When Dice Were Made of Flint #8

In the 1980s, everything Japanese was very fashionable. The craze started in 1980 with the TV miniseries of James Clavell’s novel Shogun and Akira Kurosawa’s epic Kagemusha, which was followed by the even more epic Ran in 1985. The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic – then semi-underground and quite edgy – was published in 1984, and of course 1982’s mega-hit Blade Runner had included many Asian touches in its visual style.

Not to mention 1980’s one-hit wonders The Vapors with “Turning Japanese,” the band Japan, and the Japanese script on T-shirts that every fashionable type was sporting at the time. Japan was everywhere, and every game suddenly needed a feudal Japanese setting.

Fantasy Games Unlimited released Land of the Rising Sun in 1980 and their edition of Bushido in 1981. TSR published AD&D Oriental Adventures in 1985 (the term “Oriental” was still acceptable in those distant times) and incorporated Kara-Tur into the Forgotten Realms in 1987. GURPS Japan was also published in 1987, and that same year Games Workshop reprinted the 1986 RuneQuest Land of Ninja boxed set as a hardback. Games Workshop also planned a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay supplement named Tetsubo, after an iron-studded club that was the closest Japanese equivalent to a warhammer, but the manuscript languished on the to-be-developed pile and was never published – although a version can be found online now.

Roleplaying games were not alone. Avalon Hill published their Samurai grand strategy game in 1980, and Milton Bradley published their big-box game Shogun in 1986. Standard Games published Samurai Blades in 1984, adapted from their 1981 medieval skirmish game Cry Havoc. There was a ninja-themed gamebook series called Way of the Tiger, and Fighting Fantasy gamebook #20 was Sword of the Samurai.

Dixon Miniatures had been selling 28mm Japanese ranges since 1977, and 1984 saw Citadel Miniatures release two sets of boxed miniatures by Aly Morrison: Oriental Heroes and Hobgoblin Warriors, plus Undead samurai the following year. I even proposed a Japanese-themed Warhammer battle pack based on these ranges, shortly before Games Workshop hired me: the excellent Awesome Lies blog has more details (https://awesomeliesblog.wordpress.com/2022/07/17/lost-warhammer-bakemonos-revenge/).

And those are just the titles I remember. Honestly, if you weren’t there at the time, it’s difficult to comprehend just how thoroughly Japan took over Western popular culture in the 80s.

I had two editions of Bushido, one by Tyr from 1979 and the expanded FGU boxed set from 1981. I never got to run it, though, as AD&D and Call of Cthulhu took up much of my time. One of my college gaming group did run a few Bushido sessions, though, and got one adventure published in Adventurer, the short-lived house magazine of Games of Liverpool, FGU’s UK importer. Imagine magazine #25 was billed as a “Far Eastern Special,” with a dual-statted AD&D and Bushido adventure by future White Dwarf editor and Realm of Chaos co-author Mike Brunton alongside AD&D material from yours truly and several other contributors.

Somewhere in the late 80s or early 90s, the fascination with feudal Japan faded. The reasons are debated, but Japan lost its economic powerhouse status in the early 90s. Cyberpunk took over as the main genre where Japanese culture flavoured gaming, thanks largely to Blade Runner and William Gibson. As the 90s progressed, manga and animebecame popular, but anime-influenced rpgs like Big Eyes Small Mouth didn’t achieve the widespread appeal or commercial success of the feudal-Japan games of the previous decade.

Katanas never stopped being cool, though.