Personally, my knowledge of Japanese history in the XVI century equals to not much, therefore I was interest in this documentary. I vaguely remembered the names of Hideyoshi and Ieyasu as the men who reunited Japan, but I missed a large part of the history.
The structure of the documentary is the usual: historians narrating the events, interspersed with acted battles and daily life scenes. The interior design and costumes look OK, but the narration (and battle scenes) go very much in the direction of "this strong samurai fought bloody battles" followed by even bloodier ones, won by the next fierce samurai.
I get that the point is narrating the reunion of Japan under a single ruler and that part of history is mostly the succession of samurais that it took to complete the task, but all the battle scenes look pretty much the same. Still worth to watch.
PS as to the criticism that the historians are mostly not Japanese... since when one should study only the history of one's own country? Which level of crazy is that even if I am interested in Japanese history, I should not talk about it because I'm not Japanese?
The structure of the documentary is the usual: historians narrating the events, interspersed with acted battles and daily life scenes. The interior design and costumes look OK, but the narration (and battle scenes) go very much in the direction of "this strong samurai fought bloody battles" followed by even bloodier ones, won by the next fierce samurai.
I get that the point is narrating the reunion of Japan under a single ruler and that part of history is mostly the succession of samurais that it took to complete the task, but all the battle scenes look pretty much the same. Still worth to watch.
PS as to the criticism that the historians are mostly not Japanese... since when one should study only the history of one's own country? Which level of crazy is that even if I am interested in Japanese history, I should not talk about it because I'm not Japanese?