u/Emergency-Gene5088

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Harry Potter in light of the upcoming HBO show, and how it occupies a really awkward middle ground in modern pop culture. Sort of like it's trapped in Siberia. Harry Potter is enormously famous, permanently present, but strangely stuck in a timeline where it doesn't fit neatly anywhere.

Harry Potter is too young to be considered a "classic" in the literary canon unlike Lord of the Rings and Dune. This is probably the strangest part, because when people talk about the great foundational fantasy works, they tend to reach for things like Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, Chronicles of Narnia, Earthsea, Conan, or Dune. These works have acquired this "literary monument" aura but Harry Potter isn't quite there. The first book came out in 1997. That's nearly 30 years ago, which is certainly old enough for nostalgia, but it still feels like a relatively recent cultural phenomenon. A person who remembers the original books coming out is still middle-aged at most and unlike Tolkien, Rowling's books weren't simply absorbed into the history of fantasy. They're still treated as a modern commercial franchise.

At the same time, Harry Potter is too old to be the hot new thing. Something like Stranger Things can become a cultural event because there's a feeling of "Dude, you've GOT to check this out!" Likewise, Percy Jackson has benefited from being an older property being reintroduced to a younger generation thanks to Disney+ but Harry Potter doesn't have that novelty. A child discovering Harry Potter today isn't necessarily discovering a new franchise, they're discovering something their parents may have grown up with which is a fundamentally different cultural experience. It's closer to discovering The Lion King or Jurassic Park except those two have had more time to become "old."

And unlike franchises like Star Wars or Doctor Who, which went dark for years and built massive anticipation for their returns, Harry Potter never truly went away. It's just been chugging along, meaning it missed out on that nostalgic "reclamation" phase. After the films ended in 2011, there was: Pottermore, Fantastic Beasts, merchandise, theme parks, studio tours, conventions, rereleases, video games, Hogwarts Legacy, stage productions, audiobooks, endless streaming availability, fanfiction, memes, discussions about the books, and now an upcoming television adaptation. Harry Potter has essentially been continuously circulating for three decades. There's no clean "before" and "after."

Finally, there's Rowling. Even if you separate the art from the artist philosophically, you can't really separate the modern Harry Potter brand from the public controversy surrounding Rowling whose social media presence actively alienates younger audiences. Gen Z largely views the franchise with ironic detachment or outright avoidance.

Speaking of which, this leads me to another question: who is the HBO show even made for? It's definitely not made for Gen Z; majority of Zoomers grew up post-Pottermania. The oldest Zoomers were born in 1997, while all the others were born from 2000 onward. That means when the final book dropped in 2007 or the last movie in 2011, Zoomers were either toddlers or under 10. They never experienced the real-time cultural phenomenon of Harry Potter and the mass hysteria of lining up at midnight for a book release that defined Millennials' school years. For most of Gen Z, it's just another franchise, and not a sacred childhood touchstone like it was for Millennials. They grew up with Percy Jackson, Hunger Games and the MCU in their formative years, and then later things like Stranger Things.

Not to mention, nothing of what came after the movies has really been anywhere near as good as good as them or even close to matching their quality. I hear Rowling is more involved in the TV show than she ever was with the movies, serving as an executive producer. If Fantastic Beasts is anything to go by, it showed us what happens when she has the reins, and it was a mess. I assume the HBO series is made for the people who grew up on Harry Potter in the 2000s (Millennials) who are now parents with children of their own (Gen Alpha). Despite the TV-14 rating, I think they're aiming for a family audience.

I'm looking for answers grounded in primary sources and scholarly analysis rather than popular media or modern interpretations. The main contemporary Japanese source is Ōta Gyūichi's Shinchōkōki (Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga), which mentions Yasuke (a man of African origin who arrived with Jesuits) being given a stipend (扶持), a private residence, and (in some manuscript variants) a short sword, while sometimes carrying Nobunaga's weapons (御道具). He was present at Honnō-ji and Nijō in 1582.

In the context of the late Sengoku period (around 1581-82), did receiving a stipend, residence, and/or weapon from a daimyō like Nobunaga typically indicate samurai/bushi/retainer (侍) status, or could this apply to lower-ranking attendants (e.g., 小人 or 小者)?

The Oda clan reportedly assigned "tool carriers" (道具持) to low-ranking servants rather than higher-status samurai in some cases. How does this fit with Yasuke's described role? Was weapon-bearing usually restricted to certain ranks? I saw different Japanese historians offering varying views.

For instance, Kaneko Taku (University of Tokyo Historiographical Institute) has stated that if "samurai" means social class/status (身分としての侍), then Yasuke was not one. Goza Yūichi has noted limited evidence for formal samurai qualifications and described Yasuke as treated somewhat like a spectacle/entertainer in records, while cautioning against over-interpretation from single sources while others such as Hirayama Yū have interpreted the grants as indicating he was made a low-level retainer/samurai in Nobunaga's direct service.

So what is the current scholarly consensus (especially in Japanese historiography) on Yasuke's position? Was he a privileged foreign retainer/vassal, a low-ranking attendant, or something in between? How fluid were these categories in the chaotic Sengoku era before the more rigid Edo-period class system?Any references to specific manuscripts of the Shinchōkōki, other diaries (e.g., Matsudaira Ietada), Jesuit letters, or academic papers would be greatly appreciated. I'm not interested in modern politics or games (like that Assassin's Creed game that dropped last year) just the historical evidence.