No, it's not a show about a cat who is a samurai. Sorry, Usagi Yojimbo fans.

In this live-action TV series, Madarame Kyutaro (played by Kazuki Kitamura) is a regular old samurai who's down on his luck in premodern Japan. (The exact time period is carefully left vague, but six months' rent on a tiny room is a little more than one ryō, and there's a secondary character who's selling the new imported delicacy, donuts! so someone who knows more about Japanese history than me could probably pin it down to the half-century or so.) He's a skilled swordfighter, but he has no lord, no prospects of work, and is, in the first episode, reduced to eating crayfish he fishes for himself.

Then he runs into this merchant's assistant who tells him a sad story about the "goblin cat" who he thinks has beguiled his boss. Kyutaro doesn't really buy it, but he is not above taking the assistant's money, and what the assistant wants is for him to sneak into the warehouse and kill the cat.

When he gets there, the cat is the most adorable thing he's ever seen, and he cannot bring himself to kill it -- so instead he steals it, leaving behind an ominous message that makes it sound like someone killed it, and takes it back to his tiny little room. The merchant is heartbroken. The assistant is pleased. Kyutaro can afford to pay his back rent.

But now Kyutaro has a cat. He doesn't know how to take care of a cat. He can't let anyone who knows the merchant see the cat. The cat may or may not actually be a goblin, but, like any cat, especially one that isn't being taken care of to its own standards, it sure is inclined to cause problems on purpose. And he's no longer flat broke, but he still doesn't have a steady job...

This is all played dead serious, despite the farcical premise, and that's about 40% of the fun. Another 40% or so is Kyutaro struggling to interact with people who are just being friendly, like the donut seller. And finally, the cat is adorable, and also impressively well trained; if you're a film buff you might like to watch just for the "how did they get it to do that" moments. (The animal handlers get prominent mention in the credit roll.)

The whole thing is on archive.org with English subtitles: season 1 and season 2.

LAST EDITED ON Jan-11-26 AT 09:34 PM (EST)
 
>(The exact time period is carefully left vague, but six months'
>rent on a tiny room is a little more than one ryō, and there's a
>secondary character who's selling the new imported delicacy, donuts!
>so someone who knows more about Japanese history than me could
>probably pin it down to the half-century or so.)

A knowledge of donut history may end up being useful as well. According to Wikipedia, the now-standard toroidal do(ugh)nut was invented circa 1850, most likely by an American sailor. The Convention of Kanagawa forced the opening of Japan to the outside world (by the... good?... offices of the United States Navy) in 1854. It's conceivable that the relatively new "doughnut" was one of the earliest things introduced into Japan from Western culture in the aftermath of Kanagawa, although as far as I know there's no evidence for that.

Meanwhile, the samurai class was abolished during the Meiji reforms of the mid-1870s, and the open carrying of swords by former members of that class was prohibited at around the same time, so if Madarame is roaming around town with his swords on, it must be before that.

So--assuming the "donut" thing is historically accurate and not just a comedy bit--that pins it down to about a fifth of a century, spanning between 1854 and 1874. :)

>The cat may or may not actually be a goblin

NOTE: All cats are goblins.

This sounds pretty fun, kinda like an even more deadpan Yojinb&333;. :) I may have to check it out.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>A knowledge of donut history may end up being useful as well.
>According to Wikipedia, the now-standard toroidal do(ugh)nut was
>invented circa 1850, most likely by an American sailor. The
>Convention of Kanagawa forced the opening of Japan to the outside
>world (by the... good?... offices of the United States Navy) in 1854.

NOTE: The lady selling them calls them donuts (spelled thus, in the subtitles; I do not understand Japanese well enough to know what word was used in the original dialogue) but they look more like straight sticks of fried dough, possibly with some kind of filling.

>Meanwhile, the samurai class was abolished during the Meiji reforms of
>the mid-1870s, and the open carrying of swords by former members of
>that class was prohibited at around the same time, so if Madarame is
>roaming around town with his swords on, it must be before that.

He and a bunch of other guys are indeed running around town with their swords on.

Another data point is that in episode 3 the cat has fleas, and a helpful fellow advises Madarame to wash the cat with "jabón", and he doesn't know what that is. (This time I'm sure that the word in the original dialogue was indeed the Spanish word for soap. Fortunately, the helpful fellow can direct him to someone who sells the stuff.)

>NOTE: The lady selling them calls them donuts (spelled thus, in
>the subtitles; I do not understand Japanese well enough to know what
>word was used in the original dialogue) but they look more like
>straight sticks of fried dough, possibly with some kind of filling.

Ah, OK. That opens it up a fair bit; the Dutch had fried-dough treats that are recognized now as the ancestors of the modern donut, at least as far back as the 1700s, and Dutch traders had a presence in* Japan from the 1640s though the 1850s. I'm intrigued now whether the word they're using in Japanese is a modification of olykoek, the Dutch word for those proto-donuts, along the same lines as "hocchikisu" ("Hotchkiss") being Japanese for "stapler".

>Another data point is that in episode 3 the cat has fleas, and a
>helpful fellow advises Madarame to wash the cat with "jabón", and he
>doesn't know what that is. (This time I'm sure that the word in the
>original dialogue was indeed the Spanish word for soap. Fortunately,
>the helpful fellow can direct him to someone who sells the stuff.)

Hmm! If it were "sabão" that would make some sense to me, since that's the Portuguese word for soap, and the Portuguese had a trading relationship with Japan before the Dutch (the Dutch ousted them from that position in 1641, in fact); but I don't know of any contact Japan would have had with the Spanish in that era. Not sure where the writers were heading with that! I don't know enough about the history of feudal Japan or of Spanish soap. :)

--G.
* or, well, technically near; they weren't allowed to leave Dejima, an artificial island in Nagasaki Harbor
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>I'm intrigued now whether the word
>they're using in Japanese is a modification of olykoek, the
>Dutch word for those proto-donuts, along the same lines as
>"hocchikisu" ("Hotchkiss") being Japanese for "stapler".

I went back and listened carefully to the first time the donut seller
shows up, and as far as I can tell what she says is "donuttu". :-)

>Hmm! If it were "sabão" that would make some sense to me, since
>that's the Portuguese word for soap, and the Portuguese had a
>trading relationship with Japan before the Dutch ... but I don't know
>of any contact Japan would have had with the Spanish in that era.

I had the same thought! This is a tidbit of Japanese history that I
do know (thanks to James Clavell). So I checked this, too.

The spoken word sounds to me like "shamon", which to my ear is not
that far off from how I'd say "jabón" (I do speak a bit of Spanish).
"Sabão" isn't that different; it definitely doesn't have the
/n/ at the end, but I have no idea what forcing either word into the
Japanese phoneme inventory would do to them.

Conclusion: I have no idea how much of this is wonky subtitles and how
much of it is the script doing something odd. Perhaps the writers were
not trying all that hard for historical accuracy :)

'Shabon' which is what it probably was rather than 'Shamon' means 'soap' and was derived from the portugese Sabao as said. So we have portugese, dutch, and a period where the west is showing up enough to create the term 'Donut'.

(Incidentally, Hotchkiss, what the japanese call staplers, is a proto-stapler from the 1800's which was popular to the point that the company name took over what it is, like Kleenex, or band-aids.)

>(Incidentally, Hotchkiss, what the japanese call staplers, is a
>proto-stapler from the 1800's which was popular to the point that the
>company name took over what it is, like Kleenex, or band-aids.)

A bit weirdly, the E.H. Hotchkiss Company that sold staplers in Japan appears to have been completely unrelatedy to Hotchkiss et Cie, the company that made machine guns in France. They're roughly contemporary, they both made Mechanical Things, the founders were both from Connecticut, and it's a pretty uncommon name, but evidently Benjamin B. Hotchkiss of Watertown (1826–1885), who moved to France in the 1860s and founded Hotchkiss et Cie, was no relation to Eli H. Hotchkiss of Norwalk (1858–1917), who bought out an office products company and renamed it after himself in 1897.

--G.
"My Love Is a Hotchkiss" takes on a different tint if you, like me, automatically think of the machine gun first
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Wait, do you mean to tell me that in Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury's "Shabon Spray" move blankets the area with soap? I guess it does produce a lot of bubbles...

>Wait, do you mean to tell me that in Sailor Moon, Sailor
>Mercury's "Shabon Spray" move blankets the area with soap? I
>guess it does produce a lot of bubbles...

It's like when they foam the runway at the airport before an emergency landing...

--G.
note: that's not soap
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Yep, soap bubbles. Hey, it works for Megaman X and most Water Pokemon.

There's a reason she's not very enthused about her power in certain abridged series. :)

>No, it's not a show about a cat who is a samurai. Sorry, Usagi
>Yojimbo fans.

Or, indeed Samurai Cat fans...

>>No, it's not a show about a cat who is a samurai. Sorry, Usagi
>>Yojimbo fans.
>
>Or, indeed Samurai Cat fans...

Or, for the matter of that, Kyatto Ninden Teyandei/Samurai Pizza Cats fans.

>>>No, it's not a show about a cat who is a samurai. Sorry, Usagi
>>>Yojimbo fans.
>>
>>Or, indeed Samurai Cat fans...
>
>Or, for the matter of that, Kyatto Ninden Teyandei/Samurai
>Pizza Cats fans.

That was my first thought, but since it STARTED as an anime...