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## Oriental Adventures and Japanese history

Mundane & Pointless Stuff I Must Share: The Off Topic Forum

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User3
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### Oriental Adventures and Japanese history

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Post by User3 » Sun Apr 17, 2005 1:16 am

So, I've just been reading this book called "Secrets of the Samurai" that I found on the bargain shelf at Barne's & Noble.
Yes, I know it is a hoaky title, but it was written by and illustrated by the same people who did Aikido & the Dinamic Sphere (Which is, BTW, the best martial arts book I've read).
Anyway, I was just reading about the history of thar "martial monk" tradition, and found mention of "Shugendo," the practice of esoteric and elementalist magic (i.e. ritualized bullshit coupled with pattern recognition). This was the practice of "Shugenja."
Needless to say I was suprised that the elementalist class from OA actually had its basis in history. As I read on I discovered that the practitioners of the more martial monk disciplines where known as (among other things) "Sohei." Wow. I had no idea.
Anyway, just thought I'd share a bit of history with ya. Most of those monk orders were finally crushed by Nobunga, shortly before the Tokugawa era.
And ya, oriental adventures has such travesties as "Rings ('Ringu'):". And the classes themselves don't seem very justified in their existance. But I was still plesantly surprised.
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