Essays in Idleness

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Cecilia Lanny Winata
Aliases: Lanny/Cecilia/Xenopus
Location: Singapore
Occupation: Grad Student, National University of Singapore
Interests: Zen, Martial Arts, Japanese Culture and philosophy, Life Sciences, Religious philosophy, Christianity
Hobbies: exploring new places, learning new things, walking (preferably outdoors), cooking, eating good food, home making, swimming, sea sports, anime (Naruto being the best by far), good music to accompany my different moods, and good books to read
Schools/Past Affiliations: TK Bunda Hati Kudus, Jakarta (Kindergarten); SD Bintang Kejora, Jakarta (Primary 1-2, 4-6); Ironside State School, Brisbane, Australia (Primary 3-4); SLTP Santa Ursula, Jakarta (Secondary School); SMU Santa Ursula (High School); Indonesia International Taekwon-Do Federation (Jelambar, Jakarta); National University of Singapore

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Saturday, May 16, 2009 @ 8:23 PM

Samurai Warriors 2

This is the ending credits for the game Samurai Warriors 2 which I have been playing continuously every night since I am a little free recently.

I LOVE this clip. I guess because of the strong old Japan flavour to it. And War history ticks me, as I only recently realized. My husband pointed out that I couldn't call myself a war history fan if I haven't even seriously read and appreciate the Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But what the heck, I have my own preferences.

I couldn't exactly recall when I started getting so excited about war history.

Perhaps, since I was younger, a lot younger. I remember that I used to like being different from the pack. Yes, you may see me as a proud little nosy girl who's always looking for things to prove her superiority over her peers. Alternatively, and to my preference, you may want to consider me as being innovative and rather eccentric maybe, so much that ordinary stuff tend to bore me easily. Whichever it is, I guess it's two different sides of a coin.

When my girl peers were crazy about Sailor Moon and collecting photos of Jimmy Lin, Aaron Kwok, Andy Lau, and the likes, I was reading encyclopedias, collecting postage stamps, and reading Dragon Ball. When we grew up a little, I went to a girls school, and my friends were talking about Brad Pitt, Andy Lau, Card Captor Sakura, and losing fat from their bellies while I found my solace in training Taekwon-Do, playing games in Sony PSX (Tekken series are my favourite because there is this badass Taekwon-Do character in it, Street fighter and King of Fighters series are also my favourites beside Final Fantasy) and writing poetries.

During senior high school years, me and some other friends got to watch Rurouni Kenshin on TV, and thought it was awesome. Not stopping at that, I started to read Japanese history during which period the story took place (somewhere around the time of Meiji revolution). But somehow I found it rather boring, perhaps because there were no huge wars going on during that time anymore (apart from the coming WWI & II, but I don't really like western style wars for some reason).

My involvement in Taekwon-Do has played a major role in initiating my interests in Korean history. It's ITF Taekwon-Do, mind you - which taught not only the technical stuff, but also the ART. And that includes the historical and philosophical aspects of it. The initial effort to memorize these are, as all first-timers often experience, uphill. But I guess my curious nature got the better of me, and I started wanting to read more about Korean history. The fact that I was coincidentally stationed in NUS as a student was also an important condition, as it granted me unlimited access to the libraries. And so I found books after books of Korean legends, martial arts philosophy, Korean war history, etc.

Some years back, I read the history of the great Korean Admiral Yi Sun Shin who led his Korean naval troops, against all odds, to defend his country against Japanese invasion during the 16th century. Although he died at the end of the battle, like almost all awesome warriors during his time did, he succeeded in beating the hell out of Japan and getting the message across to them never to dream about setting foot in Korea ever again... at least for ~3 centuries.... and his feats have earned him one of the greatest heros of all time, as well as a wealth of coverage in wikipedia. I also read his War Diaries, which I find really inspiring although it was rather tricky to understand probably due to cultural values at his time.

Then I took JS2214 Ideas and Images in Japanese Culture as a cross-faculty elective during my third year as an undergraduate. And this was when I really fell in love with Japanese tradition. I felt that I have somehow found the very ideas which echoed the ideas I have always had. Wabi-sabi, Zen - the concept of beauty in simplicity, the expression of the unexpressably intense emotions in haikus, the code of honor in the bushido of the samurai and today's martial arts, and many others.

And then I played Samurai Warriors 2, and started researching about Japanese history during the 16th century great wars. I used to have my reservations about the warlords of Japan during this time, I guess because the pop culture always portrayed Oda Nobunaga as some kind of a demonic power-hungry warmonger, Toyotomi Hideyoshi just because he was the one who initiated the Korea - China invasion attempt which got my favourite Admiral Yi Sun-Shin killed T-T, and Tokugawa Ieyasu as a boring old man who just got lucky in enjoying whatever the previous rulers had established through their hard work. But I recently found that my ideas of them were downright mistaken. I also got to know another Japanese warrior whom I admire as much as Admiral Yi Sun-Shin: Sanada Yukimura - for the same reasons that he was a never-say-die kind of person who, although killed in battle as well T-T, left a deep impression in the history of Japan, and which of course, also warrants some coverage in wikipedia, as well as the manifestation of himself in many popular items today.

I would love to write another blog entree to discuss more details of the awesome people during the Japanese great war period, because I have to end this entree as it has deviated from its original purpose.

Anywayz, please enjoy the clip!