The Samurai Cartoon Armies! E-Book

F.J. Guil Grund

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 116

Beschreibung

Fran Guil returns with a new visual and informative work. This time we travel to Sengoku-jidai Japan, the Country at War (16th century), where they fight day in and day out. The samurai are at their peak, but are these famous warriors really what we think they are? Are they really guided by bushido? Is the katana really the soul of the samurai? Sengoku samurai or Edo samurai - which is the real thing? Amusing, full-colour vignettes illustrate in detail the appearance and the most diverse situations of these legendary warriors. We will discover the real protagonists of the battlefields of the time: the ashigarus (light-footed). Sieges, battles, Mongols, warrior monks, samurai women, Korea, the arrival of the Portuguese, the arquebus, the recipe for oniguiri. And we'll still find time to talk about ninjas! In the same vein as the previous The Late Roman Cartoon Army! (2020), this book is short, succinct and entertaining. The protagonists are undoubtedly the more than 50 drawings that, accompanied by an explanatory text, make up the chapters of the book. In this case, the reference to films reinforces this visual work.

Leseprobe

INDEX

PREFACE AND THANKS

INTRODUCTION

SENGOKU JIDAI 1467-1615 (All Against All)

Oda Nobunaga

Toyotomi Hideyoshi,

Tokugawa Ieyasu

SAMURAI WORLD

Samurai

Minamoto No Yoshitsune

Mongolian Invasions 1274 and 1281

Daimyō (The Great Man)

DRAWING ATTENTION

Sashimonos And Other Banners

Communications And Signals

Jinmaku (The Command Post)

Oh, I Challenge You! (The Daimyō In Battle)

An Example: Ii Naomasa (And His "Red Devils")

LOGISTICS

Bows & Katanas

More Than Katanas

Kabutos & Armours

Armed To The Teeth

Tate & Tedate (Shields)

Horo (Or The Arrow-Stopping Cloak!)

Feeding The Troops

Off We Go!

Camping

Jin-Ya (Fortified Camp)

Medic!

RECRUITMENT

Koku (The More You Have,

The More You Contribute)

Ronin (Wave Men)

Ashigaru (“Light-Footed”)

PREPARING FOR BATTLE

Martial Arts (Training Mind And Body)

Group Training

Yari (Spear)

Archers Teppo (Arquebusiers)

Samurai And Ships

MISCELLANY (Essential Characters)

The Portuguese (Nanban The Southern Barbarians)

Monks (Buddhism)

Sōhei

(

Warrior Monks)

Ikkō-Ikki

(

Devotee League Revolts)

Shinobi (Spies In The Shadows)

Onna Bugeisha (Master Women Of Combat)

THE BATTLE

Before The Battle (Rituals)

Formations

Orderly Chaos (The Battle Line),

Nagashino 1575 (Concentrated Fire)

The Invasion Of Korea 1592-1598 (The Imjin War)

Sekigahara 1600 (The Great Betrayal)

Heads Will Roll! (Rituals After Battle)

Plunder And Pillage

CASTLES AND SIEGES

Yamashiro (The Mountain Castle) 12th Century

Towers Of Power 16th Century

Besieged

Besieging

Takamatsu 1582 (The "Floating" Castle)

The Great Siege Of Osaka 1615

He Siege Of Hara 1638 (The Last Battle)

THE TWILIGHT OF THE SAMURAI (Edo Period)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PREFACE AND THANKS

As in my first work, "The Late Roman Cartoon Army!", I have tried in this volume to be as simple and yet as enjoyable as possible. And I repeat the formula again: lots of illustrations, funny, colourful and historical. Yes, historical because they have been thoroughly documented to show a samurai world without clichés.

I include again references to films, anecdotes or notes that help to understand the text.

"The samurai armies", the title already tells us that it was not a single centralised army as, for example, in the Roman Empire. However, obviously, these samurai armies share many characteristics given the idiosyncrasies of warfare in medieval Japan, a "home war" affair.

To refer to the historical characters in this work, we will use the Japanese form, where the surname precedes the first name. Also, an important samurai could change his name several times in his life, so we will only use the one by which he is best known.

The samurai world known to the West is shrouded in legend, romanticism and quite a few exaggerations; it is tempting to believe in bushido, the mythical katana and samurai counting cherry blossom petals as they duel. However, the samurai of the Sengoku period is very different from the character so adored by pop culture. I myself grew up reading about this code of honour, tragic harakiri (ritual suicides) and duels in the alleys of Edo, but my hobby as a reenactor has led me to interpret the sources and helped me to distinguish between folklore, legend, exaggeration or pure invention about historical events, attires or weapons of the past. You can also enjoy a Takeda Shingen and a Rurouni Kenshin!

Discover their weapons, their extravagant armour, their courage... but also their despair for victory and survival on the battlefield.

War is never a pretty thing, despite the colourful drawings, if a child reads the book, better with the company of an adult. It is a merely informative book, let's not ask for more than what it gives.

I would like to thank my patrons for their contribution and my friends/family for this birthday present by financing the book: Andrea Höller, Olga López, Javier Muñoz, Mariló González, Paco López, Mariví del Castillo, José Ruiz, Patri Rodríguez, Ale Martínez-Abarca, Rocío Sánchez, Martín Lago, Bea Fernández, Javier Gallardo, Davinia Pérez, Fernando (Guipú) Grund, Carmen Laguna, Francisco Castrillón, Nuria Quintana, Luis Garralón, José (Joseffo) Martín, Sali Garrido, Nati Guil, Ale Guil, and my dear Mara Correyero.

I dedicate the book to my MOTHER, Natividad Grund, giving her back a little bit of everything she has given me.

INTRODUCTION

I must warn the reader that this book is not about Bushido, honour, harakiri or the soul of any samurai (referring to his legendary sword, the katana). It is a simple text about the samurai armies of the total war period "SENGOKU JIDAI" (1467-1615). With a critical spirit: the samurai, the bushi, as the warriors were generally called in medieval Japan, they were nothing like the samurai the western world knows. The image that has reached the West is a romantic and rewritten one created during the peaceful Edo period. The Tokugawa shogunate establishes a peace that turns thousands of warriors into idle civil servants. The samurai of the 1700s never set foot on a battlefield, nor did they have to survive on it. Nostalgic, they revisited the ancient texts and stories and reinvented them into a fascinating culture of a legendary warrior caste of strict code and temperance, masters of the sword and ready to succumb by their own hand, for honour.

I will not cite sources, since Japanese authors are strangers to the non-academic public, and even less so if we do not speak Japanese. I find it unhelpful to talk about authors whose names we would not even know how to pronounce, or to lose the reader in quotes. I will include an extensive bibliography at the end. Nor will I go to the predictable sources that all lovers of the samurai world would expect:

Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakuré. Written in 1716 and not published until the beginning of the 20th century. This gentleman, although a samurai, was a civil servant with no martial training due to poor health.

Budo Shoshin-Shu by Daidoji Yuzan (1639-1730). Yes, the author of the famous quote "a samurai must first of all bear in mind the fact that he is going to die...". In the West the book was called "The Code of the Samurai".

Bushido Zasshi 1898. A magazine that brought together intellectuals and thinkers. This is when the term BUSHIDO first appears as such.

Bushido, the soul of Japan 1899 by Nitobe Inazo. Economist raised and educated outside Japan; in fact, the book was written directly in English, in the United States. There is little mention of Japanese sources.

And the most well-known: "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword" by the American anthropologist Ruth Benedict (1946). Written without stepping in Japan, based on Japanese literature (possibly the same books that I did not want to use as sources) and interviews with Japanese living in the United States. Used to explain Japanese idiosyncrasies, not specifically samurai.

I do NOT use them because they do not describe or explain the samurai of the SENGOKU JIDAI. Simply because the samurai of the "Country at War" were not the same as those of the Edo period.

Historians specialising in Japan from the 12th to the 16th centuries have been unable to find any text from the period that can be said to be a precedent for a "Bushido code".

Even after this speech, I do not intend to attack the samurai myth, I will summarise the concept of what I want to convey... with a SPOILER! In the 1979 film "G.I. Samurai" (Sengoku Jieitai) a group of Japanese soldiers from the 20th century, after a strange temporal phenomenon, end up in the Japanese medieval period, in the middle of the fight between two daimyō (feudal lords), circumstances make it seem that they help and join forces with one of them. The daimyō who benefits sees the opportunity and makes use of modern soldiers and their modern weapons. After defeating his opponent and emerging victorious, he betrays and kills his former allies. Moral of the story, in the end the captain of the modern soldiers, admirer of samurai culture and master of swordsmanship challenges the daimyō to a sword fight; nevertheless, this one takes a gun and shoots the "modern samurai". Behind the fantasticness of the plot, what becomes clear to us is that the practical Sengoku samurai does not risk the duel and uses what gives him certain victory, without any concern for honour.

The "time bubble" produced by the Tokugawa government's closure of Japan has favoured that an enormous amount of artefacts, iconography and texts have survived to the present day (there were samurai until 140 years ago). It is possible to find reliable and abundant sources that, analysed in their context (armours, swords, battle scrolls, decorated screens), bring us back to medieval Japan as if time had not passed since the 17th century. I cite as very interesting the illustrated stories Ehon Taikoki (The Illustrated Chronicles of the Regent) and the Ehon Toyotomi Gunki (Toyotomi Chronicles), both from the 19th century.

← The samurai on the left, in full armour, wears a sashimono (banner) on his back that identifies him in the heat of battle. This three-dimensional object is the vajra (diamond/ lightning bolt) known as sanko-sho (the Three Mysteries). Like the breastplate of the armour, shaped like a monk's belly, these two pieces speak of the Buddhist faith of the wearer. His enemies would know how to perfectly interpret the complex "heraldry" of this warrior.

I. SENGOKU JIDAI

SENGOKU JIDAI 1467-1615 (ALL AGAINST ALL)

We can define the Sengoku Jidai (Warring States Period) as a state of total war from 1467 (Onin War) to 1615, the beginning of the Edo period, which will plunge the country into a fog of isolation and peace under the triumphant Tokugawa clan and its shoguns for 250 years.

The shōgun was a military officer, "commander of the army". Appointed by the emperor, he became a general administrator of the state, with a de facto greater power than the emperor himself. His government, the bakufu ("camp government", which reminds us of its military origin), makes all the country's decisions and accumulates total power. But these "rulers" do not always have sufficient authority and charisma and they are soon challenged and fought by the provincial lords who have the wealth and power to do so. There is no clear central power and the emperor has for centuries been merely a figurehead with no real power (there may even be several emperors at the same time, fatuous ones, who only serve to legitimise the pretenders to the office of shogun).

What happens over the next century and a half is a rise and fall of successive warlords, who, with greater or lesser success, strove for the office of shogun. The different provincial lords ally themselves or fight as it suits them (or dragged by circumstances). Powerful Buddhist temples, popular rebellions, and the arrival of Westerners (Portuguese) influence events. This state of chaos favours the appearance of charismatic characters, a peasant can prosper to the top or a samurai of ancient ancestry can be overwhelmed by the events that follow one after the other quickly and dramatically and disappear from history; it is the gekokujō ("the inferior triumphs over the superior"). Even the traditional way of waging war changed and large armies fought across the land, with new tactics and weapons. Neighbouring Korea is invaded (disastrously) and the state of insecurity throughout Japan is so apocalyptic that no fiefdom, province or clan is unaffected.

And it is in this chaos of blood and destruction that our book takes place.

ODA NOBUNAGA 1534-1582

Here I briefly tell the story of one of the three main warlords of the period. With him begins the real unification of the country and he is one of the most interesting and popular characters in the cultural imagination and folklore of Japan.

From a middle-class samurai family, he stood out for his extravagance, rude manners and cruelty. He faced his brothers for power after the death of their father and did not hesitate to kill them. Bold, he attacked rival clans and he was gradually gaining power and conquest, gathering around him loyal vassals such as Toyotomi Hydeyosi and Tokugawa Iyeasu (curiously, the other two great Sengoku Jidai rulers).

Famous for his surprise attack at Okehazama, he defeated the Imagawa clan with just three thousand men under a storm. He faces insurgents of the Iga province (land of the shinobi), who due to their guerrilla tactics are difficult to defeat. The warrior monks and their rich temples on Mount Hiei are a political interference and he does not hesitate to slaughter them (he may well learn from them the arquebus tactics he will use later). He intervenes in "national politics", first by being an ally and then by deposing the Shogun Asikaga. He faces the other two great lords of the time, Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin who, by chance of fate, both die of natural causes (although legends point to other causes). Takeda Katsuyori succeeds Shingen, but he is no match for Nobunaga, who defeats him at Nagashino, a battle famous for its use of arquebusiers. With several open fronts he seems unstoppable, but the betrayal of one of his generals, Akechi Mitsuhide, slows down his meteoric rise. He is attacked when he was barely protected and surrounded by enemies, he commits seppuku (suicide), disappearing from history among the flames of Honnō-ji temple.

Pro-Westerner, he welcomes the Portuguese Jesuits, even shows interest in Christianity; Portuguese arquebuses are also of his interest. He builds Azuchi Castle and is a great patron of the arts (he gives his name to the Momoyama period).