The Vanished, Bloodstained World of 1800s Japan

Be the 1st of 1,000 subs and let's get my new channel growing together! sub here: @argentiaa Watch next: Last photo taken as a brand new bridge starts to collapse with a man and dog still running on it: Tacoma Bridge Collapse: Final Moments Capt... Everyone has seen this photograph. A samurai in a straw hat, a katana at his belt, arrows on his back, shot in Japan between 1863 and 1868 by a European called Felice Beato. but was the man in it a real samurai? I spent about six weeks inside these plates, mostly zoomed to 400% on fabric. What I keep coming back to is the sleeves. One is a delicate floral kimono, the other a plain fitted maroon. People tell me a retainer could own both and not care. I do not believe it and I cannot prove it, and that bothers me more than the parts I can prove. ──────────────────────────────── CHAPTERS 0:00 A samurai who probably wasn't 2:11 Hand-painted, not colour photographs 3:07 Beato photographed a murder scene 4:32 What a samurai actually was 6:03 The hair and the money 7:20 The 1876 sword ban 8:03 Out of bullets at Shiroyama 9:45 The army was samurai too 10:54 The ones you already know 12:09 Actors from a prop box 13:27 No face, four real words ──────────────────────────────── THE FACTS Are 1860s Japanese photographs in colour? No. Photography in the 1860s was grey. Every colour was brushed on by hand after printing, by Japanese painters at tables in Yokohama. Wet-plate glass negatives, albumen paper coated in egg white. These are paintings on top of photographs. Did Saigo Takamori's men charge swords against machine guns? No. The Satsuma army marched with Snider-Enfield rifles, artillery and modern uniforms, and left armour behind because armour cannot stop a bullet. The last forty drew swords at Shiroyama on 24 September 1877 because they had run out of ammunition. Is there a real photograph of Saigo Takamori? Not one. The face on the stamps and in the textbooks is a drawing made after his death by an Italian engraver, worked up from the features of Saigo's brother and cousin. His only authenticated quote is four words long. ──────────────────────────────── RESTORATION Ten archive plates in the closing sequence were AI-restored: damage repair, upscaling, hand-painted colour brought back up, black-and-white colourised. All ten are public domain or CC0, and each original is shown beside its restoration. No AI-generated photographs, stock or audio appear anywhere in this video. ──────────────────────────────── CREDITS Under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY), modified: “Katana, sword (AM 1934.316-13)” by Sada Kane, CC BY 4.0 “Snider Mk III short rifle” by Auckland War Memorial Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira, CC BY 2.0 “Nagasaki; the Daion-ji Temple”, Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 “Saigo Takamori statue @ Ueno Park” by Guilhem Vellut, CC BY 2.0 “Statue of Saigo Takamori in Ueno Park” by Tsurumaru Gonzo, CC BY 4.0 “Saigo Takamori's deathplace monument at Shiroyama” by Y. Sakoh, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 · /by/3.0 · /by/2.0 Under CC Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA), modified: “Samurai room, Snowshill Manor” by Tadeusz Hare, CC BY-SA 4.0 “Saigo Cave at Shiroyama” by Doricono, CC BY-SA 3.0 “Tenjibashi bridge after 1888, Musee Guimet” by Ismoon, CC BY-SA 4.0 “Edison Standard Phonograph, Good Evening Caroline” by Ngpitt, CC BY-SA 4.0 “Ueno Park, several scenes” by Nesnad, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa... · /by-sa/3.0 Music: “Devastation and Revenge”, “Dreams Become Real” and “Thunder Dreams” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), CC BY 4.0 · Additional music licensed via Artlist.io · Further tracks by atlasaudio, Chestnut Music Studios and DanyDory. Short excerpts: THE LAST SAMURAI (2003), Warner Bros. · RUROUNI KENSHIN (2023), Watsuki / Shueisha, Aniplex, Liden Films · GOLDEN KAMUY (2026), Noda / Shueisha, Golden Kamuy Production Committee · SAMURAI CHAMPLOO (2004), Manglobe / Shimoigusa Champloos. Full source list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15M68Ec... ──────────────────────────────── A NOTE ON FAIR USE Every third-party clip is a short excerpt used for criticism, commentary and historical analysis under 17 U.S.C. section 107. Each runs two to four seconds against narration that argues with it. If you hold rights in anything here and think I have got it wrong, please contact me before filing a claim. I will credit it, licence it, or remove it. ──────────────────────────────── If a law abolished your whole world, and nobody ever took your picture, what would be left of your legacy? Subscribe for more Argentia. One photograph, all the way down. #Samurai #Japan #History #Photography #Documentary