00:00:00 John Daub: Check that out. Look, there's two samurai dudes just hanging out there. This is Yonezawa and Yamagata, and they're going to be showing us around the park and the castle ruins here and get some really good information about the area. How you doing, everybody? I'm here in rainy Yamagata. It's still the rainy season here. And I think this area, the castle ruins here and a shrine is really interesting, but even more interesting when you're following some samurai dudes around. So let's, over the next 15, 20 minutes or so, get some pretty good information here.

00:00:36 Uesugi Kagekatsu: Hello.

00:00:41 Suibara Chikanari: Hello.

00:00:44 Translator: Let's introduce ourselves.

00:00:47 Uesugi Kagekatsu: Hello, everyone. We are Yamagata Aizu Bu Shōtai. I am Uesugi Kagekatsu.

00:00:53 Suibara Chikanari: And I am Suibara Chikanari. Nice to meet you.

00:00:59 John Daub: Oh, wow. Samurai. Did you get that? So we have a translator.

00:01:11 Translator: This person is the ninth generation of Yonezawa's master, Uesugi Yōzan.

00:01:17 John Daub: Uesugi Yōzan. I think many of you know his name, but he is a great, wonderful politician. He was very famous, Uesugi Yōzan, and a feudal lord, the ninth feudal lord. But originally, he was not from this area, Yonezawa. He was born in Miyazaki. At 17 years old, he became the future lord and came to this place. Wow. So he has a huge impact on the city of Yonezawa and Japan as well. And I was really struck by this plaque here. This is Caroline Kennedy, who was the ambassador to Japan from the United States. She was here in 2014. And this is quite impressive.

00:02:24 John Daub: The connection between the United States and Yonezawa is right here in this plaque and this man. President Kennedy admired the man whose festival we celebrate. In a speech that President Kennedy made, he said something very similar to something that Uesugi Yōzan said. One man can make a difference and every man should try. Does this sound somewhat familiar to a very famous phrase that President John F. Kennedy said at some time in history? Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. He was a very influential man. He was greatly influenced by Uesugi Yōzan, who is right here. He's from Miyazaki, but came to Yonezawa and resided here and was a great teacher and somebody who changed a lot of things in Japan. I actually don't know a lot about him, so I'm really happy to be here.

00:04:01 Translator: It is said that he saved the Yonezawa domain.

00:04:14 John Daub: That's amazing. Thank you very much. I love Japanese history and I love learning about the place that I call home so much. It's a fascinating story. The connection with John F. Kennedy and America from a leader here in Japan from long ago. It's fascinating, right? I'm glad we have these two samurai with us to help us understand. I'm not sure it would be as much fun without having two cool samurai with us.

00:04:49 Translator: There is a shrine here. This is called Matsugasaki Shrine.

00:05:08 John Daub: Okay.

00:05:09 Translator: The Uesugi Yōzan that we introduced earlier is worshiped as a god. So this shrine, Uesugi Yōzan is deified. And inside, deified. He became a god in here. And worshipped inside this shrine. By the way, the one I introduced earlier, Uesugi Kagekatsu, this Kagekatsu is also worshipped as a god here.

00:05:47 John Daub: Wow. So this is your... He came from here. He is deified here in this shrine, but he's right here too. How cool is that? We have a god right in front of us. It is quite a tongue twister to say the name of the shrine many times, so you can try to do that. Since we are here, why don't we go closer and say hello to the gods?

00:06:13 Translator: Welcome. Thanks for joining us.

00:06:15 John Daub: And wow, we'll take some questions. As a way of worshiping the shrine, I will offer a meal in front of this torii. Do you have to bow? Okay, let's all of us bow. Never walk down the center either, always on the left or the right. Follow the samurai dudes. Awesome.

00:07:22 Translator: Now, I will explain how to worship the shrine in Japan. I will show you how to worship in Shinto.

00:07:27 John Daub: You're going to show us how to worship. Okay. First, when you come here, you should be able to see the bell. Originally, you should be able to see the bell, but the bell is not working due to the coronavirus.

00:07:46 Translator: Because of the corona protocol, there's no ringing of the bell. The rope is gone, but you just bow. Then, you bow twice. Once, twice, and then you put your hand on it. This is also twice. Then, you bow once more. This is the way to worship in Japan.

00:08:28 John Daub: Please try to worship in the shrine when you come to Japan. That's the way you pray at a shrine, and they prayed for world peace, for everybody to be okay. So, that's a really good prayer. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. If you do have some questions for the samurai, I am here to ask it for you, too. Wow. Look at the rain. It's beautiful. This is such a beautiful garden here.

00:09:20 Translator: In the evening, the trees here are in full bloom. They put in fire inside of here at night, so it illuminates it with this really beautiful like orange fire glow.

00:09:33 John Daub: This is where you'd wash your hands, but because of the coronavirus, they've taken away the ladles for you to do it. So you're gonna have to use a bottle of water or something. So you would cleanse yourself and purify yourself by washing your hands here, rinsing out your mouth as well, but because of COVID-19, we can't do that at the moment. Look at how green things are because of the rain. We've had a tremendous amount of rain over the last 24 hours. You can see that's probably flowing from the rain right there. Yonezawa is very famous for its beef. Yonezawa beef, you might have heard that before, but there's so much more here. Yesterday we talked with a CEO of a sake company, Tako Gifu [?], and today we are taking a look at the center of the town. There's a link in the description, a Google map that will show you exactly where we are. And I guess that's a museum over there. I don't know a lot about this. I just came here and there were these samurai waiting for us. Big fan of Japanese history. Your adventures in different areas of Japan are very informative and fun. Keep up the amazing content.

00:11:07 Translator: By the way, this place used to be called Yonezawa Castle. It was a castle here. This is a special thing called a castle. You put water on a castle so that no enemy can enter it. This was a defensive wall. This is the way to the castle.

00:12:06 John Daub: Not the hawk, sorry. It's a pigeon. Look down here. Wow! Dudes! Many many carps!

00:12:40 Translator: They were raised in this way and they were fed and protected by the people. In case of the famine, people did not have enough food to eat. So just in case, they cultivated here. And koi has a lot of protein. So they could eat in case. In times of famine, people could eat these. But in times of no famine, you can see the earthquake, right? The carp would react before the big earthquakes. And they will give word slightly before. And they are taking care of the tourists. They can feed them. You can feed the carp, but there's not a lot of tourists here. So they haven't been fed a lot. But they are eating properly, right? So the city is feeding them. Just food? And there are bugs around here. They eat bugs.

00:13:48 John Daub: Don't feed them Yonezawa beef. That's for you. By the way, Yonezawa people eat koi in the modern era. So they have a question about your armor. This is real. Made of steel? Real? Steel? It's iron. You can just stick magnets. There's a sword, too. That's a real sword. Oh, it's a real sword. Oh, gosh. Okay, okay, okay. Back away.

00:15:00 John Daub: More hawks protecting the castle. So welcome to the ruins of Yonezawa Castle, which you'll also find a shrine here now. And I'm looking forward to taking you around this park. If you have any questions, I'll try my best to ask them. Thanks for asking about the armor. And it is real armor. And I'd like to see them in battle with each other.

00:15:38 Translator: We just crossed this bridge and came here. This is where koi was.

00:15:44 John Daub: Oh, so we're right here. And it looks like Edo era? It's around that time. Ah, so this is back in the 19th century before the Meiji Restoration, the middle of the 19th century. Kind of looked like this. This is the castle. And the moats around it and the enemy couldn't get here. So there were three layers to the onion here to get out. And so, the lord lived here?

00:16:17 Translator: Yes, the lord lived here. The head was here. The dining area was here. The regional feudal lords and then samurai. I lived around here.

00:16:29 John Daub: Around here? Ah, the fourth layer, okay. And Lord Kagekatsu, you are the most central lord here. Wow! So our lord here is right in the center. We pay great respect. Welcome to his house was here. He's got a sword. It's pretty amazing stuff.

00:17:09 Translator: The birthday stone of the late Masamune of Sendai.

00:17:18 John Daub: Sendai was a big domain and Date Masamune's birthplace is here. Date Masamune was born here. He's a famous samurai lord of Sendai. He was born here in Yonezawa. Amazing. And then, Uesugi Yōzan is here too. We showed you this before, one of the men who highly influenced JFK. Wow, it's a strong pose. Not a sword, but a pen.

00:17:56 Translator: I have this.

00:18:00 John Daub: Oh, a censer. A censer. He's holding a censer, which is a fan. Man of peace. Needs an umbrella today. I have a book. Not a sword. A book. Interesting. So he has a book and a fan. And a man of peace. So I'm really impressed. I'm really interested to learn more about Mr. Yōzan here.

00:18:38 Translator: The direction I'm heading to is the current Yonezawa City Hall. The local government office. So this is the direction of the Yonezawa City Office.

00:19:01 John Daub: Very powerful. The power to the people.

00:19:18 Translator: You can do it. You have to do it in everything. If you do not, you should do everything. That's from Uesugi Yōzan's work. Uesugi Yōzan said this. You must do it.

00:19:34 John Daub: That's from Uesugi Yōzan's work. Means Nike. This is a phrase Nike's motto is Just Do It that came from Yōzan. Wow. So he influenced Nike again. Wow. Just Do It. That's it. That's what it says there. Incredible. Arigatou gozaimasu. Yeah, you can do it. If you don't do it that means you dare not do it but so you should try everything. Awesome expression. Arigatou gozaimasu. So do it, come to Japan and come to Yonezawa and do it. That's right. It's pretty powerful.

00:20:31 John Daub: So then became the future lord but Yonezawa domain was very in red, uh, hard, in deficit, having like kind of a depression. Yeah, not a lot of food and uh that's when he was a leader. He found ways to feed the public at a time of a depression when there was uh not a lot of things so that made him quite a hero. Wow, so he taught people how to eat the mountain vegetables, right? Yeah, how to make better use of their resources to stay alive. Wow, so that book that he was holding in the statue has a significance, showing what to eat and what to have and the name of the food. So how to survive in the worst of times which they did have in Japan sometimes. There was depression, there were times of no money but obviously from a great leader they learned how to survive which is good, which is everything, right? A man of peace, learn to survive not from war but from a book and learning through education you could survive not through war and killing. Great man.

00:22:26 Translator: The cool thing is that you can eat food in all of the southern part of Japan. Yeah, you can eat food all over the country. So this was throughout Japan and many Japanese people could eat a lot of food through the information of the book.

00:22:40 John Daub: Oh, I want to read this book. Knowledge is power. Well said. So for those joining us right now, we're in Yonezawa following two samurai dudes who are taking us. One of them is actually the lord of this castle, which is a ruin, but he's with us today. And he's showing us a little bit about Yonezawa's castle ruins and the shrine here and the significance of this area to Japan. Really, Yonezawa is pretty cool. It's more than just beef. Although the beef is pretty good. I had that yesterday. Check Instagram.

00:23:38 Translator: In the Japanese like the state period about the 16th century.

00:24:07 John Daub: Wow. That's the Sengoku period, the 16th century. That's why also your katana is a little bit different. It's not inside your kimono but it's outside, right? Like tied by a string. Why is this katana used like this?

00:24:24 Translator: As I said earlier, our samurai in the Sengoku period often rode on horses. So they would turn their blade upwards so that they wouldn't hit the horse. The swords, typically they would be put through the obi, right? But this one is actually attached by a string. It's because here they would ride horses and when you're riding the horses you don't want it would be impossible to do it with the way that the swords were placed by samurai who walked. So horse riding samurai would have theirs attached like this. The swords in this direction.

00:25:21 John Daub: Which is very interesting note that I didn't know a lot about this. This is fascinating stuff. Thank you very much. It's heavy. The katana is heavy, right? Very heavy.

00:26:07 Translator: Become older. All right so this is where he uh stayed when he was uh Uesugi Yōzan stayed here.

00:26:14 John Daub: Oh I see. Oh arigatou gentlemen that's very nice. Keep the rain off of us. Thank you very much. Weather Drew, welcome to the show. If you have any questions let me know and I hope that the signal is still strong for you in this rainy area. We've got about a couple more minutes. I'm actually here to film another production so I asked them to let me know when I have to end the live stream. Oh this is also a shrine. Check out this shrine. It's behind the main shrine is a small shrine, Kasuga Jinja. This is so beautiful surrounded by the trees here. This is a beautiful. I just love that the way it's so natural and open. Um I'm sorry the signal might not be so strong so just bear with me I'm gonna go into a better area.

00:27:57 Translator: Here also from Niigata. Wow so everything brought from Niigata to here Yonezawa. The first line was a kind of mental support for the Uesugi clan. For getting some inner peace. So now also so many people come to worship.

00:28:26 John Daub: Yeah, I've come here to worship too. This is awesome. Yeah, look at how beautiful this is. Very photogenic. Yeah. Very nice big smile. I want to just show you really quickly. Do you see this? I put it in wide. How beautiful is this? I'm just going to pan down from the trees so you can take a look at how beautiful this is. Just with some quiet. Wow, great charisma. Very cool. Pass your compliments along. Yeah. They want to meet you. Come to Japan, George. You got some friends here. Yeah. There's also a photogenic spot and this is where we're going to end the live stream here too. Can you ask the samurai to explain what is on their helmets? Okay. And Justice FX, they're going to explain. He's amazed by this beautiful red bridge.

00:29:52 Translator: It's called Hishimonbashi. It's a place where no one was allowed to pass. This is where some great people would come here. Secret gate bridge.

00:30:12 John Daub: Secret gate bridge. Wow. Hishimonbashi. This is like on the side entrance so you can get in. Again, you can see the moat here. There's some koi right here. He's a rebel koi. He's here to destroy the Death Star. It's like a Luke Skywalker right there. What's in the helmet?

00:30:36 Translator: Thunder, fire, god, wind. And it's shaped like a leaf. It's like a fan. And this is a Yonezawa beef horn. Wagyu. Wagyu. Very strong. Wagyu are very big and strong and this is an iron helmet. Buffalo. And over here, also the phoenix. Very strong. And material is iron. About 3 kilograms or like 10 pounds around. Very heavy.

00:31:36 John Daub: All right. So, I just wanted to say thank you so much for joining us. You're very welcome, Jennifer. Could they marry? Are you married? Everyone is married. The beautiful woman is... Are you married? I was 400 years ago, but now I'm applying. He said he was married 400 years ago, but he's a free rider now. So, if you're interested, give him a call. I'll get his cell phone number later. All right. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for guiding us. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for guiding us. If you do come to Japan, I do highly recommend Yonezawa. It's not that far from Ginzan Onsen as well, which is a very famous place. A lot of foreign tourists go there, but Yamagata, especially Yonezawa, there's more than just beef here. There's samurai and stuff, which is cool. So I hope that you learned a little bit of something from this live stream. Click that Like button if you like this kind of content. I'll see you in the next live stream, probably really soon. Bye bye guys. Ciao.