The thin veneer of Kuritan orientalism

[Vandervecken]

I've been working on getting a friend into Battletech's lore via reading Wolves on the Border, and his immediate response to the Combine is that they seem like ****** fanboys.
I know from deep exposure to Battletech over decades that the veneer of orientalism in the Combine is a lot more fragile than the founding societal myths make it out as, and that it cracks in all sorts of ways when practicality requires.
Are there any good write-ups or explanations about what's going on in the Draconis Combine? The whole bushido/samurai thing, and how it's far more complex than it appears initially?

[worktroll]

He's right, you know.

The Combine "culture" was a product of Urizen Kurita (IIRC), who attempted to formalise inherent pro-Kuritan/Japanese culture as a reaction to Star League imperialism. And it was basically forced on people. I could make some real-world examples, except I'd hit Rule 4 so hard the last thing passing through my mind would be my glasses ...

Handbook House Kurita (E-CAT 35205) is your best bet for the sort of information he'd want. But that won't disguise it's an artificial imposition intended to bolster a controlling state apparatus.

[Vandervecken]

He's right, you know.
...
But that won't disguise it's an artificial imposition intended to bolster a controlling state apparatus.

No, I think I didn't make my point. He thought that it was the *author's* ****** fanboyism.
In-game ****** fanboyism is actually a lot more interesting.
The idea that it's an artificial imposition intended to bolster a controlling state apparatus is the narratively complex fact I want to highlight.

[Empyrus]

HBHK is excellent resource on that.



How samurai-like were Kuritans established when Wolves on the Border was released? I wonder if the author is actually a big reason how we see the Draconis Combine nowadays, or he was told to make them space samurai?

[Ogra_Chief]

No, I think I didn't make my point. He thought that it was the *author's* ****** fanboyism.
In-game ****** fanboyism is actually a lot more interesting.
The idea that it's an artificial imposition intended to bolster a controlling state apparatus is the narratively complex fact I want to highlight.

The Orientalism inference is a bit of a stretch, the Draconis Combine was meant to be Space Japan much as the Federated Suns was meant to be a neo-Angevin Empire, and the entire setting thematic at best. Anything more seems unlikely.

[Chinless]

How samurai-like were Kuritans established when Wolves on the Border was released? I wonder if the author is actually a big reason how we see the Draconis Combine nowadays, or he was told to make them space samurai?

House Kurita came out in '87, whereas Wolves on the Border was '89 - they were already space samurai.

Chris

[Colt Ward]

Since its the first book that deals with the Drac culture . . . yeah, you can say that . . . and I think you can also say it was built from 80s pop culture image, which makes sense with a imposed ideal since pop culture would likely be the IC source for such things.  The way the cities are described, the yakuza, and some of the other touches feels to me like a lot of the late 80s & 90s anime- and I have very little exposure, Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, Robotech (haha).  Some scene descriptions felt like Decker was going to cross the street.  Maybe some old rubbersuit Godzilla movie touches for the idealistic society image.  Hmm, I am actually thinking mostly of Heir to the Dragon, lol.

But yeah, what Ogra said . . . you have to remember the universe was set up in the 80s, where the easiest/best source to build each House was going to be a published encyclopedia at the library and the universe authors were unlikely to have ever been to Japan.  They MIGHT have known some immigrants or a US armed forces member who had been stationed in Japan.  So sure it looks superficial . . . because it was, and used a lot of pop culture influence and likely your friend if he is interested in Japanese culture has a better understanding of it than someone would have in the 80s that was not a official expert.  Since it is a very foreign culture, its a lot more apparent superficial application than the Lyrans, FedSuns or Leaguers . . . the Cappies are better culturally grafted faction since they were ripped from a pair of world powers at the time.

Wolves gets interesting and I think the PoV character lets the reader know the culture is a forced because he is a black samurai descended from a family that embraced the Kuritan Japanese culture push.  The antagonist being someone who exists in that culture but but rejects the tenets of bushido but gives lip service for his own advancement.

[Sartris]

The Orientalism inference is a bit of a stretch, the Draconis Combine was meant to be Space Japan much as the Federated Suns was meant to be a neo-Angevin Empire, and the entire setting thematic at best. Anything more seems unlikely.

a deconstruction of an orientalist analysis would quickly veer deep into rule 4 waters, but i agree that it's an aggressive accusation.

to me it seems the creators were like "hey you know what's cool? katanas."

[snewsom2997]

It seems to wax an wane with whomever is coordinator. Takakski K was a hard line fundamentalist, Teddy K and his son, not so much. Takakski K would practice ideology when practicing pragmatism would have been the better choice. Teddy and his son, were practical to the point of greatly upsetting the fundamentalist, like the Black Dragon Society, which caused its own problems.

[trboturtle]

The Combine is the result of one man in the 26th century dusting off what he saw as the right culture for his empire -- the feudal era of Japan. The fact he was born a thousand years too late to actually experience that era meant he relied on history books and other sources for his vision. It doesn't mean its 100% accurate.

So, the Combine is one man's vision of feudal Japan. Simple as that. After several generations of being raised in a culture like that, the citizens of the Combine don't see anything wrong with their culture...

Craig

[Bedwyr]

No, I think I didn't make my point. He thought that it was the *author's* ****** fanboyism.
In-game ****** fanboyism is actually a lot more interesting.
The idea that it's an artificial imposition intended to bolster a controlling state apparatus is the narratively complex fact I want to highlight.

Your friend isn't wrong exactly. There's a lot of curiosity in the 80s about eastern cultures that were a bit blunt. That's something that's filled out quite a bit since then as the US has learned and understood more, but because there's little rebooting in the BT universe, much of that fanboi flavor sticks around along with perms and Terminator-style bandanas. Authors since then have done a lot of filling out that establish the hows and whys of the cultural fanboi-ism establishment and that certainly mitigates a lot of the heavy-handedness, but the core is still there, yeah, and that's probably what your friend detects. It's all good in the end.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

I once saw it put as the Draconis Combine is the theme-park version of Japan.

Also, IIRC there was a line in one book about some of the samurai who were invited to Earth as part of the Draconis Combine delegation to Hanse and Melissa's wedding taking the opportunity to actually go to Japan and being the most obnoxious tourists imaginable (to the point of actually stealing every random thing that they could get their hands on).

[Greatclub]

A couple years ago I had to try explaining what was going on with the Japan obsession in shadowrun to a guy in his 20s. He just couldn't grok it either.

Japan looked different in the 80s/early 90s than it does through the lens of history.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

It was because at the time, Japan's economy was growing at a phenomenal rate and there was a great deal of speculation about Japan emerging as the third global superpower.

Also, for cyberpunk settings, Japan had a longstanding rep of being extremely dominant in the world of computers and electronics at the time.

Of course, that all came to an end in 1991 when Japan suffered a severe, decade-long recession.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JapanTakesOverTheWorld

[PsihoKekec]

I once saw it put as the Draconis Combine is the theme-park version of Japan.

Also, IIRC there was a line in one book about some of the samurai who were invited to Earth as part of the Draconis Combine delegation to Hanse and Melissa's wedding taking the opportunity to actually go to Japan and being the most obnoxious tourists imaginable (to the point of actually stealing every random thing that they could get their hands on).

There was also mention in JHS: Terra about DCMS troops stealing stuff in Japan,

[Greatclub]

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JapanTakesOverTheWorld

I was trying not to mention that here; mods be uptight, man.

[Mendrugo]

It's clear that Shiro and Urizen did hold onto a substantial amount of Japanese culture in their own upbringing, even though their colony appears to have been founded initially by Uzbeks.  (Samarkand is in Uzbekistan, so New Samarkand...)  It's known that they initially rose to control a single city-state on what appears to have been a fairly anarchic colony.

Their initial expansion of the Alliance of Galedon and the later Draconis Combine did show some overtly Japanese cultural elements, even prior to Urizen II's Star League-era wholesale cultural reformation.  In the prologue of Far Country, the Von Rohrs-era troops act like post-Urizen II soldiers, and go on to found Japanese-architecture influenced city-states on the Tetatae homeworld.  The first ever DEST team equates its initiation rituals with becoming a true samurai (also during the Von Rohrs era). 

So the Japanese cultural elements within the Combine were present even before Urizen II.  This can be explained by people feeling uneasy with the usurper Von Rohrs dynasty and trying to act more Japanese as a show of loyalty to the old Kurita clan.  Once the Von Rohrs dynasty fell and the Kurita line was restored, I can easily see the populace doubling down on emulating their leaders' cultural background (ignoring the half-Rasalhagian heritage of the bastard offspring who survived the Von Rohrs usurpation and restored the dynasty), and being primed to absorb everything Urizen II threw at them during the Good Years of the Star League.

[Colt Ward]

A couple years ago I had to try explaining what was going on with the Japan obsession in shadowrun to a guy in his 20s. He just couldn't grok it either.

Japan looked different in the 80s/early 90s than it does through the lens of history.

Yeah, I will go with this . . . I would say the current cultural equivalent is like Firefly/Serenity with the blending of trope-level Chinese into that universe.

[Iracundus]

Yeah, I will go with this . . . I would say the current cultural equivalent is like Firefly/Serenity with the blending of trope-level Chinese into that universe.

Hence the Capellan resurgence?

[Ogra_Chief]

Hence the Capellan resurgence?

More like lazy creative writing and magic Worf effect.  :P

Edit: less critical

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Hence the Capellan resurgence?

The Capellan resurgence happened six years before Firefly went on the air.

[Iracundus]

The Capellan resurgence happened six years before Firefly went on the air.

I meant perhaps more replacement in the public consciousness of the old trope with the newer
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChinaTakesOverTheWorld

Firefly was itself maybe a sign of this.

[Colt Ward]

Yes, that was my point . . . sorry client called and I hit done.  For the 80s, it was a panic reaction to Japanese industrial/import explosion of the late 70s into the 80s that brought us brands like Sony to replace GE & RCA in homes.  I was in junior high but I remember the 'we got to stop Japan' talk that happened around the Gulf War that lasted into the early 90s- it was still going even after they collapsed.

Now its China, and as demonstrated in Firefly/Serenity we get cursing in Mandrin, ideograms, and more cultural stuff.

[Mecha-Anchovy]

No, I think I didn't make my point. He thought that it was the *author's* ****** fanboyism.
In-game ****** fanboyism is actually a lot more interesting.

The truth is that it's both, I think. It was the late 80s - not the height of Western Japanophilia, but it was definitely on the upswing. The OOU cause of House Kurita is a bunch of nerdy game designers going, "Hey, you know what's cool? Samurai. And katana. And ninja. And Gundams."

But the IU cause of House Kurita is Shiro Kurita and his descendants, and they were obsessive restorationists. The Draconis Combine is not based on Japanese culture as it actually is or was - it's based on Shiro and company's attempt to construct something new inspired by a particular period of Japanese history. Their construction is not going to be entirely accurate, partly because that's impossible, and partly because the Kurita family consciously adapted what their inspirations to the needs of running an interstellar empire. I talked about this a bit last year.

The short version, though, is that the Draconis Combine are not historical Japan or historical samurai. They are a new thing inspired by a particular, idiosyncratic recollection of Japan.

And the point of this is to have giant robots with katana.

Because that's cool.

[Koshirou]

The truth is that it's both, I think. It was the late 80s - not the height of Western Japanophilia, but it was definitely on the upswing. The OOU cause of House Kurita is a bunch of nerdy game designers going, "Hey, you know what's cool? Samurai. And katana. And ninja. And Gundams."

I don't think that the original Kurita House Book (where all of this starts, really... in BTech and MW 1st Ed. Kurita was just a straight-up military dictatorship and police state with only superficial Japanese elements) shows a lot of Japanophilia. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Some of the sources used in the HB are writings about Feudal Japan, but many others (in some cases rather lazily copy-pasted) are writings about WW2-era Japan... taken up to eleven to paint a comically drastic picture of brutality and backwardness.

And the point of this is to have giant robots with katana.

That kind of silliness only came much, much later.
EDIT: Have to correct myself a bit - the Hatamoto-Chi didn't have a sword, but it was clearly designed to visually evoke Samurai armor, and that was as early as 1989. But the first katana-wielding Mechs only came about in the FM:HK if memory serves.

[Kidd]

Look no further than Victor Milan's Black Dragon trilogy, he was the original 80s Japanophile. He played the Japanese Drac idea utterly straight, with all its masks and undercurrents. And he even predicted the aggressive rise of saccharine J-pop/K-pop girl bands at least a couple years before it was mainstream in Japan itself, God rest his soul.

In that sense he might have gone a step too far, since the original idea is that Dracs were people of all races playing at being Japanese.

Now its China, and as demonstrated in Firefly/Serenity we get cursing in Mandrin, ideograms, and more cultural stuff.

Not actual curses, but yeah.

When a country does the economic equivalent of leaping on the world stage, the mainstream media picks it up and runs with all the cultural stuff as well to fill headlines. Then if any cultural ambassadors are around, they start getting attention, even if they didnt before, and they lead everyone else into it. Its suddenly cool to be interested in that stuff, and people learn more about it and feature it in whatever they write.

Like what Game of Thrones did for medieval and dungeons and dragons stuff. ASOIAF fans leapt from the back rooms of FLGSs and secondhand bookstores (around the discount bins) into the limelight cause suddenly it was cool to think and talk about knights and dragons, it was no longer the domain of geeks.

Same thing.

Who knows what the next big thing will be. Maybe HBO will do a Georgian series next. Then there'll be this huge interest in Regency lifestyles and you find a lot of content coming out based around it, Davions suddenly acting like Jane Austen characters.

Then maybe I'll get hired by Buzzfeed to write about Napoleonic line and column tactics...

[Colt Ward]

Who knows what the next big thing will be. Maybe HBO will do a Georgian series next. Then there'll be this huge interest in Regency lifestyles and you find a lot of content coming out based around it, Davions suddenly acting like Jane Austen characters.

Well . . . I think the broken up League's Rim Commonality had that nailed down when Jessica started bringing folks back together.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Look no further than Victor Milan's Black Dragon trilogy, he was the original 80s Japanophile. He played the Japanese Drac idea utterly straight, with all its masks and undercurrents. And he even predicted the aggressive rise of saccharine J-pop/K-pop girl bands at least a couple years before it was mainstream in Japan itself, God rest his soul.

In that sense he might have gone a step too far, since the original idea is that Dracs were people of all races playing at being Japanese.

To be fair, Battletech as a whole seemed to get hit with that at about the same time.  The CC saw a similar plunge in the ethnic diversity of the characters who represented it (in the Warrior Trilogy, Romano was very explicitly a redhead).

[Kit deSummersville]

Don't look too closely at the Germanization of the Lyran Commonwealth. Or that fact that the Federated Suns was founded upon a medieval theme-park.

[Colt Ward]

Or that fact that the Federated Suns was founded upon a medieval theme-park.

Oooo . . . Katherine got off light!  Victor should have placed her in stocks in the center of the Davion Peace Park!

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Don't look too closely at the Germanization of the Lyran Commonwealth. Or that fact that the Federated Suns was founded upon a medieval theme-park.

But the LC's Gemanization was never anything beyond them speaking German as their national language.  There's nothing about them dining on sausages and sauerkraut at every meal, wearing lederhosen all the time, or spending their free time polka dancing the way depictions of the Combine bludgeons you with "LOOK AT HOW BLEEPING JAPANESE WE ARE!"

[nerd]

But the LC's Gemanization was never anything beyond them speaking German as their national language.  There's nothing about them dining on sausages and sauerkraut at every meal, wearing lederhosen all the time, or spending their free time polka dancing the way depictions of the Combine bludgeons you with "LOOK AT HOW BLEEPING JAPANESE WE ARE!"

Exactly. German as a National Language was how the Steiners were selling themselves as interstellar unifiers, and even early sources noted how the LC was a realm where wearing colorful planetary dress was expected at formal events, especially if it was divergent from the norm.

[Colt Ward]

Well . . . Whiting on Coventry I thought was supposed to be a stereotypical German/Bavarian village like this tourist trap my mother loves-



Then you get Tharkad's 1 world biome we get which is generally a Nordic frozen North, especially with the depiction of the Triad and palace which sounds like Asgard fantasy construction.

The ONLY one you where you do not seem to get a caricature mono-culture IMO is the League . . . mostly b/c its ignored?  4SW the CapCon comes across as 50s Red China while Xin Sheng overlays bits of the Dynasty periods.

[Kidd]

That's because the League is considered a crazy melting pot of peoples, even in a universe of crazy melting pots of peoples

But the LC's Gemanization was never anything beyond them speaking German as their national language.  There's nothing about them dining on sausages and sauerkraut at every meal, wearing lederhosen all the time, or spending their free time polka dancing the way depictions of the Combine bludgeons you with "LOOK AT HOW BLEEPING JAPANESE WE ARE!"

That's because yukata are way more comfy than lederhosen :D

And I'm not Japanese, but there was a time when I ate sushi practically every day. (At the time I lived opposite a late-night sushi place of decent quality.) Still would if I could :D

Whereas currywurst and sauerkraut, although also delightful, isn't perceived to be as nutritious as a bento box.

[Daryk]

Kidd, did you miss the Hornblower and Sharpe's Rifles series?  Sean Bean was even in the latter!

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Tharkad very explicitly has a tropical equatorial band. The cover art of TRO 3075 is from one of the planet's tropical jungles.

Also,  Nordic is not the same thing as German.

[Colt Ward]

Sure, but everyone gives them the 'German' overtones but Tharkad always was described in a Nordic fantasy type construction.  And its always described as a type of ice planet, the only time in fiction its not that I recall is when Malvina is doing her ocean walk in Bonfire.  I never said I bought into the 'single biome' presentation but a lot of the art and as I said most of the fiction depicts it as winter or getting over winter.  The last only occurs when Vic is visiting the grave afaik.

[Kidd]

It's not, but it's their standout trait, as they vie for at least 2 other factions for fantasy Norse tropes.

Kidd, did you miss the Hornblower and Sharpe's Rifles series?  Sean Bean was even in the latter!

Course not. I referenced the latter here just the other day...

But they didnt capture worldwide imagination quite like GOT did. Sharpe was pretty low budget, as British TV tends to be.

[Liam's Ghost]

There's a fundamental difference to how a relatively free society goes about cultural unity and how an outright authoritarian one goes about cultural unity. It's a lot easier to make people... lets say "enthusiastic"... about embracing a cultural standard they'd never heard of before when you have secret police, absolute power, and a comfortable understanding of the origins of the term Decimate.

[Koshirou]

Look no further than Victor Milan's Black Dragon trilogy,

When those came out (well actually, when they reached local stores, which always took a while in those dark times), one of two things happened.
Either this trilogy was so cringe that it finally shocked me out of my illusions about BT fiction in general.
Or I had matured to the point where for the first time I picked up some BTech fiction and realized "Hey, wait a second... this is garbage. Come to think of it... all of this is garbage!"

And it wasn't the Japanese elements either, though I am quite sure these would be many times worse to me now.

There's a fundamental difference to how a relatively free society goes about cultural unity and how an outright authoritarian one goes about cultural unity.

More to the point, there's also a fundamental difference to how good books use inspiration by real world cultures and how low brow schlock does.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

I've read some of Milan's Battletech novels and some of his non-Battletech novels and found that they were all cringy.

[Kidd]

Either this trilogy was so cringe that it finally shocked me out of my illusions about BT fiction in general.
Or I had matured to the point where for the first time I picked up some BTech fiction and realized "Hey, wait a second... this is garbage. Come to think of it... all of this is garbage!"

And it wasn't the Japanese elements either, though I am quite sure these would be many times worse to me now.
More to the point, there's also a fundamental difference to how good books use inspiration by real world cultures and how low brow schlock does.

I don't know what's what's cringey about them, I admire the japanese-inspired worldbuilding, which is the main contribution on the topic, and the many varied side characters which are not some mild variation of "sci-fi military man" which makes up 90% of Battletech novels.

If Cassie Suthorn is the cringe (which I often hear) she's no different from the archetypal heroes of many award-winning books and blockbuster films.

[Koshirou]

If Cassie Suthorn is the cringe (which I often hear) she's no different from the archetypal heroes of many award-winning books and blockbuster films.

That is not an argument for quality.  :P

But yeah, even though I clearly remember that Miss I-kill-BattleMechs-with-Knives did annoy me, I don't think that, in retrospective, this character was the main problem either. As I said, it's just as likely that at that point, my tastes had simply developed to a point where I no longer enjoyed reading that kind of book.

The Japanese-style world building was not particularly interesting to me at that point. What I remember from the novels was pervasive hokiness and "badass moments" which just seemed like the plot being full of itself, if that makes sense. Plus some vague memories of really terrible writing which I'm not going to go into detail about.

On the plus side, in contrast to say, the Warrior and Blood of Kerensky trilogies, I don't recall misogynist, social Darwinist or "yellow peril" undercurrents, nor idiot plots that didn't make any ****** sense, nor a complete lack of sense of space that basically threw the established BTU out of the window, nor incredibly repetitive descriptions (good old Blood of Kerensky drinking game: Take a shot every time a characters hands are "knotted" or curled or balled into fists "in frustration").

[Kidd]

That is not an argument for quality.  :P

But yeah, even though I clearly remember that Miss I-kill-BattleMechs-with-Knives did annoy me, I don't think that, in retrospective, this character was the main problem either. As I said, it's just as likely that at that point, my tastes had simply developed to a point where I no longer enjoyed reading that kind of book.

The Japanese-style world building was not particularly interesting to me at that point. What I remember from the novels was pervasive hokiness and "badass moments" which just seemed like the plot being full of itself, if that makes sense. Plus some vague memories of really terrible writing which I'm not going to go into detail about.

On the plus side, in contrast to say, the Warrior and Blood of Kerensky trilogies, I don't recall misogynist, social Darwinist or "yellow peril" undercurrents, nor idiot plots that didn't make any ****** sense, nor a complete lack of sense of space that basically through the established BTU out of the window, nor incredibly repetitive descriptions (good old Blood of Kerensky drinking game: Take a shot every time a characters hands are "knotted" or curled or balled into fists "in frustration").

It's not an argument for quality, but I posit it's not complete schlock either.

Yeah, as you say, BT fiction is sci-fi pulp at best. So to me the trilogy stands out for pretty much the same reasons, and it's at least that little more deeper than "the thin veneer" that is BT otherwise.

[deathfrombeyond]

I've read some of Milan's Battletech novels and some of his non-Battletech novels and found that they were all cringy.

I liked Milan’s Star Trek novel from the depths which is the first book of his that I read.

I also happened to like his Battletech trilogy as well. I’d put him at number two behind charrete (sp?) for Battletech authors.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

He was a very polarizing author- people either tend to regard him as one of the best or one of the worst, with remarkably little inbetween.

[Colt Ward]

Wait, were we talking about the Cassie Suthorn books for the Japanese veneer or Heir to the Dragon & Wolves on the Border?

[deathfrombeyond]

Most fans sleep on prelude to war because it was a Mechwarrior novel and it didn’t involve any of the major players. Underrated novel, in my opinion. Probably the best of the pre dark age Mechwarrior novels.