he somehow, he was alive. And then so then I think, this is just my talking, you know, so it makes sense for me that even though he's losing, I mean, he kept losing and everything. So just to recognize all the good stuff, what, you know, among the things he had.
And I think eventually that brought him to the top. Right. The third crisis came when Oda Nobunaga, who had unified Japan, was assassinated in 1582. And he had unified Japan, but under his fist. It was a very unstable alliance that was basically kind of being enforced through sheer willpower and fear because of Oda's charisma and his just incredible ability in battle.
his death threw Japan into chaos again. And Tokugawa was aligned with him. At that time, Oda was in Kyoto when he was killed, and Tokugawa was in Osaka.
Tokugawa needed to get to Mikawa, his home, you know, base, literally base. That was the only, his place of safety. But there was no way that he could travel through Kyoto, which was the way to get to Mikawa at that time, because there were literally, everybody was on the lookout for anybody allied with Oda and trying to kill them. This is how much people hated Oda in a lot of ways. And there was a dedicated faction that wanted to kind of
rest control away from him. That's why he was assassinated. Tokugawa is no dummy. He knows that if he goes out on the open roads, he's going to get slaughtered because people are literally, you know, people who are allied with Oda are. So he's trying to figure out what to do. And Hattori Hanzo says, I have an idea. I can take you a back way through the mountains of Iga, which is my hometown.
You know, my homeland, so to speak. And Iga is, as Hiroko was talking about, it's like a kind of basin. It's surrounded by mountains with only one or two entrances to get in or out. This is the whole reason why the people there could live in relative peace, because it's defensible. It has natural defenses. It's also very difficult to navigate. There's a lot of really rugged terrain. So Hattori Hanzo, Masanari, leads this group
of Tokugawa and a handful of samurai because he didn't have a huge force with him through what is known in Japanese as Iga Goe or the Iga Escape. And this is an incredibly dramatic moment in Japanese history because they're constantly being attacked. Hattori Hanzo is gravely wounded at one point helping spirit Tokugawa to safety even going through this area but he succeeds. And if he hadn't, if he hadn't succeeded and Tokugawa had been killed
Japan we know today wouldn't exist. It just wouldn't exist. So Hattori Hanzo was instrumental not only in helping Tokugawa at this really, really difficult, delicate time,
arguably he's this kind of linchpin who made modern Japan in a lot of ways, which is really interesting. Yeah, so once again, the same thing for Tokugawa Ieyasu did. So he recognized his... Tokugawa Ieyasu recognized Hattori Hanzo's work and then he rewarded. Now he commanded to lead 200...
foot soldiers of Iga. Yeah, so his troops are growing. And then he got the... We call that Goku. 8,000 Goku. It's a basic rice thing, but it shows you that he got... Wealthy, basically. He was given a lot of reserves. Higher ranking samurai, I guess. Tokugawa Ieyasu has a castle.
Today is the royal family's house, royal palace at the center of Tokyo in Otemachi. You can still visit there. But anyway, there's one gate, the gate? Yeah. It's a ruin. The ruin of the EES's castle basically. And then the major part, another major part is today is the royal family's house.
Anyway, there's a gate named after Hattori Hanzo's name. Hanzo Gate. Hanzomon. Hanzomon Gate. And also, I guess, the Japanese respected Hattori Hanzo's work, I guess? And then also because of the gate's name? We have a subway.
It's called Hanzomon Line. So when you go to take the train, basically you're riding the train to Hanzo.
Man, I want to get on the Hanzo train now. Exactly. Like a ninja runs through the city today. So that's what's interesting about Tokyo. And even though Tokyo is like a metropolitan, you know, the high tech, whatever, but still you can touch such an old history.
And it's a total intertwined historical thing and modern. But the gate is still there. Yeah, it'd be so interesting to wonder, you know, Hanzo, someone like Hattori Hanzo II, it must have been fantastic to have a gate at the castle named after him, a real honour. It's hard to imagine what he would think if he arrived in 2024 and found that there was a subway train line named after him as well.
know the gate it was named after his death i think he was using that gate but then uh then later yeah but i don't know when exactly named it but it's still like because you know but matt is absolutely right like it's his gate so it was a huge that was his gate in the main gate and he was using it all the time so um so yeah so i don't know it was a nickname but i don't know when exactly officially you know they called it hanzomon but today it's just called hanzomon gate
Yeah. I just wonder if he arrived in Tokyo in 2024 and he was like, hang on, there's a gate named after me. There's a subway train under the city named after me. Well, this is pretty cool. What is this thing running through the tube under the ground? Yes. Yeah. How do you make an Airbnb a Vrbo? Picture a vacation rental with a host who's showing you every room like you've never seen a house before. Now get rid of them. There you go. No host ever. Now it's a Vrbo. Make it a Vrbo.
Our skin tells a story.
Join me, Holly Frey, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin, you'll find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on Our Skin.
Listen to Our Skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I guess we ought to get on to what happens to Hattori Hanzo in the end. I mean, it seems almost a shame to bring his life to an end because it's been so incredible. It's been so impressive. He's done and achieved so much. I guess the big question is, having been so involved with Tokugawa Ieyasu, does he see a unified Japan? Does he see Tokugawa as shogun?
Unfortunately, no. He passed away in 1592. The Battle of Sekigahara happened in 1600. And then Tokugai Ieyasu officially became Shogun in 1602. So he couldn't see it, unfortunately. So he was 50 years old then? 55? 55? Can you imagine?
Did he mention? Although it's, yeah, I- So young! Very young, very young by modern standards. But you know, there's no hospitals back then, there's no modern medicine, and Hattori Hanzo was somebody who did not lead life sitting on a couch in his living room. Like, this was a person who was involved in some of the most key battles and undoubtedly carried a great many scars with him, and we don't know why he died.
The records just say the most believable record is that he collapsed suddenly when he was engaged in his favorite sport of falconry, which is, you know, it's a popular sport in many countries, but trained falcons, which you would have hunt for you. Very popular among the aristocracy of Japan back then. And he apparently died. Was it a heart attack?
You know, we don't know, but because we don't know, a lot of legend has sprung up around this. Oh, somebody poisoned him, or there was a dart from a blowgun, or some rival ninja faction killed him, or, you know, fill in the blank. It's, when you have that hole in the record, it is just...
too delicious to not try to exploit in fiction but all we know is that he died then and he must have really wanted to see it through to the end I'm sure it sounds like it was sudden but it's a kind of sad and for a really awesome guy yeah it is I'm quite often struck by you know I look at various historical figures across all time and across the world and you look at the age at which some of them died and the things that they'd achieved by that age and then I look at myself and I think oh no
How many battles have I fought in? You know, have I unified a country? I haven't helped any warlords across the, you know, the, the Ego mountains. What am I doing with my life? Yeah. They lived fast and hard back then, but you know, well, you got to remember, we're talking about the, the, the,
absolute standouts of the era. The average person was probably living very close to where they were born, engaged in the exact same sort of work that their fathers and fathers before them or mothers or mothers before them had been, and led very sort of quiet lives compared to these sorts of captains of battle and industry, so to speak. Also, the people that wrote down those stories
That's why people like us, the modern people, know what happened. And then, so that's the thing about the shinobi...
Yeah, the shinobi literally means hiding. And that's what a ninja is all about. You have to hide to gather information because it's a spy. If that, you know, shinobi is a work in a public information, that means that shinobi is not shinobi. And they're not doing a good job for that. So there has to be, there has to be a lot of nice job, but which are not written. And we know nothing. And we know nothing about it.
Yeah, I quite like the idea that the only shinobi we know about are the bad ones. Right, exactly, exactly. And there was no record keeping, so it's not like, "Oh, well, in another 20 years they're going to unseal the JFK files." There's no files. It's just gone. So that's why this... This is just only me talking again, but I think the reasons and why Hattori Hanzo, the stuff is written a lot is just probably because he was a commander.
military commander and then using his own spy network of an Inga ninja clan. Yeah, so he did do a lot of interesting and exciting things but he's also better recorded than a lot of other people so there is something we can latch onto to tell his story. Absolutely. And it's been told many, many times and that's why Hattori Hanzo is so well known. He's a staple of Japanese pop culture and has been for a long time. I'm not sure when the first
sorts of stories were told about him, but certainly in the 60s there's Ninja Hattori-kun, the kid's manga. And then in the 80s there's Kage no Gundan, the Shadow Warriors, an 80s television series starring the legendary Sonny Chiba, who again played Hattori Hanzo in Quentin Tarantino's movie Kill Bill. So, you know, the reason that we know him and love him and talk about him is because of all of these appearances in pop culture.
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to have to confess that most of my knowledge about Hattori Hanzo comes from Kill Bill. Right, right. I'm sorry. That's the limit of my knowledge before. Sushi chef. Sushi chef, exactly. But actually, it's funny because Tarantino has said that unofficially he sees that as a sequel to the Kagen no Gundan shows. Because Hattori Hanzo, as Hiroko said at the beginning of this, is a title.
But it's also a real name. So you will find people named Hattori-san. Hattori has become associated with ninja just like Bond has become associated with spies, MI5, what have you. So it's a really similar sort of thing. That's a really interesting comparison that he's sort of a Japanese equivalent to James Bond in the English spy genre. It's really interesting.
I've seen him referred to as the demon. Is that a nickname that he would have recognized? And if so, how do we do we know how he earned that nickname? So the Hanzo's nickname is Oni no Hanzo. Oni. Oni. And then the Oni is not the demon. Oni is a concept, Japanese concept, and a demon is not Japanese concept.
Oni in Japanese concept means powerful. Powerful, strong, beyond human capability. And then that's what his nickname was all about. Actually, there is a story about him that I kind of like. When Tokugawa Ieyasu got involved in a political movement,
scandal, incident, whatever. He had to order his own son, his own son, eldest son, and wife to commit seppuku, the suicide. And then the son was only 20 years old. Anyway, when you do the seppuku, the harakiri, there is a second to help you. A kaishakuni. Yeah, kaishakuni, the second.
But the first person who got ordered to be a kaishakunin for Ieyasu's son, he couldn't do it. It's just too much. And then he ran away. And then Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered Hattori Hanzo to be the second for Ieyasu's son. But it was just too much for him too.
And according to the story, Hattori Hanzo actually begged Ieyasu, "Let me commit seppuku on behalf of your son." And he cried, shed the tears. So when Ieyasu said to him that even oni like you yourself would shed tears,
So that's the story and that's the oni and not the demon. And it shows that Hattori Hanzo had a heart. This wasn't some kind of brutal person. So that story really gives you another side of his personality. He's strong and powerful and blah blah. And then also he's a human being.
Yeah, I think it's really great to be able to round people like that off a bit. So we're not just talking about a guy who is militarily capable. We can see a human side to him as well. And it sounds like rather than thinking of him as the demon, what they're referring to him as is something more like a superhero. They're considering him to be beyond what a normal man is. So they're setting him apart, but not in the sense of a demon as we would think of it today. Yeah, the hero behind the scene kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Our skin tells a story. Join me, Holly Frey, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin,
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The Assassin's Creed games give players the opportunities to step into the Animus and be transported back in time to these periods. If you could go and visit one moment in Hattori Hanzo II's life, what would you like to see? Where would you like to be? Okay. My answer is I don't want to go.
I mean, I don't know why. Just because Japanese people in general, including myself, romanticize that period of the war in the States. So I don't want to meet heroes.
person you know that it's a fact that it's a brutal era and then you know there has to be a lot of ugliness that I just simply didn't just you know don't agree with but just because so many years ago you know there's a fantasy attached to it and I totally enjoyed it so
want to go I want to just keep it as it can we live in a terribly polarized era and it would be like going back to an even more polarized era where you actually kill each other over at the polarization instead of just arguing about it online so as much yeah because we just we have
have such a you know the soft heart with that era even though it's a brutal bloody thing we probably couldn't survive five minutes in that time period you know what i mean i'm gonna just die yeah okay kill like number one targets all of us it's just like i can imagine some bandits like oh look at these weaklings you know like we get some gold yeah so
I mean, the historian in us would love to fill in some of the blanks in the record, of course, but actually going there, no, thank you. No, I quite like the idea of keeping it as a nice romantic memory, you know. We'll send you back there and you can just close your eyes for a bit until we bring you home again and just imagine that it was...
Yeah, yeah. Imagine that it was still the Romantic period that you remember. Yes. That's a brilliant answer. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Hiroko and Matt. It's been fascinating to try and get a little bit closer to Hattori Hanzo II. I will remember to call him the second from now on as well. Yes, please. And it's been fascinating to see
a different aspect of the Sengoku period, a different figure working his way through it, and also to be able to see different dimensions of him, a man who is not just a warrior, but someone who had a human side to him too, who achieved an awful lot and whose name still lives on in Tokyo today. It's fascinating. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for inviting us. We'll ride that subway in this show's honor.
Think of me next time you're on it. I would love to be on the Hanzo line of the Tokyo subway. That sounds very cool. Come on out and ride it. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit.
In the next episode, I'll start my special series examining the cultures of samurai and shinobi with Professor Eric Rath. Then, next week, we're returning to the history of the Sengoku era with a trip to Mount Hiei, the home of the warrior monks. Don't forget to subscribe and follow Echoes of History wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're enjoying it, you can leave us a review too. I'll see you next time amongst the Echoes of History.
Our skin tells a story.
Join me, Holly Frey, and a slate of incredible guests as we are all inspired by their journeys with psoriasis. Along with these uplifting and candid personal histories, we take a step back into the bizarre and occasionally poisonous history of our skin and how we take care of it. Whether you're looking for inspiration on your own skincare journey or are curious about the sometimes strange history of how we treat our skin, you'll find genuine, empathetic, transformative conversations here on Our Skin.
Listen to Our Skin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.