“Men these days are wimps, but men in history are courageous and manly,”


Masamune Date is not an obvious heart-throb for today’s young Japanese women. He has an aristocratic lineage and love of the arts — but he is also a one-eyed ruthless killer. He lost an eye to smallpox and in his relentless pursuit of power is said to have slaughtered his own brother, as well as Christian missionaries, Korean peasants and countless of his compatriots.

The biggest turn-off might have been that Lord Date has been dead for 373 years, having flourished during the Azuchi-Momoyama Period.

In fact, he enjoys a celebrity in today’s Japan that would be the envy of many actors or rock stars. Books, television dramas, films, animations, comics and video games examine his life — and he is only one of several celebrity medieval samurai in the limelight. Japan is in the throes of a feudal warlord boom whose heroes are not smooth-cheeked young men but scarred, disease-riddled, brutal warriors whose kind died out centuries ago.

Samurai dramas have long been a part of Japanese culture, enjoyed mainly by middle-aged men. What is new are the female warlord enthusiasts — Rekijo — or “History Ladies”.