Ghost of Orientalism

Abstract

This study explores how the history of the Japanese samurai and their purported warrior code (bushidō) is represented in modern media. This is done through the American video game Ghost of Tsushima (2020), set on the small Japanese island of Tsushima during the Mongol invasion of 1274. Players of the game are placed into this world as the fictional samurai Jin Sakai, fighting to free the island from the Mongol yoke. Aside from being a story about the defense of home and hearth, the game explores how the main character has inner conflicts about the legitimacy of his family code of honour in a time of crisis that demands exceptional action. The study uses theories of history culture, orientalism, and game analysis in order to interpret the historical representations. Special interest is taken in the role which the Japanese concept of bushidō takes in the representations within the game. The primary conclusions of this study is that traces of late 19th and early 20th century Japanese ethnocentrism and Western exoticism can be found within these modern media. This being an effect of normalisation, and eventual commercialisation, of pre-imperial Japanese history during the postwar period. Consequently, the history in Ghost of Tsushima relies heavily on stereotypical and anachronistic depictions of medieval Japanese history generally and the premodern Japanese warrior specifically. In addition, are these trends within the history culture perpetuated by commercial actors profiteering on the recognisability of these depictions.