The NHK taiga drama “Toyotomi Brothers!” has stirred up discussion on 5ch after depicting the deaths of Shibata Katsuie and Lady Oichi as a suicidal leap. According to a Daily Shincho report (9/3), portraying Katsuie — a man who prized honor above all — dying by jumping rather than by seppuku made for a striking, unexpected scene. On the thread, some defended the choice, arguing it’s “the result of getting bashed for being formulaic whenever they stick to the historical record,” while others hit back with “they clearly don’t understand that seppuku was considered an honorable death” and “even a layperson can tell that death scene doesn’t add up.” The debate spiraled into a broader argument over how much creative license a historical drama should take before it stops being history.
Thu, 9/3, 6:00 AM
Daily Shincho
Katsuie and Oichi’s leap to their deaths left a strong impression, but…
This is the result of getting slammed as 'stale' every time they stick to the historical record.
36AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:07
Re: #5
Handling that skillfully is exactly what a pro is supposed to do.
80AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:15
Re: #5
I don't remember a taiga drama ever getting bashed for sticking to historical fact — when was that supposed to have happened? Usually what gets a taiga drama criticized is twisting the record or shoehorning in a forced female lead.
7AnonymousSep 3, 2026 16:58
I mean, normally it'd just be seppuku — the jumping might be overdoing it.
31AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:06
Re: #7
They clearly don't get that 'committing seppuku' was considered an 'honorable' act lol
10AnonymousSep 3, 2026 16:58
The producers are just letting their ego run wild trying to cram in 'originality.'
12AnonymousSep 3, 2026 16:59
Have the castle go up in a big blaze
Actually do it for real
Do it with CG
Either way,
they don't have the budget, the skill, or the will
to pull off staging like that.
14AnonymousSep 3, 2026 16:59
It's just fiction based on history, what do you expect — by that logic, the Honno-ji Incident, which they've probably dramatized hundreds of times by now, is entirely made up too.
15AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:00
Is the historical consultant actually doing their job? Even a layperson can tell that death scene is off.
59AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:11
Re: #15
Wasn't it that Shingen died choking on a rice cake, and Nagamasa got his head cut off by Oichi?
17AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:00
Re: #1
It's made by 'that crowd' (5ch slang implying left-leaning NHK staff), so of course it turns out like this.
19AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:00
It's dangerous because idiots actually think NHK taiga dramas are literal true stories.
21AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:01
It's the classic 2-hour mystery-drama pattern where the culprit gets cornered on a cliff. Dun-dun-duuun♪
22AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:02
Even old Kacchan (Katsuie) must be crying from beyond the grave.
23AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:02
Shibata: "Watch closely — this is what war looks like!" → jumps to his death.
Kind of a Ramba Ral moment, huh (´・ω・`) (a Mobile Suit Gundam character famous for his dramatic death scene)
25AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:03
Bothering to watch this every single week just to complain about it — that's the real foolishness.
26AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:04
Honestly, who cares about 'the values of the era'? If you actually reproduced everything by period values, you'd get an even more sexist, way worse drama. And history is full of records written up by whoever won, so who knows how reliable any of it really is. Complaints like 'stick to the historical facts!' can just be ignored — reworking the past through a modern lens is something taiga dramas have always done.
27AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:05
Right before the leap, cornered Oichi looked at the soldiers and said something like, 'How reassuring — the Oda clan will be safe now.'
28AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:05
If they're allowed to fictionalize it this much, they might as well just do Yamato Takeru next.
29AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:05
And yet at the same time, they cling to 'historical accuracy' that's as moldy as some pre-war scholarship.
30AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:05
If you want the real history, go read a textbook or a history book. As long as it's a drama or a novel, it's pointless without some originality lol
32AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:06
Taiga dramas are just glamorized fiction anyway.
33AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:06
There's just nobody left who can actually make good work, or act it, anymore.
Better to give up and go watch the old classics from back when actors like Morishige and Tanba were in their prime — it's healthier for you.
34AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:07
To begin with, there's almost no 'truth' in Japanese history anyway.
35AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:07
Can't be helped, screenwriters vary in skill — this year's just a dud.
37AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:07
Fantasy would be one thing, but wasn't the NHK Special's war reenactment drama actually sued by the bereaved family of some lieutenant general or other?
39AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:08
If they're willing to take it this far, just go make Hyouge Mono into a taiga drama already. (a manga about a Sengoku-era tea master)
55AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:11
Re: #39
Can't happen — when NHK adapted it into an anime, they had a falling-out with the author and the credit got downgraded from 'original work' to 'original concept.' That's also why the anime got cut short.
41AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:08
Having a written record doesn't make something fact unless it's a confirmed eyewitness account — that's overstating it. If 'there's a record so it's true' held up, every wartime Imperial Headquarters announcement would count as historical fact too. (those announcements were notorious for being fabricated propaganda)
48AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:10
It's not just NHK — no period drama is ever going to be 100% historically accurate.
83AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:16
Sure, go ahead with the acrobatic interpretations, but if it's not what the taiga drama's actual audience is asking for, it's nothing more than the screenwriter indulging themselves.
86AnonymousSep 3, 2026 17:16
Re: #83
The ones complaining are mostly Sengoku-history nerds anyway.
Background and Points of Debate
The widely accepted account holds that in 1583, after being defeated by Hashiba Hideyoshi at the Battle of Shizugatake, Shibata Katsuie and Lady Oichi took their own lives at his castle, Kitanosho — said to have set the keep ablaze and gone down with it. The “leap to their deaths” staging departs from this standard account, and because it clashes with the values of samurai society, which regarded seppuku as an honorable death, some viewers apparently found it jarring. While some on the thread called for fidelity to the historical record, there’s also a strong strain of opinion defending the show’s creative license, noting that the historical sources themselves are unreliable since they may be slanted by the victors’ own accounts. The question of “how much of a taiga drama should be historical fact” is a debate that resurfaces every year. In truth, primary sources detailing exactly how Katsuie and Oichi died are scarce, and historians themselves are divided on whether it was seppuku or death by fire after setting their own residence ablaze — making it hard to flatly condemn the drama’s staging alone as “distortion.”
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