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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5265943" data-attributes="member: 80487">1) Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo comic book, about a ronin rabbit, is among the finest ever. There have been a spin-off video game and one or two RPGs, but I am not acquainted with them.2) The movie Kwaidan is a must-see IMO!3) Kwaidan is based on one of several excellent books on Japanese subjects by Lafcadio Hearn. He relates (among other things) stories going back to the Konjaku Monogotari-shu, which seems to have had only portions ever translated into English.4) Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Tomoe Gozen trilogy -- Tomoe Gozen, The Golden Naginata, and Thousand Shrine Warrior -- may hit the spot. This saga of swords and sorcery is set in the land of Naipon, which bears a striking resemblance to old Japan but is not identical.5) Sean Russell's The Initiate Brother and Gatherer of Clouds tell another epic set in a world more magical than ours.6) If you can find and run the old computer game Cosmology of Kyoto, that is quite an experience!7) The Nihongi, or Nihonshoki, would be hard slogging to read straight through, but one can dip into it for a taste of Japan up to A.D. 697 as it was seen by Japanese of the eighth century. It starts with a long chronicle of the Age of the Gods!8) There are many old RPGs focusing on one period or another but admitting anachronisms along with other fantasy. Bushido was 'the' chanbara samurai game of the 1980s, at least in my circle. It is still available in a single-book (not boxed set) edition from Fantasy Games Unlimited.One of the more recent (but apparently out of print) offerings, Sengoku from Gold Rush Games, contains quite a bit of flavorful material in fairly digestible form.Lee Gold, whose Land of the Rising Sun for FGU was considerably denser, wrote a lighter treatment in GURPS Japan.</blockquote>

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