The Tale of the Soga, a.k.a. the Soga Monogatari, is a medieval tale of Japanese revenge set at the beginning of Japan’s first period of samurai rule: the Kamakura Period (1192-1333). Join me as I explore the background of this tale, narrate the story itself, and showcase a small portion of the wealth of pre-modern and early modern images depicting it.

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Translation of the full story into modern Japanese: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1...

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
0:29 Background and explanation
4:14 The story
27:48 Closing thoughts

Information Sources:
復讐の論理 (The Logic of Revenge) by Saeki Shin’ichi
Fuji City’s official Soga Brothers pamphlet (https://www.city.fuji.shizuoka.jp/img...)

Basis of my translation of the tale:
少年日本お伽噺読本 (Main)
少年曽我兄弟 (Supplemental)
(Both books from the National Diet Library Digital Collections)

Image sources:
The National Diet Library Digital Collections (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/)
The Art Research Center (https://www.dh-jac.net/db1/books/sear...)
The Waseda University Library (https://www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kotensek...)
The British Museum (https://www.britishmuseum.org)
The National Institute of Japanese Literature (https://kotenseki.nijl.ac.jp)
The Tokyo Metropolitan Library (https://archive.library.metro.tokyo.l...)
Colbase (https://colbase.nich.go.jp/)
The Hiroshima University Library Textbook Collection Image Database (https://dc.lib.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/text/)
The Densho Digital Repository (https://ddr.densho.org/)
Twitter User Sayonosuke, who posted the entirety of the 1936 Kodansha Soga Brothers picture book (  / sayonosuke  )

Music/sound effects:
The National Diet Library Digital Collections (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/) (Traditional music)
効果音ラボ (https://soundeffect-lab.info/)
VSQplus (https://vsq.co.jp/plus/sound/category...)
Hip-hop beats produced by me (Buyuuden Japanese History)