The PlayStation game Ghost of Tsushima (2020) sold at a record-setting pace, globally netting six and a half million sales as of March 2021.[1] In the game, players take on the role of Jin Sakai, one of a few surviving samurai present on Tsushima island (located right between South Korea and southern Japan) during a fictionalized retelling of the First Mongol Invasion of Japan in the mid 1270s. The game’s American development studio, Sucker Punch, took strong aesthetic and narrative cues from samurai films such as those directed by Akira Kurosawa; Tsushima was received so well in Japan that its two lead directors were given awards and appointed as permanent tourism ambassadors by the Japanese government.[2] While these events are of course expressions of American and Japanese soft power that benefit each nation in terms of international politics and global capitalism, I’m going to talk about something a touch more positive here—something rather unexpected to arise from an action game where the main draw is bloody swordplay. I’m going to provide a brief overview of how poetry appears throughout and functions within the game, namely in the form of haiku, for which Tsushima contains an interactive, albeit simple, composition system.
While navigating Tsushima island, players occasionally come across serene vistas and are given the option to sit before them and compose a haiku. When players choose to do so, Jin sets his swords down before himself and kneels, observing the landscape. The screen then displays an idea for players to “reflect on”; this will serve as the guiding theme for the haiku. Players’ normal freedom of movement is restricted—in these moments of haiku composition, they control only the camera, observing elements of nature to glean inspiration. Adhering to the 5-7-5 syllable structure, the game presents players with three options for each of the poem’s three lines. So, players aren’t themselves writing the haiku as much as structuring it from predetermined phrases.
In the above example video, of the many possible combinations, I constructed this haiku based around the theme of “strength:”
The final defense
‘Jogaku Haiku,’ found in northern Kamiagata
Death’s call is sharp and biting
I yearn for guidance
At this point, I must address that Tsushima’s haiku aren’t great—but that doesn’t mean that they’re not meaningful. I recommend Ian Walker’s excellent interview[3] with haiku expert Jim Kacian regarding Tsushima’s poetic shortcomings. Kacian points out that because Tsushima offers players variation, its haiku often come out discordant and unfocused, fulfilling the 5-7-5 structure and adhering to a given theme, but rarely if ever presenting haiku that are artful beyond “the most superficial and populist sense.” I think the haiku I put together above exemplifies this well enough: while there’s a sense of foreboding, the ties between the three lines seem tenuous. The blanks can more or less be filled in by the context of their being themed around strength, but none of these lines meaningfully or directly engage with one another—at least not with the degree of nuance and poetic prowess that a critic like Kacian would expect. But the meaning that I as a player (taking on the role of Jin Sakai) draw from the poem is contextualized by other elements of the game and its narrative.
The opportunity to craft this particular haiku does not appear until later in the game, when things are most dire: terrible betrayals and tragic murders have transpired. The player finds themselves geographically isolated as the war effort has driven them to the wintry north into territory overrun by Mongol forces, and Jin as a character has become psychologically distant from an uncle who, throughout much of the game, served as a mentor. While, in isolation, the above haiku isn’t much to speak of, each line reflects experiences that the player has through Jin as their avatar. From here on, I’ll be referencing my personal interpretations of the game’s story. While all players of Tsushima meet the same characters and fight the same battles, the ambiguity of the haiku will undoubtedly evoke different meanings for different players. So, the haiku’s first line, “The final defense” most obviously reminds me of the ongoing war, as in the moment I composed the haiku the game’s plot was building toward a final confrontation with its antagonist. The line “Death’s call is sharp and biting” evoked the wintry climate featured throughout this portion of the game, as well as the game’s heightened difficulty at this point, as the Mongol forces confront the player with greater numbers, more heavily armored and armed than ever before. And finally, “I yearn for guidance” refers to Jin’s sense of directionlessness after ideologically conflicting with his uncle about tactics and the defense of Tsushima island’s people—at this point in the game Jin and the player alike are unsure of if Tsushima island can, in fact, be successfully defended.
The video linked earlier shows the different choices that I could have made while constructing this haiku. For example, the first line could have read “Falling forever,” connoting a greater sense of hopelessness than my eventual choice of “The final defense” which, while still dire, makes successfully resisting the invasion sound more like a serious possibility. Likewise, the middle line could have been “The mind recalls the teachings.” That line may have better fit into the idea of Jin being distant from his familial mentor, flowing more effectively into the final line of “I yearn for guidance.” However, I preferred the middle line as “Death’s call is sharp and biting” because the roughness of the transition into “I yearn for guidance” reflects a greater sense of desperation. This way, instead of the haiku illustrating Jin’s conflict with his uncle, it focuses on the dangers of the war with the Mongols itself, concluding with an admission that Jin needs guidance in some form to navigate the war.
With all of that said, there remains one other essential contextualization of Tsushima’s haiku: spatiality. As a video game, Tsushima’s audience has an interesting relationship with space. Players aren’t reading descriptions of Japanese forests, or viewing carefully orchestrated cinematography that utilizes tree trunks to create a sense of depth—players are walking through the forest themselves, circling trees and seeing the grass rustle underfoot as they choose to steer off of the beaten path.
In their 2009 book The Spatial Turn, Barney Warf and Santa Arias compiled essays which explores a recent cross disciplinary shift within the humanities, a turning of attention to “a perspective in which space is every bit as important as time in the unfolding of human affairs, a view in which geography is not relegated to an afterthought of social relations, but is intimately involved in their construction.”[4] The game mechanics behind Tsushima’s haiku participate in this reframing of human presence within the landscape. As I’ve described, players come across opportunities to compose haiku while roaming the island. In that alone, there resides an interesting association between the composition of poetry and moments of discovery. But, more important, during the process of choosing the poem’s three lines, the options are anchored to points of the landscape; the player chooses each line by turning the camera toward it, and by extension the object that backgrounds it. In the earlier video example, “The final defense” was situated upon a rock standing sturdily among ocean waves; “Death’s call is sharp and biting” was situated upon Jin’s swords; “I yearn for guidance was situated” upon a mountaintop temple. Alternative lines, such as “Falling forever” and “The mind recalls the teachings” were respectively situated among the stormy sky and Jin’s head. The example video’s fixation on Jin’s swords and body is actually an exception—most of the game’s haiku focus exclusively on natural environments. These moments where Jin, as a character, reflects upon his situation within the war, double as opportunities for the player to reflect upon their overall experience with the game. The primary way that this occurs is by foregrounding visual elements of the game that players often take for granted.
Ambushing Mongol forces in forests and riding on horseback from fortress to fortress across the land, players of Tsushima see thousands of trees. During the action, players’ eyes are constantly drawn to Jin’s body, his blades, and the Mongol bodies they battle against through Jin as their avatar. While the backdrops of Tsushima are consistently beautiful, they’re seldom the focus. During instances of haiku composition, however, the camera is displaced from Jin, focusing often on trees and waterfalls, spotlighting the exquisite visual detail modern video games are capable of. The game’s haiku not only reflect Jin and the players’ personal journey through the game’s spaces and narratives, but also draw close attention to elements of the landscape that generally go overlooked. Although Ghost of Tsushima’s poetry is not particularly artful in the conventional sense, it provides noteworthy moments of meditation to break up the action. Given the game’s popularity, it has surely introduced a new generation of players to the haiku as a poetic form.
For those interested, here’s a compilation of many other haiku found throughout the game:
[1] https://gamerant.com/ghost-tsushima-6-5-million-sales-march-2021/
[2] https://www.gameinformer.com/2021/03/05/ghost-of-tsushima-developers-named-official-tourism-ambassadors
[3] https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/07/i-asked-an-expert-to-read-my-ghost-of-tsushima-haiku-he-wasnt-impressed/amp/
[4] Warf, Barney, and Santa Arias. The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Routledge, 2009, p. 1.
