From our other sites
The story
A thread titled “History God: ‘Spend a year in Japan 500 years ago.’ Me: ‘Heh…’” started on 5ch’s “Live Anything Broadcast” board (Nanademo Jikkyou G), where users seriously debated whether they could survive one year in Japan around 1526, under the condition that they couldn’t leave their current prefecture. With Nobunaga not yet born, the discussion ranged from the internal strife within the Hosokawa Keichō family and the movements of the Ōuchi clan and Hōjō Ujitsuna, to trivia like the terror of a self-help society where petty quarrels could escalate into full battles, how “ha-hi-fu-he-ho” was actually pronounced back then, and the real size of native horse breeds like the Kiso horse. Opinions were divided on whether a modern person with martial arts experience could stand up to a real samurai.
What people said
Somewhere like Yamaguchi, where the Ōuchi clan built their 'western capital,' might be a relatively good pick.
Hygiene is obviously going to be rough, but you'd just have to get used to it.
If you're a commoner, you could probably get away with a pretty easygoing life doing farm work.
The local lords who are supposed to mediate disputes among commoners end up fighting each other, so in some areas farmers straight-up end up killing each other too.
Have you never actually played as Nobunaga?
Time travelers have already flooded in and spoiled the Honnō-ji Incident for him.
He's not even born yet.
Nobunaga not born yet?
Before the Miyoshi clan took control of the Kinai region?
The Hosokawa clan running the shogunate, with the Ōuchi clan as the biggest power by rice yield?
And Hōjō Ujitsuna still rapidly expanding in the Kantō region?
Nobunaga's not born yet.
The Hosokawa Keichō family is in the middle of a succession dispute, and the Miyoshi are still their subordinates.
The Ōuchi came into the Kinai region a bit earlier but have already gone home.
As for the 'eastern barbarians' out in Kantō, no idea.
This was still a 'self-help' society where you couldn't easily rely on the law for protection even if you were wronged, so the mindset of 'if they think they can walk over you, you're finished' was strong, and disputes never stopped.
People weren't furious all the time, but the bar for anger was a lot lower than it is now.
Here's an example from the Muromachi period (source: 'The Birth of Kenka Ryōseibai' [the 'both sides punished' dueling law])
A maid comes to pick up a hair ornament (motoyui) she'd ordered from a shop, but it isn't finished, so she curses out the shopkeeper
↓
The furious shopkeeper beats her and throws her out
↓
The furious maid reports it to her master, a samurai
↓
The samurai starts plotting to kill the shopkeeper
↓
The shopkeeper catches wind of the plot, gathers his friends, and launches a preemptive bow-and-arrow attack in the middle of town
↓
The samurai and the shopkeeper end up killing each other
↓
Samurai from the Sekiguchi family, the shopkeeper's overlords, mobilize
↓
Samurai from the Sanjō family, whom the original samurai served, also mobilize
↓
Armed forces clash in the middle of town
↓
The Kira family steps in to arbitrate and somehow gets it settled
The public order and morals back then make 'yami baito' (shady gig-work crime rings) look like nothing — I really don't think I'd survive.
Isn't that just the good old Japan of yesteryear?
For real.
The main evidence is the romanized Japanese written down by Portuguese missionaries during the Sengoku period.
Hakata, for instance, was written as 'Facata.'
Average height back then was like 150-something cm, right?
Even back then, you'd need to be at least 180cm to dominate.
And even then, only if you had the stamina to keep swinging a club around.
You'd be up against warriors who are used to killing and trained in the full range of martial arts (bugei jūhappan, the 'eighteen martial arts').
It'd be rough even bare-handed, and if they're armed you'd get killed easily.
No chance against someone who'll go straight for your eyes, groin, or throat.
You'd probably just get wiped out by Nobunaga ('Nobbu').
Plus you'd be making enemies of the existing religions too.
You'd need to win debates against guys who studied abroad and came back — think you can handle that?
If you can't read classical Chinese, you're not even in the running.
But Portuguese doesn't even have an 'h' sound to begin with, right?
Can we really trust their 'f' spellings?
That's an interesting question.
Short answer: it's probably reliable.
In Portuguese, the 'h' from Germanic languages (English, German, Icelandic, Frankish, etc.) tends to get absorbed as if the word started with a vowel.
Take 'Henry' versus 'Enrique' (sometimes written 'Henrique,' but the initial h eventually stopped being pronounced either way).
That's a name of Germanic Frankish origin (a relative of English, not French).
Since Portuguese treats 'h' as silent, that suggests the Japanese ha-row wasn't an 'h' sound but something closer to 'f' (though not the labiodental f made with the lower lip and upper teeth like in most Indo-European languages — more of a bilabial sound using both lips).
LOL the 'that's an interesting question' bit totally reeks of ChatGPT.
Isn't that backwards?
When I asked ChatGPT ('Chappy'), it said Latin-derived languages often kept writing 'h' even after they stopped pronouncing it, and Portuguese in particular was quick to drop the silent 'h' from spelling too. So 'Henrique' is actually evidence that it was passed down through writing, not sound.
And as for Japanese, it's actually true that Portuguese isn't reliable evidence here — the leading theory is that the sound was ɸ [a bilabial fricative], not f or h. Portuguese has no letter for that sound, so Portuguese speakers at the time just substituted 'f' instead.
Martial arts from 500 years ago, without even YouTube? That's garbage compared to MMA.
I can't imagine modern combat sports — which can draw on techniques from all over the world — losing to that.
They'll come at you with concealed weapons, you know?
MMA gyms don't exactly train you to fight ten short guys who are armed and already have kill experience.
Broadly speaking, MMA and modern combat sports are about subduing an opponent.
When it comes to dealing with an armed attacker, what they actually teach you in those places is 'run away as fast as possible.'
Though 'pony' covers a pretty wide range of sizes, so I'm curious exactly how small…
Here's what Daisan Haruyama-gō, a Kiso horse, looks like
Looks like it'd just trot along cutely.
Not even that small.
More like a big pony.
Here's what an Edo-period horse looked like
The guy riding it is probably like 140cm tall himself.
It's not gonna play out like some 'isekai' light novel (narou-style power fantasy).
Even if you had all the essential skills and knowledge, going the 'isekai power fantasy' route would still just be a low-odds gamble with your life on the line.
Even more so with only a one-year time limit.
500 years ago is basically cavemen-level compared to us. There's plenty we could overwhelm them with using modern knowledge and common sense — mostly science.
We even know how to save babies who, back then, were dying constantly from dehydration. Water, salt, honey — that's it. With just that, you'd be a miracle doctor saving children's lives.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The thread’s setting, around 1526, falls at a time when the Hosokawa Keichō family, who held real power in the Muromachi shogunate, was split by a succession dispute, and the Miyoshi clan — who would later become major power players — were still just their vassals. The explanation that the great western daimyo, the Ōuchi clan, had advanced into the Kinai region but had already withdrawn by this point, while Hōjō Ujitsuna’s rise in Kantō was seen from the Kinai as a distant affair involving the ‘eastern barbarians,’ broadly matches the historical record. As for the pronunciation of ‘ha-hi-fu-he-ho,’ posters cited Portuguese missionaries’ romanized Japanese from the era — such as writing Hakata as ‘Facata’ — as evidence, but as one correction in the thread pointed out, this may simply reflect Portuguese (which has no ‘h’ sound) substituting ‘f’; linguists generally favor the theory that the actual sound was closer to the bilabial fricative ‘ɸ.’ The claim that native Japanese horses, epitomized by the Kiso horse, stood only about 120-140cm at the shoulder — pony-sized — was also backed up by the images posted in the thread. Meanwhile, whether a modern person with martial arts experience could beat a samurai remained unresolved, with cautious voices — citing concealed weapons, group combat, and the samurai’s real killing experience — tending to dominate the discussion.
*This article is composed as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Nanademo Jikkyou G) thread “History God: ‘Spend a year in Japan 500 years ago.’ Me: ‘Heh…’“
Leave a Reply