Ghost of Tsushima: Visual Historiography and Cultural Mythmaking

Ghost of Tsushima (2020) is more than a stylish samurai adventure – it is a case study in how video games construct and circulate a vision of Japanese history for global audiences. Developed by the American studio Sucker Punch and set in 13th-century Japan, the game follows Jin Sakai, a samurai defending Tsushima Island from Kublai Khan’s Mongol invasion in 1274. Ghost presents a highly stylised jidaigeki-inspired narrative that plays fast and loose with facts in the service of drama (Townsend, 2024). In Martin Roth’s terms, the game exemplifies the “multilayered spatialisation” of modern media: its content reflects both local Japanese lore and global cinematic tropes, and its production and distribution span cultures to deliver a packaged notion of “Japaneseness” worldwide. Using in-game visuals as historiographic evidence, this review critically examines Ghost of Tsushima’s narrative fiction, gameplay systems, cultural representations (and omissions), and its reception, all to explore how a Western-made game became a visual history of Japan that players keenly embrace.

Game Narrative as Period-Drama Fiction

Screenshot 1: Mongol invasion fleet at Komoda Beach, as seen in the opening cinematic. A mythic tableau that sets the tone for the game’s epic, romanticised framing of history. Credit: Sucker Punch

From its opening cinematic, Ghost of Tsushima frames the Mongol invasion as a grand, romantic conflict. The story centres on Jin Sakai, one of the last samurai on Tsushima after the invading Mongols slaughter the island’s defenders, and his quest to save his homeland and his uncle, Lord Shimura, from Khotun Khan (a fictional cousin of Kublai Khan) (Wu, 2020). Major characters, such as Yuna (a thief-turned-ally), Sensei Ishikawa (an elderly archery instructor), and Lady Masako (a vengeful noblewoman), bring depth to a tale of honor, sacrifice, and guerrilla resistance. Yet this narrative is deliberately ahistorical. The developers chose to make an entertaining period drama, “not a history lesson”, ensuring the game “won’t make a game that Japanese people will feel is insulting”. In practice, Ghost freely fictionalises events. In reality, Tsushima’s Mongol attackers were ultimately repelled by a typhoon, not a lone samurai, and many picturesque locations in-game never existed on the island. By leaning into a Kurosawa-style legend rather than strict accuracy, the game “earns belief” through evocative storytelling rather than factual recounting. The result is a narrative steeped in samurai cinema tropes: lone heroes, noble sacrifices, and clear moral stakes. It’s a consciously mythic vision of 1274 Japan, one that has been crafted to resonate as authentic in spirit, even while taking liberties with history (Ivan, 2021).

Gameplay Mechanics: Combat, Exploration, and Style

Screenshot 2: Jin Sakai traverses Tsushima’s stylised wilderness. Gameplay merges exploration with cinematic spectacle, reinforcing the player’s identity as a wandering hero (Narin, 2022). Credit: Sucker Punch

Playing Ghost of Tsushima feels like stepping into a samurai film. The gameplay balances elegant sword-fighting mechanics with stealth and exploration, all presented through an artful lens. In combat, players can challenge foes honourably in one-on-one standoffs or adopt the “Ghost” approach, employing assassination, darts, and trickery that Jin’s samurai upbringing once forbade. The swordplay is grounded in what developers called “mud, blood and steel”, emphasising lethal precision; every swing and parry carries weight, and enemies fall in just a few strokes if the player’s timing is true. To make duels feel cinematic, the game even includes an old-fashioned duel mode (complete with tense pre-fight stances and wind-swept surroundings), reminiscent of chanbara films. When traversing the island, Ghost eludes intrusive HUD markers in favour of storyline guidance, a Guiding Wind system that literally blows in the direction of objectives, replacing the typical video game mini-map with a gust of nature. This design choice not only preserves immersion in the world but also reinforces the game’s theme of living in harmony with nature and intuition, as a wandering samurai might. Players can roam Tsushima on horseback, follow foxes to hidden Shinto shrines, compose poems at scenic spots, and engage in spontaneous sword duels under falling cherry blossoms. The developers included a robust Photo Mode to encourage players to capture these moments and even added a special “Kurosawa Mode”, a black-and-white film-grain filter with Japanese dialogue audio, to pay homage to classic samurai films (Cork, 2020). In short, every mechanic, from the stylised duels to the way maple leaves swirl on the breeze, works in concert to make the player feel like the hero of a lost Akira Kurosawa epic.

Cultural Representation and Historical Omissions

Screenshot 3: Jin composes a “haiku” near ancestral graves. A symbolic moment that evokes spiritual reverence, though historically anachronistic (Colucci, 2020). Credit: Sucker Punch

Ghost of Tsushima constructs a vision of Japanese identity that is at once loving and curated. On one hand, the game overflows with cultural markers meant to celebrate Japan’s heritage, the samurai code of honour (bushidō) that Jin struggles not to betray, the practice of bowing to fallen enemies or wiping one’s blade (the chiburui ritual) after battle and moments of zen like composing haiku in beautiful natural vistas. Players and critics have praised such details for painting “a true picture of Japanese culture”, elevating the game to a “love letter to the samurai genre”, as director Nate Fox put it (Weber, 2020). At the same time, these representations are selective. The game presents an idealized samurai ethos, emphasizing loyalty, honor, and courage, while quietly sidelining aspects of Kamakura-era society that don’t fit the romantic narrative. Notably, Ghost never acknowledges shudō, the tradition of erotic male mentorship bonds among samurai, which was a documented part of samurai life in feudal Japan. This omission aligns with the game’s overall pattern of sanitising or simplifying history to avoid discomfort.

Screenshot 4: Khotun Khan in fire-lit framing before executing Lord Shimura. The game's villain is visually coded as absolute evil, reinforcing a mythic moral binary between barbaric invaders and noble samurai. Credit: Sucker Punch

Similarly, the Mongol invaders in Ghost are depicted as brutal enemies (raiding villages, burning fields), but are stripped of certain grim realities; for instance, historical chronicles of Mongol campaigns include reports of survival cannibalism during sieges, a dire detail the game pointedly leaves out. By omitting these darker or more complex truths, Ghost of Tsushima constructs a streamlined cultural myth: a pure clash of samurai valour versus barbarian invaders, with little to sully the archetypal heroism on display (Spartan The Conqueror, 2020). This mythmaking has a purpose; it delivers an emotionally resonant and easily digestible tale of triumphant “Japanese spirit”, even if that requires overlooking the messier nuances of 13th-century history. In the context of visual historiography, we might ask: whose vision of Japan is being foregrounded and whose is being quietly left out of frame?

Comparative Cultural Critique: Ghost vs. Assassin’s Creed: Shadows

The largely positive response to Ghost of Tsushima’s romanticised history stands in stark contrast to the scrutiny heaped on another recent portrayal of samurai-era Japan: Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. Ghost has been widely celebrated, especially in Japan, for its respectful tone and cinematic authenticity, “embodying the spirit of Japanese period dramas” in a way that even earned praise from local authorities. Japanese gamers voted it their Game of the Year 2020, and it received a rare perfect score in Famitsu, indicating that its American creators had succeeded in crafting a vision of Japan that resonated with Japanese audiences (Ashcraft, 2020). By contrast, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows (a 2024 title set in 16th-century Japan) became a lightning rod for controversy before it even hit shelves. Ubisoft’s game, developed by a French studio, was criticised for various cultural inaccuracies and insensitivities: a trailer showed a Shinto shrine being violently desecrated by the player-character, which Japanese commentators (up to the Prime Minister) condemned as disrespectful (SCMP Asia Desk, 2025). The backlash forced Ubisoft to alter content in a day-one patch amid accusations of “cultural insensitivity” (Carpenter, 2025; Chundawat, 2025; Shutler, 2025).

Why did Ghost of Tsushima escape such critique while Assassin’s Creed: Shadows ignited it?

One explanation lies in differing approaches to tone and meticulous consultation. Sucker Punch worked closely with cultural experts and modelled Ghost after beloved Japanese media (samurai cinema, period dramas), explicitly aiming not to “insult” Japanese audiences. Ubisoft, by comparison, waded into Japan’s history with a franchise known for sandbox mayhem and faced swift reproach when that freedom crossed cultural red lines (for example, allowing players to graffiti or destroy sacred sites without contextual sensitivity). There may also be a double standard at play regarding who is allowed to mythologise Japan. As one analyst notes, Ghost “romanticises bushidō ethics but avoids scrutiny, while Assassin’s Creed: Shadows faces outrage” for similar fictionalisation. Both games take liberties for the sake of fiction, yet only the Western-produced AC: Shadows was met with diplomatic backlash and online uproar. This suggests that Ghost of Tsushima earned a degree of trust, perhaps due to its clear admiration for Japanese culture, which insulated it from accusations of appropriation. It opened a conversation about representation in games: Who gets to tell Japanese history, and under what terms? The differing fates of Ghost and AC: Shadows illustrate how careful cultural positioning (and fan goodwill) can make or break a game’s reception when navigating the minefield of historical representation.

Metadata, Paratextual Analysis and Multilayered Spatialisation through Fan Discourse

Screenshot 5: Kurosawa Mode transforms a fiery battlefield into a cinematic spectacle, as Jin Sakai charges into combat amid black-and-white chaos, an homage to classic samurai cinema. Credit: Sucker Punch

Martin Roth’s metadata-based framework emphasises that video games must be understood within the multilayered spatial contexts of their production, distribution, and reception, not just through their in-game content (Roth, 2025, p. 112). In this sense, “metadata” refers not merely to back-end data but to attributes such as developer origin, platform, genre labels, and marketing networks, which profoundly shape how a game is culturally positioned and interpreted.

In the case of Ghost of Tsushima, this framework allows us to analyse how the game’s transnational construction contributes to its perceived authenticity. Developed by Sucker Punch Productions (a U.S. videogame developer) and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment (a Japanese platform-holder), the game blends American production values with Japanese narrative and aesthetic traditions. Its genre tags, “Action”, “Historical”, “Open World”, “Samurai”, and features like Kurosawa Mode or original Japanese voice acting act as paratextual cues that signal cultural legitimacy (Ivan, 2021). These layered elements of metadata do not merely describe the game; they structure its reception and interpretation. As Roth explains, games are “spatially unstable objects” whose meaning shifts depending on the industrial and cultural contexts they traverse (Roth, 2025, p. 95).

The development team undertook at least two research trips, alongside personnel from Sony Japan, to Tsushima and other historical sites. There, they consulted local artisans, Japanese historians, and martial arts experts to inform the authentic cultural depiction (Takahashi, 2020). The result was well received; Japanese critics praised the game’s fidelity to samurai cinema, with some claiming it felt “more Japanese than Japanese games” (Ashcraft, 2020). Analysts such as Amber V and Koselke (2024) note that its lack of ideological imposition and focus on entertainment over instruction helped secure its positive domestic reception.

Building on this, Roth’s idea of spatialised metadata helps explain not only how games are produced and distributed, but also how their cultural significance emerges in circulation, especially through player communities and paratextual discourse. Fan commentary, reviews, forum posts, and user-generated media function as interpretive layers through which meaning is constantly negotiated. As Švelch (2020) notes, contemporary game paratextuality focuses on how players and fan cultures contribute to the game’s evolving cultural footprint.

Paratextual analysis of Ghost of Tsushima’s online reception, such as Steam reviews and Reddit threads, reveals three major interpretive patterns that emerge consistently across fan commentary:

• Reverent immersion: Players frequently praise Ghost of Tsushima’s landscapes, sound design, and cinematic flair, often describing the experience with phrases like “breathtaking vistas” or noting that it made them “feel like a samurai.” This sense of immersion is frequently attributed not only to major narrative or mechanical elements but to subtle environmental details, such as guiding foxes, rustling wind, or falling cherry blossoms, that collectively reinforce the game’s perceived cultural authenticity.

• Kurosawa-inspired romanticism: The optional Kurosawa Mode is widely celebrated in fan discourse. Players cite classic films like Seven Samurai or Yojimbo when reflecting on the game’s visual tone, framing it as a tribute rather than an appropriation. These comparisons position Ghost of Tsushima within a familiar, globally recognisable samurai media lineage (Sheridan, 2020).

• Historical nitpicking: A vocal subset of players critiques the game’s liberties with historical fact, such as mixing armour styles from different centuries or including haiku poetry centuries before it emerged. These critiques, while often respectful, signal a tension between aesthetic stylisation and historical fidelity.

Screenshot 6: Jin and a fellow warrior stand in ornate, anachronistic armour amid battlefield wreckage. This exaggerated aesthetic triggers fan debate about stylisation versus authenticity. Credit: Sucker Punch

Together, these responses illustrate how Ghost of Tsushima is not just interpreted through gameplay or visuals, but through a multilayered process of cultural evaluation shaped by its production metadata and its reception in fan discourse. This analytical framework, which combines metadata, paratextuality, and spatial theory, highlights how digital games function not merely as entertainment but as dynamic sites of cultural mediation and mythmaking.

In developing my framework for analyzing Ghost of Tsushima, I draw from three intersecting strands of theory: Roth’s (2022) metadata analysis and multilayered spatialization, and Švelch’s (2020) conception and deployment of paratextuality. Building on the idea of fan discourse as paratext, Švelch (2020) allows for an analysis of the cultural life of the game beyond the software itself. Švelch observes that contemporary game paratextuality “focuses on players, fans and game cultures,” treating their contributions as integral to the media ecosystem (Švelch, 2020). A researcher might therefore employ paratextual or discourse analysis methods to investigate how audiences negotiate and reshape the game’s meaning. For example, one could collect a sample of Steam reviews and Reddit posts, then qualitatively code user utterances into themes such as immersion, cinematic language, historical accuracy, or cultural critique. This approach positions fan commentary not as peripheral, but as part of the multilayered meaning-making process that defines a game like Ghost of Tsushima.

Beyond qualitative themes, one might also quantify patterns in the discourse, such as how often players reference Kurosawa, or how expressions of approval compare to critiques. These data can help reveal how Tsushima’s visuals and historical framing are received and evaluated by its audience. Through such analysis, it becomes possible to trace how players negotiate the game’s authenticity claims: some may embrace cultural stylisation as being “true to spirit”, while others may reject specific elements as “inaccurate”! This framework is also transferable to other titles; for example, one could examine how Assassin’s Creed fans debate historical fidelity or how forum communities engage with cultural representation in any historically themed game. In each case, players’ remarks form a paratextual archive that sheds light on the reception, contestation, and co-construction of cultural meaning in games.

Conclusion

Ghost of Tsushima exemplifies a richly immersive exercise in visual historiography and cultural mythmaking, marrying a stylised narrative, stunning visual design, and smooth gameplay mechanics to deepen player engagement. This chapter’s analysis, drawing on Roth’s metadata framework and Genette’s notion of paratextuality, revealed how the game’s respectful use of samurai-era aesthetics and multilayered spatial design choices work in concert to create a compelling reimagining of 13th-century Japan. At the same time, Ghost of Tsushima’s curated historical vision consciously omits certain historical realities (such as the practice of shudō and the full brutality of the Mongol invasions) in service of a romanticised, transnationally palatable vision of Japan’s past. These selective omissions, while sanitising the past, enhance the game’s mythic narrative of honour and courage, reinforcing a heroic samurai ethos that resonates widely (Hashimoto, 2020). The cultural significance of Ghost of Tsushima is evident not only in its critical acclaim and enthusiastic reception by players worldwide, including praise from Japanese observers who lauded its authenticity (one industry veteran remarked the Western-made title felt “even more Japanese” than local works) (Video Games Chronicle, 2020), but also, in its real-world impact on heritage engagement, as seen when international fans helped fund the restoration of a Tsushima Island shrine (Video Games Chronicle, 2021). Ultimately, Ghost of Tsushima stands as a testament to how modern video games can serve as both entertainment and an interactive historical narrative, utilizing creative license and layered design to invite a global audience into a stylized yet culturally resonant past.

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