【as eroticism revels in the rotting stench of death surely the embrace of a lover is not dissimilar】

Westworldthe show may be as eroticism revels in the rotting stench of death surely the embrace of a lover is not dissimilarnamed after Delos's Wild West park, but after Sunday's "Akane No Mai" episode, everyone is talking about Shogun World, the extra-violent, samurai-filled park that Maeve, Hector, Lee, and their tiny band of Westworld survivors stumbled into.

But what isShogun World? What's with the stab-happy overlord? And what on earth were ninjas doing there? Don't worry, your questions will be answered shortly.

See More: The new, most popular 'Westworld' theory for Season 2 is a doozy

What is the Edo Period?

The Edo period of Japanese history is named after Edo, the area that is now modern-day Tokyo, which was established as the seat of government in 1603. Some of the characteristics of the Edo period were a very strict class system that put a military overlord known as the shogun and his clan on top, landed lords called daimyo underneath them, warriors called samurai underneath the daimyo, and peasants under the samurai. It is also referred to as the Tokugawa period.

Who or what is Tokugawa?

Tokugawa Iyeasu was a daimyo who rose to power and was granted the title of shogun from the emperor in 1600. While he was not the first shogun, he completed the unification of Japan, which had been fractured after a series of clashes called the Warring States period. Tokugawa Iyeasu’s clan maintained control of the shogunate for 250 years, which was way longer than any other house had gone before.

So the guy that the geisha Akane kind of… three-quarters decapitated with her hairpin was most likely the robot version of a Tokugawa clan member.

Wait. If the shogun is in charge, where is the emperor?

The emperor is probably somewhere in Edo World, but he’s not the guy in charge. There is one prevailing rule through all of Japanese history, and it’s that no one is allowed to kill the emperor. Even if you are a military overlord ruling the country in everything but name, you shut your mouth and keep the emperor somewhere safe where he can serve as a figurehead.

It’s this rule that makes the Japanese imperial house the longest-running monarchy in the modern world – 1,200+ years and counting.

What about the guys who had their ears burned out?

Those were daimyo, lords that served the shogun. Fun fact about daimyo during the Edo Period — all daimyo under Tokugawa were forced to spend one year at their landed estates and the next year serving at court in Edo.

Tokugawa knew that moving was super expensive (as anyone who has had to flee yearly rent increases will know), so he enforced this tradition to make sure no single daimyo got rich enough to oppose his clan. It was the classic “keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but only sometimes, to make sure they stay poor” thing.

Where do samurai fit in to all of this?

Samurai had existed in Japan for hundreds of years before the shogunate came about. They were historically a class of warriors who followed a code called bushido, which is very complicated and based on honor and service. Individual daimyo would hire bands of samurai to be their own personal army, and these groups of daimyo-bound samurai did most of the fighting that weakened Japan during that Warring States period. In the Edo Period, samurai were still bound to their daimyo and maintained their traditions.

Was that cool guy a samurai?

Kind of. Musashi, the mean, ass-kicking guy with a katana, is a ronin, which is a samurai who doesn’t serve a house or daimyo. Think of him as a wandering knight, except it was very frowned upon for a samurai to exist without a house or lord supporting him.

This is probably why nobody in Edo World seems to like Musashi, though being the Hector of Feudal Japan also isn’t winning him any personality contests.

I distinctly recall seeing ninjas.

That’s not a question, but I still got you. Shinobi, or ninjas as we call them, were elite warriors who specialized in all the dirty, underhanded combat a samurai would be too honorable to pursue. They attacked at night, snuck up on people, hid in bushes, impersonated nobles... they were basically the James Bonds of Japan.

Depending on when exactly in the Tokugawa shogunate Edo World is supposed to take place, the writers of the park may have taken liberties on the existence of shinobi at that time. The last recorded appearance of shinobi was in 1638, when the shogun hired a bunch of ninjas to crack down on a rebellion of Catholic farmers (there’s a true sentence I never thought I’d write).

So while it’s possible that Edo World takes place in the first 35 years of Tokugawa rule, it’s more likely that the time period of the park is fuzzy and the writers really, really wanted to include ninjas in their plot.

Why were those geisha dancing and serving tea?

Well, friend, that's that geisha do. Geisha in the Edo Period were primarily entertainers who trained in singing, dancing, playing instruments, conversation, and the general art of hosting bomb parties.

It's a bit of a fantasy on Lee Sizemore's part to make Shogun World's geisha house the Japanese equivalent of Maeve's Mariposa brothel, because geisha were crucially not prostitutes. Under the shogunate they were forbidden from forming close relationships with their customers because real prostitutes complained that geisha would steal their business if they did. (This is probably why Akane got mad when Musashi touched her. It was a big no-no.)

Lee also royally fudged the time period when he wrote geisha as existing concurrently with ninjas. Geisha in the form seen in Shogun World started cropping up in the mid-1700s, more than a century after that Catholics vs. ninjas battle I mentioned earlier.

These kinds of inaccuracies are important to point out, because it reminds watchers that allof Delos's parks are based on the fantasies of their customers, who don't have the strongest grasp of history and just want to have a good time.

Why is there a park based on this period of Japanese history?

I’m sorry, does this sound boring to you? Feudal leaders! An emperor in decline! Samurai battles! Teetering class systems! Mandatory biannual house-moving! Traditional dance! My only question is: why isn’t Edo World the standard park? Forget the desperados, I want to hang out with Sakura and Akane forever.