Legends of the Samurai

By: Hiroaki Sato

Narrated by: Walter Dixon

Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

Over the decades, the reputation of the samurai has grown to mythical proportions, owing to such films as Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, as well as works such as James Clavell's epic Shogun.

In Legends of the Samurai, Hiroaki Sato confronts both the history and the legend of the samurai, untangling the two to present an authentic picture of these legendary warriors.

Through his masterful translations of original samurai tales, laws, dicta, reports, and arguments accompanied by insightful commentary, Sato chronicles the changing ethos of the Japanese warrior from the samurai's historical origins to his rise to political power.

A fascinating look at Japanese history as seen through the evolution of the samurai, Legends of the Samurai stands as the ultimate authority on its subject.

©1995 Hiroaki Sato (P)2016 Gildan Media LLC

Lots of interesting tid bits.

Even if the reader anglicized the japanese words and phrases, as this seems to bother some folks, I thoroughly enjoyed these retellings of old legends very much, and would definitely recommend this work for anyone interested in the Samurai class. Anglicized Japanese dosen't negate the research and compilation that ie presented here.

Poetry and Philosophy

This book has a lot of fantastic stories of the samurai and tide to those stories are their poems and philosophy about how they lived, fought, and died.

Like nails on a chalkboard....

With so many Japanese names, places, quotes and poetry, couldn't they get a reader who could pronounce them correctly? The reader was good if it was English, but treated what is a beautiful language, terribly. I believe it did this book a great disservice. Listening to the readers pronunciation of Japanese, was like nails on a chalkboard. There was lots of good information, but the mispronunciation for me was very distracting and frustrating. Unfortunate.

Pronunciation

The content itself was great. Really cool stories and some background provided to explain the culture of Japan for people unfamiliar to it.

The narration was pretty bad. The narrator should have looked up Japanese pronunciation guides, which are pretty easy for English speakers to grasp. Either that, or a different narrator who already knew at least a little Japanese should have been hired. As someone actually studying the language, I found the Japanese excerpts impossible to understand.

Not Worth the Purchase or the Listen Even if Free

This is by far the worst audio book I have listened to thus far. There was no sense of organization and it frequently skipped around to different eras. It would make sense had this been advertised as a collection of short stories taken from noted historical tellings. My initial impression was there would be linear story telling of the ways of the samurai. Instead, it's hours and hours of pronunciations being butchered and stories being told in a random fashion. The narrator sounded so dull and tired it seems as if he too hated reading the book. There was no emotion in any retelling and was one solid flat pitch for hours. Seriously struggled to get through this.

Pretty Bad

What would have made Legends of the Samurai better?

I downloaded this for a class I was in. The reader nearly put me to sleep when I was listening.

What could Hiroaki Sato have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

This subject wasn't much of interest to me. So with that being said it is difficult for me to give an unbiased opinion

How did the narrator detract from the book?

He was very monotone. I did not enjoy his voice and I thought his reading style was boring.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

I helped me realize and recognize that the samurai were a complex and proud people. But they were also babaric. Very good historical account, probably would enjoy it if you were into asian history.

Meh

Meh. The narrator is horrible. Bad bad bad pronunciation. It's an older audiobook. It just hurts my inner samurai pizza cat.