The Entire History of Ancient Japan

Shout out to Thomas Lockley, our resident Japan expert, and Manuel Rubio who has been editing the videos on the channel over the past year. This is their magnum opus - huge thanks to both.

Its crazy how much ancient history the Japanese put into the Zelda games. The Tri force is an ancient symbol i had no idea.

This documentary is breathtaking, fascinating to the end and produced to the highest quality. Also the narration is flawlessly read.

This was such a treat. It’s surprisingly hard to find good and informational content about ancient Japan, so seeing this in my recommendations was a very welcome surprise!

46:10 I love that "cunning plan" of declaring victory in spite of losing. I don't know if this is the first instance of that humorous phenomenon, but it certainly wasn't the last.

17:02 If you ask 100 Japanese people about what we call "Shinto", 99 of them will probably argue that it is not a "religion" but a "belief system" or simply "culture".

Apparently there's no actual archeological evidence of servants being buried with Himiko. The idea that there were came from Chinese documents that saw the burial mounds that looked just like the ones used in China where they did do this so they probably assumed it was the same. But archeologists who have searched the ones in Japan have found no evidence of this being done in Japan. However, Himiko's mound has never been found so it's possible that it was done just this once since she was so important, or the Chinese documents just made an assumption. This is what I learned in university anyway.

Who here’s been watching Shogun?

As a history enthusiast, I'm thoroughly impressed. This video covers so much ground and does so in a way that's both comprehensive and enjoyable. A must-watch for anyone interested in the history of Japan.

Btw, Hojo Tokimune is from the Hojo clan not the Tokimune house. Unlike western names, Korean and Japanese surnames are said first and then their personal name afterwards. You honor your clan and family before yourself, so his formal name is Hojo Tokimune, but when referring to Tokimune himself or if a casual friend calls his name you say Tokimune. Takeda Shingen's son was still named Takeda Katsuyori.

The title of "barbarian nation" was given by default by the Chinese to all other nations. Every nation outside of China had a specific "barbarian" term to be referred to that varied according to the location, hence, the Japanese belonged to the category of "eastern barbarians" ("dong-yi" 東夷).

I think I just learned more about ancient Japan from this one video than I did during an entire semester class in far East studies. And plenty of reminders. Thanks for posting!

I loved this video. One thing I wanted to point out though, Ninigi-no-Mikoto's father was not Susanoo, it was Ame-no-Oshihomimi who was the son of Amaterasu. Susanoo on the other hand was Amaterasu's younger brother.

Informative, interesting and the narrator didn’t put me to sleep! Thanks for the great video! Japan has always been an interesting culture to me so to find a this kinda format video that gives a good amount of knowledge is refreshing.

Massive respect to the narrator, David Kelly. Heard him on the "History of the Universe" channel first.

Damn, I resisted the temptation to spend my Sunday afternoon playing video games, in favour of reading a book I'm supposed to return to the library soon. But then Kings and Generals uploaded a video about Circassians and now you dropped this fascinating and awesome documentary. I guess that's a nice problem to have.

This piece was incredibly put together, as always. Thank you for creating it!

Just really love your works on YT. Love your accent and your voice guiding us through the attractive history story. Can you make more videos about Chinese history from different dynasties? And your updates on YT have been a bit slow, can you churn out more videos it’s because I cannot get enough of you voice telling historic stories.😊 love the great work you have done, keep it up bro!

Thank you, You're the most underrated channel on Youtube. The documentaries you've produced are better than anything available in mainstream media. Especially like the Japanese documentaries.

Omg, putting studio produced tv and movie documentaries to shame with this. The production value is excellent