“Honour died on that beach!”

For those who have played Ghost of Tsushima, this line would invariably have struck a deep chord. It is a painful assertion of one’s own incompetence and the decisions that follow to fill the lacunae. Decisions so hard and difficult that they change the course of the protagonist’s life. If you haven’t played the game and are planning to, I would advise you to stop reading further as it contains major spoilers ahead. But if not, enjoy the discussion.

For the unfamiliar, the video game Ghost of Tsushima follows the story of a Samurai Jin Sakai. His home, the island of Tsushima, is invaded by Mongols and in order to defend it, the Samurai army, led by his uncle Lord Shimura, charges head-on to battle the Mongols at Komoda beach(where the said honour died but more on that later). They are slaughtered though Jin and his uncle along with a few hundred Samurais survive. What follows next sets the premise of the entire game.

We then play as Jin Sakai as he tries to rebuild his army and plans to get rid of the Mongols for good. But Jin was raised a Samurai and trained in the ethics and moral codes of being one and a Samurai is unable to fight with the methods employed by the Mongol army: lies, deception, poison, hostage and everything that exploits the very codes of war a Samurai is trained to follow, even unto death. So he takes a drastic decision: he lets go of those ethics and takes up the mantle of someone who plays by the same rules as the Mongols. He becomes a Ghost. Cue title of the game.

Being a ghost is less about an individual and more about an idea. While a Samurai is limited by his morals, a Ghost, on the other hand, has no such limitations. He can cheat, attack from the shadows, use deception and can expand his intelligence network via thieves and murderers. Since to Jin, the conventional means no longer serve the purpose of protecting his people, he adopts the mantle. But it is not so simple in the game and that’s why it is so beautiful.

Gradually the uncle and the nephew part ways due to the obvious dissent that follows and Jin continues fighting and eventually succeeds in freeing Tsushima of the Mongol rule. The final duel between the uncle and the nephew is beautifully choreographed. Starting with Lord Shimura asserting that Jin has no honour to which Jin replies “And you are a slave to it”, it ends with giving us two choices: either to spare his uncle and Jin fully renounces the life of a Samurai to live as the Ghost or to kill Lord Shimura and give him the honourable death he truly deserves as a Samurai.

There are two sides of the story. From Shimura’s point of view, being a Samurai means: face your opponents openly and head on, don’t deceive your enemies, accept personal risks rather than endanger the principles of the warrior class and defend your honour even at the cost of your life. The Ghost exploited every single one them and thus incurred the ire of his uncle. Shimura lived his entire life by those codes and they meant everything to him. Disobeying and disrespecting them meant disrespect to the entire Samurai institution and their way of life.

Now consider for a moment the life of a farmer in Tsushima. He is quietly working in his field when suddenly a small scout party of Mongols charge in his village. They plunder and kill and rape the little population. He has no means to defend himself. All that he cares for are his wife and children. Suddenly he sees smoke around the Mongols and they are dispatched quietly. Only one man remains standing amongst the dead. He is wearing a mask. He has heard rumours about him. They call him the Ghost.

Jin Sakai thought of these same men and women of Tsushima. When they faced the Mongol army on Komoda beach, he saw his fellow Samurais, his friends, his family members killed in what was a strategically planned losing battle. His realisation that the enemy has weaponised his code of war and exploited it to force them to fight head on with an army armed with weapons and methods far superior and twisted than his own, changed his entire life arc and made him choose the one way that made sense in his mind for the good of the entire island. Even when it meant that he would never make it back to his former life. That he would always be called a dishonourable man in his own land.

While Shimura’s ideology represents an institution, Jin’s transformation as the Ghost represents the consequences of the inadequacies of that institution. Institutions are important for the functioning of a society as a whole. They maintain order and guarantee a safe and effective environment for the citizens to thrive and develop through a well defined social order. However in the face of radically changing circumstances, the institutions can become maladaptive. That gives birth to outliers. Here, for example, the Ghost isn’t created because Jin suddenly decides “I don’t believe in honour anymore” but because the people he is trying to protect do not have the luxury of dying honourably. A farmer tilling his fields daily for the sake of his family wouldn’t die on a horseback: he would be stabbed with a Mongolian sword, through his chest. The Samurai institution has failed them.

A parallel can be drawn here to our great epic Mahabharata. The maladaptivness of the institutions lead to the greatest war ever in mythology. A dharma that was designed to preserve order can, under radical circumstances, begin producing adharma when followed mechanically. A great many characters come to mind. Bhishma, Drona, Yudhishthara, Karna and Arjuna even among others but the principle remains the same. Their lack of action when required and their rigidity in following a particular order led to a bigger chain of events that eventually triggered the war.

But Shri Krishna is careful with this distinction. And we need to be careful too or the argument skews towards chaos. His logic remains throughout that one cannot defeat an adharmic system while insisting on fighting it according to every convention that the system itself exploits. But He is careful to mention that failure of one rule doesn’t imply the uselessness of dharma itself. Dharma is important. The institutions are important. They are the life blood of a society. Without them what’s stopping tyranny to take over? Nothing. And yet one sometimes need to step beyond them when they themselves become the hindrance to achieve the outcome which the system once guaranteed. But only beyond the system, never dharma. Never.

No one ends up with clean hands either. Neither Shimura, Kauravas, Pandavas or Jin Sakai. Every single one of them has some stain on them and that’s what reality looks like. That there isn’t really an easy right or an easy wrong. Always a mixture of both. Shri Krishna says that in Gita too and probably that is one of, if not the most, important lesson for life. That every good is mixed with some bad and every bad is mixed with some good. And thus one must go on. To fulfill our duty according to the circumstances that we are presented with.

This beautiful dichotomy, this interplay between both sides is what makes the game so beautiful and endearing; the what if scenarios and the repercussions of the decisions. Canonically you are only allowed to play as Jin Sakai and follow his choices to the ending of the game and only mourn the other side. But it leaves you with a beautiful afterthought of what really matters and what really matters in the larger scheme of things. Everyone has to fight a battle at their own Komoda beach. We must decide whether that particular moment requires the strength of a Samurai or the fluidity of a Ghost and to reach the right decision at the right time is the most honourable thing one can do or at least strive for. And thus, perhaps, not everyone’s honour dies at the beach. Some are reborn with it there.