Shogun: Total War manual

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Manual Cover - SHOGUN TOTAL WAR GOLD EDITION

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CONTIENT SHOGUN: TOTAL WAR™ ET L'EXTENSION OFFICIELLE

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CONTIENE SHOGUN: TOTAL WAR™

E L’ESPANSIONE UFFICIALE MONGOL INVASION

INCLUDES INCLUDES SHOGUN: TOTAL WARSHOGUN: TOTAL WAR™

AND THE AND THE OFFICIAL EXPANSION PACKOFFICIAL EXPANSION PACK,MONGOL INVASIONMONGOL INVASION

INCLUDES SHOGUN: TOTAL WAR™

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1

Introduction ......................2

1: A History of Japan ........6

Early Japan ............................ 7

The Rise of the Samurai ...... 8

The Gempei War ................10

The Early Shoguns ..............11

Sengoku:The Country At War ..........12

The Last Shogunate ............28

History In The Game ..........29

The Daimyo In Shogun: Total War ............................30

2: The Samurai ........................34Bushido:The Way of the Warrior......35Arms & Armour ................39Samurai Armies ..................46Army units ..........................50Castles & Siege Warfare ....58Artillery In Japan ................59Naval Forces In Japan ........60Strategic Units In Shogun: Total War ............................60

3: THE LAND OF THEDAIMYO ..................................64

Rebellions, Peasant Revolts & Ronin ................67

Military Buildings in Shogun: Total War ..........................70

4: Three SamuraiCampaigns ..............................80

A Tactical Revolution ..........81

The Battles of Oda Nobunaga, 1560-1575 ..........................82

The Battles of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 1582-1590 ........89

The Battles of Tokugawa Ieyasu, 1564-1600 ..........................94

5: The Mongols ............101Who were the Mongols? ......101Temujin ................................102Kublai Khan ..........................106The Invasion of Japan ..........109The Mongol Army ................113Mongol Military Units in Shogun: Total War ..............................118

Credits ..................................120

Licence ..................................121

Warranty ..............................123

Product Support....................123

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Introduction“If you know your enemy and know yourself, you will not be imperilled by a

hundred battles. If you do not know the others but do know yourself, you will win

one and lose one. If you do not know the enemy and do not know yourselves you

will be in danger in every battle.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Much of Shogun: Total War™ — Gold Edition is set in the Sengoku period of Japanesehistory. Now, unless you’re a Japanese historian and recognise that this means “TheCountry at War”, that probably doesn’t mean very much to you. By the time you’replaying the game (and if you’ve read at least some of this manual), you will realise thatthis is one of the most dramatic and exciting times in the history of Japan. In fact, it’sone of the most dramatic and exciting periods of history anywhere in the world!

“Act after having made assessments. The one who first knows the measure of far

and near wins — this is the rule of armed struggle.”


In the space of a little of over one hundred years, samurai armies fought for control ofJapan. They were lead by the daimyo, a group of hugely powerful warlords whowould have been kings and princes in their own right anywhere else in the world.Some of the daimyo were undoubtedly heroes, and some were undoubtedly uttermonsters, but all of them were vastly ambitious! You’re about to be pitched into themiddle of this epic struggle between the daimyo. The prize is to become shogun, themilitary ruler of Japan, and the controller of the nation’s destiny. The shogun is a morepowerful man than the Emperor himself. The reward is tremendous, but the price offailure is death for you and your adopted clan!

“To perceive victory when it is known to all is not really skilful… It does not take

much strength to lift a hair, it does not take sharp eyes to see the sun and moon,

it does not take sharp ears to hear the thunderclap.”


History and warfare doesn’t happen by accident. You’ll understand the game muchbetter if you read at least some of this manual. You don’t have to remembereverything (there’s no test on this stuff, we promise), but if you do know why daimyoA hates daimyo B but is willing to do a deal with clan C, you’ll have a lot more funwhile you’re playing. At the very least, it’ll explain who all these people are, and whoknows, it might even help you win Shogun: Total War — Gold edition! Think like adaimyo, and you’ll win like a daimyo!

“Those who know when to fight and when not to fight are victorious.”


The game has been designed and programmed to think like the daimyo and follow theideas of Sun Tzu, the Chinese author of The Art of War. If you do the same and followhis principles of warfare, you will triumph and end up as the new shogun!

“When on surrounded ground, plot. When on deadly ground, fight.”


So trust no one. Keep your friends close… but remember to keep your enemiescloser still!

So who was Sun Tzu?All through the Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition game and this manual, you’ll findreferences to — and quotes from — Sun Tzu, and most especially his book, The Art ofWar. So why was a Chinese writer who’d been dead for centuries so important to thesamurai?

“In ancient times skilful warriors first made themselves invincible, and then

watched for vulnerability in their opponents.”


Sun Tzu was a contemporary of the great philosopher Confucius, and lived around500 B.C. in the kingdom of Qi, which is roughly the modern Shandong province inEastern China. During his life, China was being torn apart by a series of wars as lesserstates fought for dominance. None of these states recognised the central authority ofthe Zhou Imperial dynasty any more. As you’ll see later, this is a similar state of affairsto the Sengoku period in Japan.

Sun Tzu was therefore quite familiar with warfare in all its forms. He is supposed tohave written his book for Helü, the King of Wu during 514-496 B.C. He ruled part ofthe lower Yangtze Valley and was locked in constant warfare with the rival kingdom ofYue. Other than that, little is known about Sun Tzu’s life. Biographies from as little as300 years after he was alive don’t include much more definite information than that,other than repeating the tale of how Sun Tzu convinced his king that he knew how totrain soldiers.

The story goes that Sun Tzu claimed he could train anyone to obey military orders,and so the King challenged him to turn the court concubines into soldiers. Naturally,the women were far from being any kind of soldiers (much less good ones) anddisobeyed all of Sun Tzu’s orders. He explained his instructions carefully and patientlyand tried again, with equally disastrous results. Having done all that he could as acommander, he ordered that the leading concubines should be put to death, as onceorders have been clearly explained it is the duty of the soldiers to obey!

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The King wasn’t very happy about the idea of his two favourite concubines beingexecuted, and told Sun Tzu that he really did believe he could train troops using hismethods. Sun Tzu replied that once a general is directing his troops, he should rejectfurther interference from his sovereign. It’s the ruler’s job to find the best general, andthen let him get on with winning the war. The women were put to death.

All at once the rest of the concubines suddenly discovered that they could, oddlyenough, obey any orders to the letter. And although he was rather put out by thedeath of his favourite courtesans, the King of Wu recognised that Sun Tzu knew whathe was talking about…

What is known for certain about Sun Tzu comes from his key work on the theory andpractice of warfare, The Art of War. He was obviously a clever man, a clear thinker andsomeone with practical military experience. Sun Tzu took his accumulated knowledgeof how to fight wars and applied careful thought to the problems that he had found.The product of all his thought was the earliest book in the whole world on what mightbe termed the philosophy and practice of warfare.

His book, however, is more than just a “how to win” handbook on Chinese warfare.Although a study of warfare, The Art of War applies to situations on every level fromthe interpersonal to the international. Its aims are invincibility, victory without battleand unassailable strength through understanding every aspect of conflict. This is aremarkable set of claims for any book. What is even more remarkable is that The Artof War achieves all it sets out to do! It lays strategy in such a clear and wise fashionthat at times it almost seems too straightforward and obvious — almost too simple —to be right.

“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious,

even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the controllers of your

opponent’s fate…”


Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition uses the strategies and lessons found in The Art of Waras a majorpart of game play. The game has been programmed to follow Sun Tzu’s preceptsbecause the daimyo and their samurai did so too. Over the centuries, the Japanesehave had a long tradition of taking the best and most useful ideas from Chinese culturewhile managing to keep their independence. The Art of War was one of the manybooks that arrived from the mainland and was seized upon by the Japanese for itsgood sense and usefulness. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why the Sengokuperiod was as violent as it became. Had only one of the great daimyo warlords readand learned from Sun Tzu, the wars would have been over very quickly. However,they had all learned from the same master of strategy. The samurai took Sun Tzu’s book and used its wisdom in their many wars, but theyalso brought their own unique Japanese perspective to the principles of warfare. In theprocess they gave warfare a character all their own:

“Cutting down the enemy is the Way of strategy, and there is no need for many

refinements of it.”

— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Wind Book

Sun Tzu would not necessarily have approved of Musashi’s apparently simplisticattitude at all!

Although times and weaponry have changed over the centuries, the problemsconfronting military commanders have not, and Sun Tzu remains as relevant today ashe was when he first formulated his thoughts, and when he was read assiduously bythe samurai. It is still considered essential reading by modern military strategists. Eventoday, The Art of War remains one of the definitive guides to warfare, and has beenread by great commanders the world over.

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1: A History of Japan“Military action is important to the nation — it is the ground of death and life,

the path of survival and destruction, so it is imperative to examine it.”


“There is a time and place for the use of weapons.”

— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Ground Book

Like many peoples, the Japanese have a creation myth that makes them the children of the gods. The Japanese home islands were created when the gods Izanagi and Izanami stood on the bridge ofheaven and stirred the waters of the Earth with a spear. The drops of water from the spear tip gathered together and became the Japanese home islands. The two then descended and raised the spear as the centre pole of their house.

Izanagi and Izanami had children. Their first-born was Amateratsu, the Sun Goddess,but like all families they had problems. Being gods, they had god-sized problems:Izanagi slew his second child, the Fire God, who had caused his mother, Izanami,enormous pain when he was born. Izanami fled into the Underworld in grief at thiskilling. Susano-o, their other son, was given to fits of temper. His violent behaviourincluded throwing thunderbolts across the sky, and he even threw a dead horse atAmateratsu, forcing her to hide in a cave. With the Sun Goddess in hiding, the worldwas plunged into darkness. The sight of her own beautiful reflection in a mirror and anecklace of precious jewels eventually tricked Amateratsu into coming out of herhiding place…

Susano-o did eventually make amends by slaying a great serpent with eight heads and tails. Theserpent had a taste for young maidens and this, along with an equal appetite for sake. Susano-oused both to lure the serpent into a trap, then slew it once it was drunk! In hacking it to pieces,he discovered a sword embedded in its tail which he then he gave to Amateratsu. This was theAme no murakomo no tsurugi or “Cloud Cluster Sword.” From almost the first moment ofJapanese history, there was a sword, and a sword with mystical powers at that.

As the first born child, Amateratsu inherited the earth and in time, Amateratsu sent hergrandson, Ninigi, to rule Japan. She gave him three gifts, the mirror, the jewels from thenecklace and the ‘Cloud Cluster Sword’ to make his task easier. These gifts from heavenbecame the Japanese Crown Jewels. The throne eventually passed to his grandson, Jimmu,who was the first earthly Emperor of Japan. He took the throne in 660BC on 11 February, adate which is still celebrated with a public holiday in Japan. The current Emperor is seen as alineal descendant of this first Emperor.

In around 200BC, Emperor Sujin and his son Prince Yamato (later Emperor Keiko) arethe agents of an important change in Japanese history. The nation at this time wascomposed of many clans, of which the strongest was the Imperial Yamato family. TheYamato (named for their home province in central Honshu) were one clan amongstmany – but they claimed the right to rule because they were descended directly fromthe Sun Goddess, Amateratsu. Sujin was the first Emperor to appoint four generals todeal with rebels in his realm. Each general was given the title of shogun (which can betranslated as “Commander in Chief” at this point in history). Yamato Sujin is a figurepartly of myth and partly of history. He is the prototype of later samurai heroes: askilled and noble warrior harried and hunted down by his many enemies who —although he comes to a tragic end, has a worthwhile death.

Early Japan“In ancient times skilful warriors first made themselves invincible, and then

watched for vulnerability in their opponents.”


More realistically but a lot less romantically — archaeology has revealed that therehave been humans in Japan for around 100,000 years. The original inhabitants of Japanwere the Ainu, a group unrelated to the Mongolian people who arrived and graduallydrove them out until the Ainu remained only on the island of Hokkaido. The incomingpeople were split up along tribal and clan lines, but over the course of time theYamato clan came to dominate from its central position on the Kanto plain. TheYamato chieftains also consolidated their power by making an early form of Shinto thegeneral religion of the country. After all, rebellion against the descendant of a god isnot as easy to contemplate as fighting another warlord!

During the early period of Yamato rule the influence of the mainland began to be feltin Japanese culture. Thanks to the relative ease of travel and trade from the kingdomof Paekche in southern Korea, iron, Chinese writing, literature and philosophy cameinto the Yamato lands. The Yamato regime even adopted Chinese script for itsdocuments, and the first dependable records in Japanese history date to around430AD. The Yamato also imported a religion too: Buddhism appeared in Japan about100 years later. Japan’s position off the mainland gave two benefits: culture, technologyand ideas could be brought into the country, but the voyage to Japan was just difficultenough to help keep out unwanted ideas and influences. That said, the Yamatogovernment was strongly based on the Chinese system: there were eight carefullygraded ranks of court official and a great council, the Dajokan, ruled through localgovernors. Everything was controlled from the capital — Nara in Yamato provinceafter 710AD — while Kyoto became the Imperial home and remained so until 1868.

Although the Yamato came to rule all of Japan, by the 9th century the Emperors wereactually pulling back from the day-to-day business of ruling a country. They werebecoming symbols of power rather than the wielders of power.

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As the Emperors retired from government, control passed to the court officials,particularly the Fujiwara family. The Emperors continued to reign, but they no longerruled the country. In 858AD, a Fujiwara prince, Yoshifusa, became the regent for hisone-year-old grandson (having made sure that his daughter had married into theImperial family). The Fujiwara also made sure that family members filled all theimportant jobs at court and in the general administration of the country. Eventually,Fujiwara Motosune was announced as the kampuku — a “civil dictator” — in 884, andhe was followed a century later by the cleverest of the Fujiwara, Michinaga. He madesure that five successive Emperors married one of his daughters, thus making sure ofthe family position at Court!

The Fujiwara period was a time when Japanese culture came into its own, leaving itsChinese-dominated roots behind. Michinaga’s dictatorship is one of the classical agesof Japanese literature, for example. At the same time, however, the Fujiwara werechanging the way that Japan was governed. The central government became corruptand weak. Land ownership started shifting to great estates: nobles who heldgovernment offices were given tax-free hereditary estates as payments. Many peasantsand lesser landholders were only too happy to hand over their property to theseestates to escape from the heavy taxes levied on them!

The Rise of the Samurai“Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.”


At around the same time, the samurai were coming to prominence as more thanjust another group of fighting men. Like the medieval knights of Europe, the samurai were the leaders of common footsoldiers. Like the knights it was possible to win promotion to the ranks of the samurai. And like the knights, to be samurai also implied a degree of service to a superior. In the case of the samurai, this service was to the Emperor, a noble

or a warlord. The word samurai had its roots in the verb “to serve”.The Imperial government found samurai incredibly useful in putting down rebellions,but with the shift in power to mighty landowners, the loyalties of the samurai shifted.The samurai came to serve the great lords, fighting against bandits, rebellious localsand other great landlords. Although some of these samurai were from humblefamilies, the clans that prospered could trace their ancestors back for centuries, oftento some (minor) Imperial relative banished from Court to seek his fortune elsewhere.Among these clans of aristocratic samurai were the Minamoto in the east and theTaira in the south west of Japan.

No longer content to merely serve and fight, the samurai began to interfere ingovernment politics. It’s worth considering all the political and military action thathappened over the next decades, because it set the pattern for later Japanese history:a pattern of ruthless power politics with the winner taking all and losers, well, literallylosing their heads!

In 1155 there was a crisis in the Imperial succession. There were two ex-Emperors atthe Imperial Court and new Emperor Konoe was a sickly child. When Konoe waspoisoned the Fujiwara clan backed ex-Emperor Sotoku. His father, however, was theex-Emperor Toba and he insisted that another one of his sons should be the newEmperor, and therefore Go-Shirakawa dutifully ascended the throne. Toba, however,died in 1156 and both the Emperor Sotoku and Emperor Go-Shirakawa summonedtheir supporters to the capital. The Taira and Minamoto clans divided by personalloyalties, but the important point was that it was the samurai that were to decide thecourse of Imperial politics, not the Fujiwara court officials, who had always done so inthe past. Japan was going to learn what it was like to be ruled by the sword from thistime on.

“The Way of the warrior is death. This means choosing death whenever there is a

choice between life and death. It means nothing more than this. It means to see

things through, being resolved.”

— Yamamoto Tsunenori, Ha Gakure (Hidden Leaves)

At the Battle of Hogen, Sotuku’s samurai were defeated. Emperor Go-Shirakawa hadan expectation that the defeated samurai would pay the price for their defiance. Theonly important Taira samurai to support Sotuku was so unpopular among his kinsmenthat his execution was a forgone conclusion. The Minamoto family had backed Sotukuin greater strength and their clan leader, Minamoto Tameyoshi was put to death onthe orders of his son, Yoshitomo in an act of loyalty to the new regime. Tameyoshi’sson (and Yoshitomi’s brother), Tametomo, was deliberately maimed and exiled, butchose death instead. He became one of the first samurai to kill himself by cutting openhis own stomach in an act of hara-kiri.

All these deaths helped the Taira clan rise rapidly to power in the Imperial Court.Once he was secure, Emperor Go-Shirakawa decided that he had had enough ofruling and abdicated in favour of his son, Nijo. Their leader, Taira Kiyomori, took a leafout of the Fujiwara book, declared that he was now Prime Minister and began a policyof making sure that Imperial wives and concubines came from the Taira clan. Therewere, however, still members of the Minamoto clan at court, and the Fujiwara clanpersuaded them that revenge was a very good idea. All in all, the Minamoto didn’ttake much persuading.

This time, in 1159-60, the civil war that followed was a straightforward fight betweenthe Taira and the Minamoto. Although the war seemed to go well initially for theMinamoto, events soon turned against them. The Taira attacked the Minamotoheadquarters, and then lured them into a counter-attack that failed when MinamotoYorimasa refused to join in because he could not violate his duty to the Emperor. Thesurviving Minamoto were pursued and slaughtered without mercy.

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Minamoto Yoshitomo fled with three of his sons. One of them, Tomonaga, was sobadly wounded that he begged his father to kill him so that the others could flee withmore speed. Yoshimoto did this, but to no avail. He was caught and murdered in hisbath, taken when he thought he had outrun his pursuers. Taira Kiyomori literallybeheaded the Minamoto clan. Tomonaga didn’t escape execution, even though hisfather had already killed him. His body was dug up and beheaded too!

The Gempei War“A good army should be like a swift snake that counters with its tail when

someone strikes at its head, counters with its head when its tail is struck, and

counters with both when someone strikes it in the middle. Can an army be made

like this swift snake? It can. Even people who dislike one another will help the

others out of trouble if they are in the same boat.”


Taira Kiyomori was seemingly unassailable. He had beaten his samurai rivals and theFujiwara. In 1180 his grandson (via his daughter), Emperor Antoku, took the throne.Kiyomori, however, hadn’t quite killed all the Minamoto and in 20 years the survivorshad become strong enough to challenge him once again.

The Gempei War would last for five years. The seemingly odd name of the war comesfrom the Chinese pronunciation of ideographs in the Taira and Minamoto clan names.Once again, the Minamoto and Fujiwara opposed the Taira, but this time they weresupported by the sohei, warrior monks from the temples of Nara and Kyoto. As anaside, these warrior monks (who despite being monks were actually often fanaticallybrave fighters) intervened at several critical points in Japanese history. You’ll see in amoment that groups of monks came to be a considerable problem for later warlords.Again, the Taira were initially successful, defeating the Minamoto army at the battles ofUji and Ishibashiyama.

In 1183 the course of the war began to swing towards the Minamoto. They won aseries of brilliant victories, culminating in 1185 with the Battle of Dano-Ura. Both theTaira and Minamoto clans boarded fleets of warships and sailed into the Straits ofShimonoseki. What happened at the Battle of Dano-Ura was virtually a land battlefought from ship to ship. The sea is supposed to have run red with blood during thebattle as the Minamoto smashed the Taira army. In the middle of the Taira fleet wasthe Emperor Antoku. He was still a child and the symbol of Taira and Imperiallegitimacy, and thus an important element of the Taira claim to rule Japan. EmperorAntoku was drowned, and his deeply symbolic replica of the Ame no murakomo notsurugi, the “Cloud Cluster Sword” that the Sun Goddess herself had given the originalEmperor was lost overboard too. Fortunately, it was just a replica, but the symbolicdamage done was almost as bad as if the original had gone. If this seems odd, it’sworth remembering that the Emperors were, for all the clans who were seeking tocontrol them, the direct descendants of the Sun Goddess and as important for theirsymbolism as such as for any earthly power that came through controlling them.

The Early Shoguns“Thus one advances without seeking glory, retreats without avoiding blame, only

protecting the people to the benefit of the ruler as well, thus rendering valuable

service to the country.”


His military victory secured, Minamoto Yoritomo did not bother with any of the politicalmanoeuvring at the Imperial Court that the Taira and the Fujiwara had tried. His power wasbased on his armies, not on Imperial family connections. The Emperor was forced intoretirement, becoming just a symbol. Yoritomo took the title and office of seiitaishogun(usually shortened to shogun), the “commander-in-chief for suppressing barbarians”.Yoritomo also moved the centre of power to Kamakura on the Kanto plain (near modernTokyo). The old Imperial Court was ignored and became largely irrelevant to the running ofthe country. The first of the true shoguns had arrived.

Eventually, however, the Hojo clan replaced the Minamoto family. They did it through aclever series of murders and conspiracies that killed every Minamoto heir and many of theirsupporters. The new Hojo rulers, however, never bothered becoming shoguns. Instead,they appointed a series of puppets to the role, including even young children! The Hojoruled as shikken, or regents, which meant that there was a figurehead shogun nominallyruling for a distant, symbolic Emperor, while a third person with actual power really ran thecountry! The Hojo knew that power meant more than any title.

This arrangement worked well enough for the Hojo to hold on to power until 1333. In1274 and 1281, the Hojo were able organise Japanese resistance to two invasions by KublaiKhan, the ruler of the Mongols. The 1281 expedition was finally destroyed by the kami-kaze, the divine wind that saved Japan. Beating the Mongols, however, had weakened Hojoresources and power slipped away from the clan. They were unable to resist whenEmperor Go-Daigo brought about a restoration of Imperial power in 1333.

Go-Daigo did try to do away with the shogunate, but he was frustrated in this when hisvassals the Ashikaga rebelled. The Ashikaga drove Emperor Go-Daigo from Kyoto and setup yet another Emperor under their direct control. The “Wars between the Courts”dragged on for 56 years as Go-Daigo and his heirs fought against the Ashikaga shoguns andtheir emperors. In 1392, however, an Ashikaga ambassador convinced the enemy (and true)Emperor to abdicate and give up the Crown Jewels and other Imperial regalia.

With their puppet branch of the Yamato family now seen as the rightful Emperors, theAshigaka shoguns now came into their own, but their rule was not to go unchallenged. In1441 the shogun Ashigaka Yoshinori was assassinated and was followed by his eight-year-oldson. He too died, and was followed by his (even) younger brother, Yoshimasa. Even thoughhe lasted for 30 years as shogun, Yoshimasa couldn’t — or more correctly wouldn’t — haltthe decline of his family fortunes. Real power had passed from the shogun to the othergreat samurai families who had become a class of hereditary feudal lords called daimyo. TheAshikaga shoguns were never able to control these daimyo, and this failure was to lead to acentury of terrible violence.

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Sengoku: The Country At War“Confront your troops with annihilation and then they will survive; plunge them

into a deadly situation and then they will live. When people fall into danger, they

are then able to strive for victory.”


The time from 1477 to 1615 is called the Sengoku Period, which translates as “TheCountry at War”. This is the main period of Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition.

The Ashikaga period was one of great refinement of manners, of great art and literaryworks and, incidentally, marked the rise of Buddhism as a political force. While theAshikaga shoguns became more interested in the intricacies of the tea ceremony andpoetry, other forces were on the move. The great landowners and the greatest of thesamurai had become one and the same thing. These men owned huge tracts of landand commanded armies that would have been the envy of kings. They were thedaimyo.

The word daimyo can be translated as “one who aspires to something better” andaspirations to power were not noticeable by their absence among the daimyo! All thedaimyo were ambitious and the greatest of them certainly nurtured dreams ofreplacing the Ashikaga shogunate. This is quite understandable, because the Ashikagawere no longer capable of effective government. Ashikaga Yoshimasa, for example,tried to abdicate as shogun and pawned his armour to pay for his expensive pastimes,such as flower-viewing parties! This is hardly what you would expect of a “Barbarian-subduing Commander in Chief”, and it was not the sort of behaviour that was goingto keep control of increasingly belligerent daimyo, who had little reason to respect thefeeble authority of such a shogun.

The Ikki and The Ashigaru“Using order to deal with the disorderly, using calm to deal with the clamorous,

is mastering the heart.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarThe daimyo weren’t alone in aspiring to something better. By the early years of the15th century the traditionally docile peasantry had reached the end of its patience. Byand large — and unlike European peasants of the same era — Japanese peasants wereusually safe from the armies that tramped across their fields. Apart from having cropsdamaged or stolen, they didn’t have to worry about war destroying their lives.Japanese peasants were unlikely to be murdered, raped or impressed into in one armyor another.

Instead, they had another problem: the shogun’s taxmen. Expensive pastimes andrefined tastes need money to pay for them, and the Ashikaga’s tax collectors raisedthat money with consummate efficiency. At times, they took up to seventy percent ofharvests in taxes! In return, the peasants got nothing.

This wasn’t a situation that was likely to make the peasants feel well disposed towardstheir masters.

And it wasn’t just the peasants on the bottom rung of society who were suffering.There had always been the ji-samurai, a class of “gentleman farmers” in betweensamurai who did nothing but fight and the peasants who did nothing but work theland. The ji-samurai worked the land, but also went to war during campaign seasons.Like the lesser peasantry, they too were being squeezed out of existence by taxes, orbeing driven to seek the protection of the daimyo. This protection came in return forhanding over all their lands to the daimyo’s clan, of course.

Something had to give, and what gave was the patience of the people. The ji-samuraiand the peasants came together in mutual defence leagues or ikki. These leagues werea genuine expression of popular discontent and gave rise to a series of revolts: in 1428a rising in Kyoto triggered further revolts throughout Japan. In 1441 the ikki returnedto Kyoto again, driven there by high taxes and endless debts, virtually besieging thecity in an outburst of rioting and arson. After a week of violence, the Ashikagashogunate cancelled the peasants’ debts to the moneylenders and pawnbrokers(which undoubtedly did nothing for the shogun’s standing with the same moneylendersand pawnbrokers he needed to finance his own loans!) and set the pattern for futurebehaviour by the Ikki. They came back to Kyoto in 1447, 1451, 1457 and 1461. In1457, the Ikki even managed to defeat an army of 800 samurai who had been sentagainst them!

“The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so

that they will share death and share life, without fear of danger.”


The other escape for a peasant from the oppressive taxman was to run away and joinone or other of the many clan armies under a daimyo. All that he needed was armourand weaponry, and these were easy to obtain. Thanks to years of warfare Japan was acountry awash with weapons. The possibility of elevation from the ranks of peasantrywas slight but it was there and there was always booty to be taken. These peasantsoldiers the ashigaru (or “light feet”, as the word directly translates) were a usefulasset to a good commander, even if their discipline left a lot to be desired. From thestart, the ashigaru were notorious for looting (seeing this as a “perk” of their job andextra pay), and their morale was not that of the true samurai. But in the wars thatfollowed every daimyo made extensive use of ashigaru troops to support their samuraiwarriors — they became an indispensable and relatively cheap source of militarymight.

It’s also worth noting that the ashigaru and the Ikki were a definite change in the socialpattern of Japan, and in the warfare of the time. They mark the start of a trend calledgekokujo, or “the low oppress the high” by Japanese historians. This trend was toculminate during the Sengoku period with vassals overthrowing established warriorclans, the very liege-lords to whom they should have been loyal to the point of death.

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But clearly, with all these troubles and changes in the “natural order” of the Japanesesocial hierarchy, the Ashikaga shogun was in no position to dictate terms to thedaimyo when he had to give way to mere rebellious peasants.

The situation was ripe for trouble, and that trouble wasn’t long in coming.

The Onin War“Act after having made calculations. The one who first knows the measure of far

and near wins — this is the rule of armed struggle.”


With the start of the Onin War in 1467 the “Country at War” becomes more than justa phrase. So called because the fighting began in the first year of the period of Onin,the war was different because nearly all the fighting happened within the city of Kyotoitself. Even after the Ikki-inspired rioting of the previous decades, the capital was stillthe most magnificent city in Japan.

The War began when the shogun, Yoshimasa — the same shogun who had tried topawn his armour to pay for his tea ceremonies — proclaimed his brother, Yoshimi, tobe his heir. He even dragged Yoshimi out of a monastery to do it! A year later,Yoshimasa changed his mind when his first son, Yoshihisa, was born.

While all this was happening, the Yamana and Hosokawa clans were looking for anexcuse to fight each other. They had spent long years as rivals. With two candidates tobe the next shogun, it was almost inevitable that each family would choose to back adifferent side. Yamana Sozen, called the “Red Monk” thanks to his terrible temper andmembership of the priesthood, decided to support the infant heir, Yoshihisa.Hosokawa Katsumoto threw his clan behind Yoshimi, the current shogun’s brother.Just to add fuel to the fire and make the struggle even more bitter and personal, thetwo leaders were related, as Yamana Sozen was the father-in-law of HosokawaKatsumoto.

The two sides gathered their armies in Kyoto. The Yamana gathered 80,000 samuraiand other soldiers, while the Hosokawa forces numbered some 85,000 men. Thenumbers involved are interesting, and show just how wealthy Japan was at this time.Compared to European armies of the same time, these are enormous numbers,especially when it is remembered that these are clan not national armies. Forexample, during the Wars of the Roses in England — a civil war on the other side ofthe world that was happening at this time — the armies raised rarely numbered morethan about 10-12,000 men on each side, and these were considered large by Englishstandards.

“When you are going to attack nearby, make it look as if you are going to go a

long way; when you are going to attack far away, make it look as if you are going

just a short distance. Draw them in with the prospect of gain, take them by

confusion.”


Neither side, however, could quite bring itself to start the war. The side that struckfirst ran the risk of being called rebels by the weak shogunate, and a rebel wouldinevitably lose support. Eventually, however, the tension grew too great. With another20,000 Yamana men marching on Kyoto, a Hosokawa mansion mysteriously burnt tothe ground. Then Hosokawa troops attacked a Yamana food supply line. It didn’t takemuch longer for the serious fighting to begin and by July 1467 — after two monthsfighting — the northern parts of Kyoto were in ruins. The two sides settled downbehind hasty barricades and began static warfare of raids and counter-raids. Everyoneelse fled Kyoto and the armies took over.

The war went on and on, as neither side could actually work out a way of stoppingthe fighting. Yamana Sozen and Hosokawa Katsumoto both died in 1473, and the warstill dragged on. Eventually, however, the Yamana lost heart as the label of “rebel” wasat last having some effect. Ouchi Masahiro, one of the Yamana generals, eventuallyburned his section of Kyoto and left. It was 1477, some ten years after the fighting hadbegun! Kyoto was now looted as the mobs moved in to take what was left. Neitherclan had achieved its aims, other than to kill some of the other clan.

During all of this the shogun did nothing. Ashikaga Yoshimasa can only be described ashaving a “passing acquaintance” with reality. He certainly didn’t seem to care what washappening to Japan. While Kyoto was wrecked, he spent his time on poetry readingsand other high cultural events and in planning the Ginkaku-ji, a Silver Pavilion to rivalthe Golden Pavilion that his grandfather had built.

The fighting in Kyoto, however, had serious consequences throughout Japan. The OninWar — and the shogun’s lack of any response — effectively “sanctioned” private warsbetween the daimyo, which now spread until no part of the country was untouchedby violence. The daimyo could see that they were now free to settle any dispute atthe point of a sword. After all, who was going to stop them? The shogun certainlycouldn’t, or wouldn’t stop them.

The Ikko-Ikki“When the speed of rushing water reaches the point where it can move boulders,

this is the force of momentum. When the speed of a hawk is such that it can

strike its prey and kill, it is precision. So it is with successful warriors.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarAlthough the fighting in Kyoto was over, warfare spilled over into the rest of thecountry. In Yamashiro province, the Hatakeyama clan split into two parts that foughteach other to a standstill. This stalemate, however, was to have serious consequences.In 1485, the peasantry and ji-samurai had enough and finally revolted. They set uptheir own army and forced the clan armies out of the province. The Ikki werebecoming a coherent force, not just an armed mob. In 1486 they set up a provisionalgovernment in Yamashiro.

In Kaga province, things went even further. Founded in the 13th century, the Ikkowere a sect of Amida Buddhists who drew most of their support from the peasantry.Unlike other — rather more aristocratic — Buddhist sects, the Ikko made every effortto appeal to the common people, which gave them secular power.

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Perhaps foolishly, one of the prominent lords of Kaga province, Togashi Maschika,enlisted their help. Included in his army, the Ikko began evolving into the Ikko-ikki, aforce of fanatical holy warriors. Convinced by their leaders that paradise was thereward for death in battle the Ikko-ikki let nothing daunt them. The greater the oddsagainst them, the more the Ikko-ikki fought like fiends.

Togashi Maschika had made a rod for his own back. In 1488 the Ikko-ikki revolted,expelled him from Kaga, and took control of the province. As with the Ikki, the rise ofthe Ikko-ikki was part of the process of gekokujo: “the low oppress the high.” In 1496,the Ikko-ikki began building a fortified “cathedral” as a headquarters at the mouth ofthe Yodo River. They chose the site for the Ishiyama Hongan-ji well. Osaka Castle wasto be built at the same spot when they were eventually defeated. The last battles ofthe Sengoku period would be fought here a hundred years later…

Overthrow and Treachery“Use humility to make the enemy haughty. Tire them by flight. Cause division

among them. When they are unprepared, attack and make your move when they

do not expect it.”


As the Onin War spread, other daimyo took the opportunity to settle old scores — and gain territory at the expense of their neighbours. The war was almost Darwinian: the survival of the fittest was all that counted, no matter how that survival was secured. And not all of the clans survived in the years that followed. The Shiba and Isshiki, as well as the Hatakeyama from Yamashiro and even the previously mighty Yamana clan had, by

1500, managed to wipe each other out. They weren’t the only people to suffer. One family lost rather more than might beexpected given the reverence towards them that had been customary. The ImperialYamato family was virtually bankrupt and couldn’t even pay for the funeral of EmperorGo-Tsuchi-Mikado in 1501. The coronation of Emperor Go-Nara had to wait for 20years until the Ikki (of all people) gave the Imperial family enough money to pay forthe ceremony. Before his death, Go-Nara lived in a wooden hut, and was reduced toselling his autograph.

The Ashikaga shogunate was equally poor. The central government had effectivelyvanished. The daimyo were free to wage any wars they wanted or could afford. Thelesser samurai families were quite free to dream of greater power and steal land fromeach other as well. The story of Ise Shinkuro is a good example of the kind of thingthat was happening.

The Rise of a SamuraiIse Shinkuro was a fairly obscure samurai, until he chose to get involved in the affairsof the Ashikaga clan. Ashikaga Chacha had been ordered to join the priesthood by theshogun, but he refused. Shinkuro took it upon himself to deal with Chacha and forcedhim to commit suicide. Shinkuro’s reward was Izu province, and he lost no time inchanging his name to Hojo Soun (he had also decided to take a Buddhist name at thesame time). The Hojo had, of course, been rulers of Japan hundreds of years earlier,but Shinkuro — or Hojo Soun as he now was — had no connection with the originalfamily at all until he married off a son to a distant descendent of the “real” Hojo!

Hojo Soun now decided to expand his lands. A deer hunt gave him the opportunity tohave a neighbour assassinated, and gave him control of Odowara. He then moved tosecure the Sagami and Musashi provinces, and then moved out onto the Kanto plain.He waited until the Uesugi family were occupied with their own problems thenmanaged to seize their castle at Edo, the old Imperial capital (and now the site ofTokyo). Soun’s son, Ujitsuna and grandson, Ujiyasu, continued his struggles against theUesugi and defeated them in 1542 at Kawagoe Castle.

The point of this account is that Hojo Soun (or Ise Shinkuro as he had been) had comefrom nowhere and, within the space of three generations he and his family had carvedthemselves out a significant domain. They did it through treachery and violence againsttheir “betters”, something that could never have happened if the Ashikaga shogunatehad been doing its job.

The Warring Clans: ShiftingFortunesThe Uesugi clan was also busy with its other struggles. Their most famous general,Uesugi Kenshin, was actually adopted into the struggling clan around 1552. Hemanaged to mount some raids against the (new) Hojo clan, but he spent most of histime fighting against the Takeda clan and, in particular, Takeda Shingen. The two sideswere well matched, but their battles were a little strange. Uesugi Kenshin and TakedaShingen fought a series of battles on the Kawanakajima plain in Shinano province in1553. They returned to the same place and fought all over again in 1554, 1555, 1556,1557 and 1563, treating the battles almost as rituals. At much the same time, TakedaShingen was in the process of absorbing Shinano, the lands of the Murakami Yoshikiyo— it was the Murakami clan that asked Uesugi Kenshin for help and started his longrivalry with Shingen.

“Steady as a mountain, attack like fire, still as a wood, swift as the wind. In

heaven and earth I alone am to be revered.”

— Motto on the war banner of Takeda Shingen (1521-1573)

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Ouchi Masahiro had managed to outlive his Yamana sponsors and gain his clansubstantial power, and his son Yoshioki was equally warlike. The family prospered untilMasahiro’s grandson, Ouchi Yoshitaki took over. With Yamaguchi as a secure and richhome territory, after 1543 Yoshitaki worked out that warfare was a little toodangerous, and took to a life of culture, aided by exiled courtiers from Kyoto.Unfortunately for him, his two chief retainers Mori Motonari and Sue Harukatawarned him that he was risking everything by this attitude and that his domain wasripe for a coup under the command of some ambitious samurai. Just to make sure thathis warning was right, Sue Harukata rebelled. Trapped and apparently friendless,Ouchi Yoshitaki killed himself.

This wasn’t the end of the matter, though. Mori Motonari felt it was duty to avenge hisformer master, but he took his time. In 1555 he managed to lure Sue Harukata, whohad more troops, into capturing a castle on the island of Miyajima. However, oncethere, his numbers were less important because he was trapped on the island. Thebattle that followed ended with the defeated and demoralised Sue forces killingthemselves en masse. As a result, the Mori clan rose to become the mightiest clan inWestern Japan.

“When you want to attack an army, besiege a city or kill a person, first you must

know about their defending generals, their visitors, their gatekeepers and their

servants. Have your spies find all this out.”


This shifting pattern of rivalries and alliances was typical of the times. One clan wouldally with another against the threat from a third, only to find that their allies hadbecome just as great a threat, or that previously loyal underlings were now moredangerous than any external threat.

Samurai warfare had always used dirty tricks, assassination and outright treachery butduring earlier conflicts, such as the Gempei War, the clans who had behaved in thisfashion were widely regarded as out-and-out villains. By the Sengoku period, however,all was fair in love and war. A quick murder was as acceptable as winning a battle. Thenew daimyo had read Sun Tzu and taken his work seriously, especially the sectionsthat dealt with the use of spies and assassins. The daimyo, of course, had access tosome of the best spies and assassins from any period of history anywhere in the world— the ninja. A wise man always took precautions against assassination, even if hedidn’t plot the deaths of his rivals and superiors.

Firepower“[The gun] is the supreme weapon on the field before the ranks clash, but once

swords are crossed, the gun becomes useless.”


In the middle of all this strife, Europeans arrived in Japan when a group of Portuguesetraders landed near Kyushu in around 1543. The Europeans brought two majorcultural items with them: effective gunpowder weaponry, and Christianity. We’ll returnto the influence of Christianity slightly later in this account.

Gunpowder weapons weren’t a complete mystery to the samurai. They almostcertainly knew about Chinese handguns, and the Mongols had used primitive handgrenades against the samurai in 1274. But gunpowder hadn’t really “arrived” inJapanese warfare until now. The guns that the Portuguese brought to Japan werearquebuses or matchlocks. Rather than using a flint to strike a spark and set off thegunpowder, a burning cord was used to fire the weapon. Arquebuses were lightenough to be used by one man and relatively safe at least when compared to earliertypes of firearms — they didn’t have quite the tendency to explode in the user’s facethat earlier guns had! The arquebus did have a slow rate of fire on the battlefield, butit did have one massive advantage that was recognised in Japan as quickly as it hadbeen spotted in Europe. Training a man as an archer takes years of dedicated workand some basic skill. Learning to use an arquebus takes days, at most, and almostanyone can be drilled to use it. The ashigaru were a pool of soldiers in every armyready and waiting for an easy-to-use missile weapon.

Given the skills of Japanese sword smiths and armourers, it’s hardly surprising that ittook little time before the arquebus was being produced in Japan, or that it wasadopted enthusiastically by the daimyo for their armies. However, although everyonecould see that the arquebus was a useful weapon, it would take time before someonewould work out how to use a substantial force of arquebusiers in an effective fashion.

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The Three Rivals: Oda Nobunaga,Toyotomi Hideyoshi and TokugawaIeyasu

“The general changes his actions and revises his plans so that people will not

recognise them. He changes his abode and goes by circuitous routes so that

people cannot anticipate him.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarOne of the problems with the collapse of any centralised Ashikaga authority was that, while taking Kyoto and becoming a family of new shoguns was undoubtedly tempting for the Hojo, Takeda and Uesugiclans, any attempt to do so would invite trouble. The first daimyo to leave his home domain would, in effect, invite his rivals to invade. It’s now time to consider the Oda clan, another one of those small samurai families who had gained control

of a province (Owari, in their case) during the Sengoku period. In 1551, the ruthlessOda Nobunaga became head of the clan. In 1558, he gained the services of anashigaru called Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was to prove a superb general. At the sametime, another young samurai, Tokugawa Ieyasu, was in the service of the Imagawa clan— although, technically, he was a hostage against his family’s good behaviour. As you’llsee, it was these three men who were to decide the fate of Japan.

For the moment, though, there were others who had designs on Kyoto.

Imagawa Yoshimoto was one daimyo with an ambition to be shogun, and in 1560 hemarched towards Kyoto, taking advantage of the fact that the Hojo and Uesugi werebusy fighting each other. Between him and his target lay three provinces, one of whichjust happened to be Oda Nobunaga’s home, Owari. Initially, the campaign went wellfor the Imagawa. Tokugawa Ieyasu (fighting for the Imagawa) took the frontier fort atMarune and all that stood between the Imagawa’s 25,000 men and victory wasNobunaga and his small army of 2000 soldiers.

“By victory gained in crossing swords with individuals, or enjoining battle with

large numbers, we can attain power and for ourselves or our lord. This is the

virtue of strategy.”


Despite the odds, Nobunaga decided to attack. After a brilliant bit of trickery, hemanaged to convince Yoshimoto that his army was camped in one place thenambushed the main Imagawa force in a gorge. The Battle of Okehazama lastedminutes rather than hours. Yoshimoto was killed, and only realised at the last minutethat the samurai who were attacking weren’t part of his own force who were theworse for drink. That he should think his own samurai were so drunk as to fightamongst themselves doesn’t say a lot for the level of control he had over his men!However, Oda Nobunaga was now a real power in the land and now the new liege ofTokugawa Ieyasu. He had been freed from his obligation to the Imagawa clan byYoshimoto’s death.

The temptation to march on Kyoto must have been there for Nobunaga as well, buthe waited and secured alliances with his neighbours by marrying off his daughter andhis younger sister. He had also married himself, to the daughter of another neighbour,Saito Toshimasa, a one-time oil merchant turned daimyo in Mino province. Toshimasawas widely regarded as a completely bad lot, as he was rather fond of torturingpeople in general and boiling people in particular! However, he came to a suitably badend when his own son, Yoshitatsu, killed him and took control. He, in turn, died ofleprosy, but not before Nobunaga had (conveniently) declared war to avenge therather nasty Toshimasa who was, after all, his father-in-law. This rather feeble excusewas all he needed to brush the Saito clan aside so that his route to Kyoto and theshogunate was open. Toyotomi Hideyoshi was given the job of destroying the last ofthe Saito clan. He carried out this task in 1564.

All Nobunaga needed was a good excuse to march on the capital, and in 1567, he gotone. Ashikaga Yoshiaki was the heir to the shogunate, and a valuable symbol for thatvery reason. His brother, Yoshiteru, had been the previous shogun, and wascompletely under the control of a couple of malicious Christian courtiers MiyoshiChokei and Matsunaga Hisahide, who eventually killed him so that they could install hismuch younger cousin as an even more controllable puppet. Yoshiaki was in dangerfrom the pair, but managed to escape and take refuge with Nobunaga.

Oda Nobunaga entered Kyoto in November 1568 with Ashikaga Yoshiaki as his ownpuppet shogun. Nobunaga ruled as the real power behind the throne of a ceremonialcommander-in-chief of a ceremonial Emperor. There were dynastic reasons why theOda family would have been unacceptable as shoguns in their own right, but the newarrangement gave Nobunaga all the power he needed.

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Nobunaga: Consolidation andTreacheryNobunaga spent the rest of his life in crushing his remaining rivals. In this, he had twofine lieutenants in Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Nobunaga was quitepowerful and secure enough to give them all the authority they needed. This in itself isa sign that samurai politics had moved on a little from the dog-eat-dog days. At onepoint, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu would have been busily plotting against Nobunaga andeach other… Now, however, Ieyasu was despatched to crush the Ikko-ikki (in 1563) and had anarrow escape in doing so when two bullets penetrated his armour but didn’t gothrough his robe underneath! Nobunaga’s next — successful — proxy campaign wasagainst Miyoshi Chokei and Matsunaga Hisahide who were defeated at the Battle ofSakai in 1567. This battle is noteworthy because of the large numbers of Christiansamurai on both sides (they took Mass together before the fighting). Christianity — orperhaps the dedicated Jesuit missionaries who were preaching Christianity —appealed to the samurai and from this point Christian samurai were not unusual.Although Oda Nobunaga never became a Christian, he did support Jesuit missionariesin Japan, undoubtedly because of their political usefulness against troublesomeBuddhist sects. Wholesale persecution of Christians still lay in the future.

“When the laws of war indicate certain victory it is surely appropriate to do

battle, even if the ruler says there is to be no battle. If the laws of war indicate

defeat it is appropriate not to fight, even if the ruler wants war.”


The remainder of Nobunaga’s life was a succession of campaigns to secure his control ofthe country. In 1570, he fell upon the Asakura in Echizen province, but was forced toretreat when his own brother-in-law, Asai Nagamasa, declared for the Asakura clan.Nobunaga returned later in 1570 and won an indecisive victory at the Battle of Anegawa.While his forces won the day, they didn’t completely crush the Asakura and Asai. Troublesnow multiplied for Nobunaga and he found he was facing not only the Asakura and Asaiarmy, but also Ikko from Ishiyama Hongan-ji and sohei (warrior monks) from Enryaku-jinear the capital. In addition, his general Tokugawa Ieyasu was now facing both the Hojoarmy and Takeda Shingen.

Nobunaga appeared to be encircled, so he attacked! His men surrounded Enryaku-ji andkilled everyone — man, woman and child — they found in or near the monastery.Nobunaga was now free to turn against his other enemies, but Takeda Shingen movedagainst his forces in 1572, almost trapping Tokugawa Ieyasu in Hamamatsu Castle. Ieyasuwas faced with a simple choice: stay where he was and fail in his duty to prevent Shingenreaching Kyoto, or fight. He chose to leave the castle and met the Takeda army in thesnow at Mikata-ga-hara, a stretch of open moors near the Magome River. The battle wasindecisive, and both sides eventually withdrew. Ieyasu returned to Hamamatsu Castlewith his job of delaying Shingen achieved. Shingen went home and never got to Kyoto.

Shingen came on again in spring 1573, this time into Mikawa province, intent on takingKyoto for himself. It was not to be. In the fighting that followed, he was wounded by abullet and died later. This loss was a disaster for the Takeda clan as Shingen’s son,Katsuyori, was not the man his father had been. Uesugi Kenshin is said to have weptover the loss of so noble an enemy. Kenshin himself was to die under somewhatmysterious circumstances in 1582. Although nothing has ever been proved, Nobunagawas suspected of having used ninja to remove another rival. One (probably untrue)version of the events around Kenshin’s death is recounted in the section about ninjalater in this manual.

“A true samurai cannot possibly forget his wife and family when he goes into

battle, because a true samurai never thinks of them at any time!”

— Remark attributed to a Takeda retainer

It took two more years before the defeat of the Takeda clan was secured. In 1575Takeda Katsuyori surrounded Nagashino Castle with his army, but the Oda defenders putup a gallant resistance. Nobunaga saw that the relief expedition would be a chance to crushthe Takeda clan, and he was right. The Battle of Nagashino that followed was a triumph forOda Nobunaga and for the arquebus. Nobunaga organised his 3000 best shots into a singleunit and placed them in three lines behind a palisade of stakes. As the Takeda clan chargedacross the waterlogged battlefield, they were torn to pieces by volley after volley.Nobunaga’s other soldiers cut down the Takeda men that survived the gunfire. Even thecastle’s defenders left their walls and fell on the rear of the Takeda army. The victory wascomplete. Katsuyori Takeda managed to escape the carnage, but he was never to threatenNobunaga seriously again and was killed in 1582.

Nobunaga now turned eastwards towards the Mori clan. Mori Motonari was dead, but hisgrandson, Mori Terumoto, ruled a rich domain of ten provinces. Terumoto had been askingfor trouble, as he had broken through Nobunaga’s naval blockade of the Ikko-ikki atIshiyama Hongan-ji. Nobunaga responded by sending an army with Toyotomi Hideyoshi, hisashigaru general, and Akechi Mitsuhide, another of his samurai generals, at its head. Hecontinued his campaign against the Ikko-ikki, even building warships with iron plate armour(!) for use against them at one point. It would be another three centuries before sucharmour plate was used in the West.

The Ikko were surrounded and in 1580 were forced to give in. The warrior fanatics had atlast been broken as a power. While all this was happening, Nobunaga also started to build acastle at Azuchi on Lake Biwa near Kyoto. It was colossal, and a sign of where the truepower in Japan now lay. It was also revolutionary for the way its design took firearms intoaccount, with stout stone defences and loopholes for gunners.

Nobunaga’s army now turned its full power towards the Mori. Toyotomi Hideyoshi hadbeen making steady progress, and had besieged their castle at Takamtsu — even the courseof the nearby river was altered so that the place would flood! The entire Mori clan gatheredto try and lift the siege, and Hideyoshi summoned reinforcements when he realised what hewas facing. Ieyasu and, as it turned out, too many Oda warriors were sent out to supporthis army. Nobunaga was left in Kyoto with only 100 men to guard him, instead of the 2000that normally formed his bodyguard. It was to prove a dreadful error.

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Akechi Mitsuhide, on the other hand, had failed in his campaign against the Mori, and hadsuffered Nobunaga’s scorn because of this and much else. He was marching near Kyoto atthe time that Nobunaga was almost unguarded. Quite why he turned his troops around andattacked Nobunaga’s mansion in Kyoto has never been explained, but on 21 June 1582,Nobunaga was shot down on the orders of his own general. He died thanks to the weaponwith which he had transformed the battlefield: the arquebus.

Even by the standards of his age, Nobunaga was a ruthless man — his sole idea of victorywas the extermination of the enemy. But he changed Japan. His military improvementsaltered the way wars were fought. At one time, peasants and ji-samurai would leave thefields to fight. Under Nobunaga, men fought or they farmed. The samurai and the ashigarubecame warrior classes who didn’t have to return to the land when it was time to gatherthe harvest. All they had to do was fight for their overlord.

The Thirteen Day Shogun“The individual without a strategy who takes his enemies lightly will inevitably

end up as a captive of another.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarWhen news of Akechi Mitsuhide’s treachery reached Toyotomi Hideyoshi, heimmediately negotiated a peace treaty with the Mori clan and then marched on Kyoto.In the meantime, Mitsuhide was following the time-honoured precedent ofslaughtering every one of Nobunaga’s relatives and supporters that he could reach.Tokugawa Ieyasu had vanished into hiding. Although it probably wasn’t Mitsuhide’sdoing, the magnificent Azuchi Castle burned down. But days later, the Akechishogunate was over. Hideyoshi attacked and Mitsuhide fled. He was captured byplunder-seeking peasants and beaten to death rather than dying beneath a samurai’ssword. He had been the “Thirteen Day Shogun.”

Toyotomi Hideyoshi was now the “official” avenger of Nobunaga and in a very strongposition. His humble ashigaru beginnings made him popular among his own ashigarusoldiers and he was a singularly able commander. Naturally, the surviving relatives ofOda Nobunaga — in particular his third son, Nobutaka — were not too keen onseeing Hideyoshi in control of the clan. There were also Nobunaga’s other generals toconsider too. Apart from Tokugawa Ieyasu, there were Shibata Katsuie, NiwaNagahide, Takigawa Kazumasu and Ikeda Nobuteru with equally good claims toNobunaga’s power!

Warfare was the only likely result of all this, despite — or perhaps because of —Hideyoshi’s suggestion that Nobunaga’s one year old grandson should be the new clanleader. A puppet with a powerful man behind him was a very traditional way of takingpower. The next months presented Hideyoshi with a difficult series of campaigns. Byfar the most dangerous threat came from Shibata Katsuie. Katsuie had actually tried toattack Akechi Mitsuhide, but had arrived too late to share in the credit of defeatinghim. Had Katsuie managed to co-ordinate his actions with those of his allies, OdaNobutaka and Takigawa Kazumasu, the three might well have won. Ieyasu and theothers were waiting too, either for a chance to take the prize, or to make sure thatthey backed the winning side!

Katsuie, however, was not blessed with wise allies. While the Shibata lands were stillsnowed under, Nobutaka decided to attack. This gave Hideyoshi the chance to divideand conquer his opponents. Nobutaka was surrounded in the Oda clan’s Gifu Castleand begged for mercy. At this point, Hideyoshi did something rather remarkable: hespared Nobutaka’s life and took hostages to ensure his future good behaviour. In thejust-gone old days, Nobutaka’s father, Nobunaga, would have killed every enemywithin reach and spent time hunting down those out of reach! Hideyoshi then splitTakigawa Kazumasu’s forces by bribing a key garrison and even captured Kazumasuhimself.

“Those who come seeking peace without a treaty are plotting.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarBy this point, Shibata Katsuie was able to send out troops thanks to the thawing snow,and Oda Nobutaka now repaid Hideyoshi’s mercy with rebellion. The Shibata general,Sakuma Morimasa, however, made a serious error of judgement when (having failed tolearn the lessons of the Battle of Nagashino) he attacked arquebus-armed troops in astrong defensive position. The resulting Battle of Shizugatake in 1583 was a disasterfor the Shibata forces, and they were pursued back to the gates of Katsuie’s castle.Recognising that his war against Hideyoshi was lost, Katusuie took his own life andburned his fortress. When he heard the news, Oda Nobutaka saw the writing on thewall and took his own life too.

The stage was set for the confrontation between Hideyoshi and Ieyasu, Nobunaga’s greatest supporters and his greatest generals. Both sides looked for allies, and the important clans in Nobunaga’s old holdings divided between them. With two such able commanders, stalemate was the inevitable result, althoughthere was much fighting, such as at the bloody Battle of Nagakute in 1584. When the battle was over, Ieyasu sat down

to count almost 2500 heads taken from an enemy army of around 9000 soldiers. Hisarmy’s losses were around 600 men, but the battle decided nothing.

A Practical ArrangementIn the end, Ieyasu submitted to the authority of Hideyoshi. His decision was supremelypractical. Together, the two men were unbeatable, and Hideyoshi, the older man,could not last forever… With Ieyasu now an ally, Hideyoshi was in a position toconquer the rest of Japan. That he managed this as quickly as he did is a tribute notonly to his military skills, but also to his political skills. When facing Nobunaga, forexample, there was little point in not fighting to the bitter end. After all, he was likelyto kill everyone whether they resisted fiercely or not.

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Hideyoshi, however, was more political (or just plain cunning). He was generoustowards his enemies, letting them keep some of their holdings (but he did need someconquered lands to use as rewards for his own loyal followers). He also took hostages,but he didn’t kill off entire clans. He left them in charge of their lands, having securedtheir loyalty. As a result, he managed to add the armies of his enemies to his ownforces and grow stronger over time. Also, Hideyoshi didn’t need to take all of a clan’slandholdings, because he had changed the way that samurai were rewarded for theirconduct in battle; rather than handing out captured lands, he paid his men in gold!Hideyoshi was now master of Japan and now free to pursue other aims. He builtOsaka Castle on the site of the old Ikko fortress of Ishiyama Hongan-ji. He alsoorganised the most important social change to take place in Japan: “The Great SwordHunt”, which started in 1588. Simply put, all weapons in the hands of the peasantrywere taken away and melted down for use in the construction of Hideyoshi’s GreatBuddha. The only people who would be allowed to carry weapons from now onwould be warriors, and the social distinctions between unarmed peasants (completelyunarmed), ashigaru soldiers (some weapons) and samurai (the only people who couldcarry two swords as a badge of rank) now became a fixed feature of the sociallandscape.

He also had plans for the conquest of China. The story of this expedition is outsidethe scope of both Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition and this manual, but his Korean Warended in strategic failure for the samurai. They failed to carve out a mainland empire,but they did have the satisfaction of bringing back considerable loot. Oddly, Tokugawatroops had taken no part in the fighting on the mainland.

The Final Struggle“Those whose words are humble while they increase war preparations are going

to attack. Those whose words are strong and who advance aggressively are going

to retreat.”


In 1598, Hideyoshi was dying, but he had enough of his old political skill left to appointfive regents to rule in his infant son’s name. Toyotomi Hideyori was only five years oldwhen his regency council took over. Of these, the most important was TokugawaIeyasu, now staggeringly rich by any standards: his revenue from his lands was2,557,000 koku — a koku being the quantity of rice needed to feed one man for oneyear. And this, remember, was his annual revenue, not the value of his domains. Theothers were Ukita Hideie, Maeda Toshiie, Mori Terumoto and Uesugi Kagaktasu.These were the most important daimyo in Japan, and Hideyoshi obviously wantedthem united behind his clan.

“Speed is not a part of the true Way of strategy. Speed implies that things seem

fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way,

the master of strategy does not appear fast.”

— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Fire Book

Ieyasu had other plans, but the opposition to him came from a courtier outside theregency, a bureaucrat called Ishida Mitsunari. On the other hand, Ieyasu had no desireto be seen as the one starting any war, so he did little other than wait for IshidaMitsunari to make the first move. In the meantime, the “significant players” slowlydeclared for one side or another. Fortunately for Ieyasu, most of Hideyoshi’s oldsupporters chose him as the natural military successor. He also had one other piece ofluck. In 1600, he met the first Englishman to arrive in Japan, Will Adams. While Adamswas interesting enough, his cargo of guns, ammunition and good quality Europeangunpowder was far more useful. Ieyasu made sure the whole lot found its way into hisarmoury.

Ishida’s followers — usually referred to as the Western Army in accounts of theperiod — eventually made their move. Unfortunately for them, the Tokugawa —Eastern — garrison of Fushimi Castle proved to be incredibly stubborn and tied themdown for far too long. When the defenders were down to their last two hundredmen, they opened the gates and repeatedly charged the whole Western Army!Although killed to the last man, they bought enough time for Ieyasu to move againstIshida’s army.

The two sides met, or virtually blundered into each other in the fog, at a narrow passat Sekigahara on 21 October 1600, in damp and miserable conditions. Both armieswere soaked through and neither side could see the other because of the dense fog.In the early part of the day, however, the fog lifted and the battle commenced as onehuge, mud-soaked brawl. The Western Army, however, had never been a unitedforce, and once battle was joined, Kobayakawa Hideaki made no effort to moveagainst the Eastern, Tokugawa army. When he did move, it was against his “own” side.

The Western army was beaten.

“When the terrain has impassable ravines, natural enclosures, prisons, pitfalls

and clefts, you should leave quickly and not get near them. For myself, I keep

away from them, so that the enemy is near them. I keep my face to these so that

the enemy has his back to them.”


By mid-afternoon, Ieyasu was again counting the heads of his defeated enemies.Although he hadn’t secured a total victory over every opponent in the field, he musthave been rather pleased with the haul. Ishida’s challenge was over. The daimyo thatsurvived — and had sense enough to submit — prospered or suffered in directrelationship to their allegiances at the battle. From this day on, Tokugawa Ieyasu musthave known that he would be the undisputed ruler of Japan.

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In 1603, he was declared shogun, the title having been unused for nearly 30 yearsafter the removal of Yoshiaki, the last of the Ashikaga clan. But there was still oneopponent to deal with. Toyotomi Hideyori was still alive and scheming.

Ieyasu chose to wait and had the sense to concentrate on good government over thenext 14 years, until the chance came to deal with this last enemy. When the excusecame — an implied insult — it was a little feeble, but good enough. After a long andinconclusive siege at Osaka Castle, Hideyori’s troops marched out to meet theTokugawa army. Hideyori’s troops fought with brave desperation, but the Tokugawaarmy showed that it had become “stale” over the years. It won, but without any realelan. The wars for control of Japan were, however, finally at an end. No futurerebellion would be tolerated and the last of the Toyotomi clan, Hideyori’s eight-year-old son (Hideyoshi’s grandson), was put to the sword.

Ieyasu had this final victory in 1615, but he didn’t have much time to savour it. Withina year he was dead, his remarkable constitution having failed to fight off stomachcancer (as far as modern diagnosis can tell from this distance in time). But his passingwas not marked by war, assassination and fevered plotting among his retainers. Hisson, Tokugawa Hidetada, quietly took control of the government and became thesecond Tokugawa shogun. The shogunate was secure and the country peaceful.

Ieyasu also achieved a kind of immortality. He was deified as To-sho-gu, the Sun God ofthe East.

The Last Shogunate“Those who are first on the battlefield and await their enemies are at ease.

Those who are last on the field and head into battle become worn out.

Therefore, wise warriors cause the enemy to come to them and do not go to

others.”


The Tokugawa shoguns remained the undisputed masters of Japan for the next 250years. The Emperors remained shadowy god-like figures insulated from real power.Meanwhile, the Tokugawa shoguns made sure that Japan remained equally insulatedfrom the outside world. Even before the final victory at Osaka, the Tokugawa hadturned against foreigners. Christians were officially persecuted from 1612 onwards,the Spanish were refused permission to land in Japan after 1624, and in the next tenyears the Japanese themselves were forbidden to travel. Japan was sealed off, otherthan for limited contacts with small Dutch trading missions. The shoguns were largelysuccessful in their isolationism until 1853, when the arrival of a US Navy detachmentunder Commodore Perry — and the threat of being incorporated into one of theexpanding European empires — forced home the idea that isolation as the only policywas no longer workable. Japan had been left behind, a feudal backwater in the newlymodern, industrial, Victorian world.

In the face of these unwelcome facts, the clans remained fiercely xenophobic andorganised attacks on foreigners in Japan, which in turn weakened the position of theTokugawa shogun, who could no longer control them. The Meiji Restoration thatcame in 1867 didn’t bring back the Emperors (naturally, they had never disappeared),but it did restore power to the Imperial family and lead to the end of the shogunate.The clans were disarmed and their fiefdoms were taken away over the next decade.

The new Imperial government set out to make Japan a modern nation. In this, theywere partly driven by the quite understandable fear of ending up as just anotherEuropean colony in the Far East. They had only to look towards China and India tosee what could happen to them. In the space of 50 years, Japan changed from amedieval society to a modern industrial nation: no other country has ever changed sodramatically in such a short space of time. With the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5,the Japanese proved that their transformation was complete when they defeated theRussian Empire on both land and sea. Both the Imperial Army and Navy proved thatthey were modern, forward-looking and equal to anything from Europe.

It hadn’t been an easy transition, though. The “last hurrah” of the old samurai ordercame with the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877 led by Saigo Takamori. A medieval samuraiarmy fought against a modern conscript army and was convincingly beaten. At the last,samurai bravery alone hadn’t been enough to halt the future and Takamori took hisown life in the traditional fashion.

Ironically, it was in the Imperial Japanese Army that broke the samurai rebels wherethe spirit of the samurai was to live on…

History In The Game“If you know your enemy and know yourself, you will not be imperilled by a

hundred battles. If you do not know the others but do know yourself, you will win

one and lose one. If you do not know the enemy and do not know yourselves you

will be in danger in every battle.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarAll of this history might have seem a little long-winded in places, but it all goes toshow important lessons that you’ll need to remember if you want to win when playingShogun: Total War — Gold Edition. Knowing the way that real history unfolded, you’llbe in a better position to crush your enemies when the opportunity presents itself. Nodaimyo ever achieved success without a degree of ruthlessness, lots of informationabout his enemies, and an eye for the main chance!

You should also have spotted that although Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi andTokugawa Ieyasu became the three main contenders to become shogun, there was noguarantee that these men were going to succeed. All the other daimyo had every rightto think that they had just as good a chance as anyone else. If, perhaps, the weather atNagashino had been better and the Takeda cavalry not so pig-headed as to chargedirectly into the muzzles of the Oda clan, it might have been one of the Takeda clanwho became shogun. In Shogun: Total War — Gold Edition, you have the chance to findout just how likely this outcome might be…

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Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition starts in the year 1530, in the middle of the SengokuPeriod. Serious warfare has been a way of life for two generations, and the strugglefor the shogunate and ultimate power is far from being over. Most importantly forsamurai generals, warfare at this point is still very traditional: “modern” (for the time)European firearms have yet to arrive in Japan and make their impact. It is during thecourse of the game that arquebuses will arrive and be incorporated into the differentclan armies with varying degrees of success.

Remember, though that you can also journey back 300 years in this special Shogun:Total War – Gold Edition to the era of Mongol invasions.

The Daimyo In Shogun: Total War

“Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, justice, courage and

authority.”


It’s traditional for Japanese names to be given as the family name first, followed by theindividual’s given name, so Tokugawa Ieyasu is actually “Ieyasu of the family/clan ofTokugawa”. By and large, family and clan loyalties were the most importantrelationships between the “big players” in this period of Japanese history, which makesit slightly easier to keep track of the different factions in Shogun: Total War - GoldEdition! If people share the same family name, they’re generally on the same side. Aswe’ve seen, this doesn’t stop some daimyo and samurai plotting against theiroverlords, relatives and friends as well as everyone else, of course!

When the action starts in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, the daimyo warlords arewell established in their home fiefdoms, and each has a realistic expectation of successin the war to come. All the clans have a reasonably equal chance of being the nextshogun family at the start of play. There are many candidates who could becomeshogun, but only if they have the skill to succeed in war and the will to prevail overtheir enemies!

“If you do not know the plans of your competitors, you cannot make informed

alliances.”


In reality, Tokugawa Ieyasu (who was held hostage during his childhood by ImagawaYoshimoto in the list below) eventually came to prominence by astute politicalmanoeuvring and great military skill. His family lasted as shoguns for 250 years, butthere’s no reason for your version of history to turn out that way! It’s up to you tosteer your chosen family to the Shogunate, with all your enemies crushed and yourclan in power. The Imagawa/Tokugawa don’t have to be the winners… unless you aretheir warlord and ruthless enough to take them to final victory!

The following great daimyo, then, are leading their respective clans:

Hojo

Hojo Ujitsuna — Ujitsuna would like to beheir to a proud tradition. The Hojo had been the shoguns ofJapan, brought peace and prosperity and even driven away theMongol hordes! Ujitsuna and his sons are powerful daimyoand will struggle for many years against the Takeda and Uesugiclans. In fact, the founder of the clan, Hojo Soun, was a lowlysamurai adventurer who overthrew the old order in his home

province and took an old name as his own. His descendants are equally ruthless!

Imagawa

Imagawa Yoshimoto — Under Yoshimoto, the Imagawaclan managed to gain control of Mikawa, Totomi andSuruga provinces. However, a move into Owari broughthim into conflict with Oda Nobunaga (the son ofNobuhide, below) and Yoshimoto was defeated and killedat the battle of Okehazama. Once he was gone, the clan’spower declined rapidly.

Mori

Mori Motonari — Originally vassals of Ouchi Yoshitaka,the Mori family came to dominate the Inland Sea of Japan for around 50 years and fight the Amako. When the Ouchiwere overthrown Motonari seized the opportunity anddefeated all rivals to their territory. With his power basesecured, he continued to expand his families’ holdings withsuccesses against the Amako, although his grandson andsuccessor was to be opposed by the generals of Oda

Nobunaga.

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OdaOda Nobuhide — The father of the more famousOda Nobunaga, and a relative of the Taira clan who had once ruled Japan. Nobuhide lead his clan to victory against the Imagawa (above) at Azukizaka in 1542 and paved the way for his children to rise to prominence. His most famous son, Nobunaga, was a greedy, utterly ruthless man who nevertheless became the archetypal daimyo general of the period and the power behind the last of the Ashikaga shoguns.

ShimazuShimazu Takahisa — Based in the southern part ofKyushu, Takahisa led the Shimazu clan in an able and innovative fashion. He was the first of the daimyo to equip his soldiers with European arquebuses on a large scale, and the first to win a victory with them in his attack on Kajiki Castle in Osumi province. After his death the family fortunes declined, and they chose to support Ishida Mitsunari at the Battle of Sekigahara which lead to their eventual downfall.

TakedaTakeda Nobutora —Nobutora seems to have been a mostly able ruler of Kai province, but favoured his younger son as his successor, which lead the elder, Takeda (Harunobu) Shingen, to revolt. Nobutora then had to suffer the indignity of being held prisoner by a neighbouring lord by his own son’s orders! Despite this seemingly poor beginning, Shingen became one of the ablest of the daimyo. He was also the subject of Kagemusha, Akira Kurosawa’s epic samurai movie — and the movie is an excellent source of hints and tips for double-dealing in the game!

UesugiUesugi Tomooki — Tomooki spent much of his time at war with the neighbouring Hojo clan. His branch of the Uesugi family (the Ogigyatsu) came to a premature end when his son, Tomosada, was killed in battle in 1545 against the Hojo while trying to retake Kawagoe castle. The other branch of the family, the Yamanouchi, lasted longer and eventually fared better. Uesugi Kagekatsu switched sides to the Tokugawa after Sekigahara and was rewarded for his new found loyalty with the valuable Yonezawa fief. The Uesugi also had a long-running dispute with the Takeda clan.

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2: The Samurai“Look upon your soldiers as beloved children and they willingly die with you. If

you are so nice to them that you cannot employ them in battle, so kind to them

that you cannot command them, so casual that you cannot establish order, then

they are useless, like spoiled children.”


The samurai are the defining image of medieval Japan, and for many they are still a defining image of Japan. They are widely seen as being the ultimate warriors, ready tocharge into danger at a moment’s notice, ready to kill themselves when events went against them, and completely unforgiving towards their enemies. As with any stereotype, though, this image of the samurai is both right and wrong. As it turnedout many were equally ready to rebel when they thought they could get away with it!

As Japanese history shows, for centuries the samurai had been changing from theirposition as the military servants of “the great and the good” and had increasinglybecome “the great and the good” themselves. What could be held by the power ofthe sword could also be taken by the power of the sword. The samurai became thepeople with power who mattered in affairs of Japan.

And this group is where most of the great clans and the daimyo were drawn from.The daimyo were not a separate class of great landowners in society, cut off fromeveryone else by wealth and privilege.

They were the oldest, the most “noble” or simply the most ruthless among manysamurai families. Without military backing, by the time of the Ashikaga shogunate andthe Sengoku period, no daimyo could hold on to his lands. At the same time, morethan one of the daimyo worried that one of his followers would try to rebel oneday…

In theory, however, samurai were supposed to follow a code of honour. Many —indeed most of them — did so to the point of death. This code was called bushido,“the way of the warrior”.

Bushido: The Way of theWarrior

“Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser

men.”

— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Water Book

Bushido as a code of principles existed from the very start of the samurai. It was onlytowards the end of the Sengoku period and at the start of the Tokugawa shogunatethat the “rules” came to be written down. The purpose of bushido was much thesame as the “rules” of medieval chivalry: it gave warriors a set of ideas to live by,elevating them above the normal run of hired killers. Rectitude, endurance, frugality,courage, politeness, veracity, and, especially, loyalty were all-important as virtues for asamurai who truly followed the code of bushido.

As long as a samurai was true to his calling, he retained honour. This obsession withhonour at all costs allowed samurai to carry out acts of seemingly wasteful self-sacrifice. A samurai who was surrounded by enemies and still advanced into themiddle of them was not, according to the code of bushido, throwing away his life. Hewas demonstrating that his loyalty was truly sincere. And this is where bushido canlook odd or even suicidal to modern eyes. It wasn’t at all. It was no “odder” thanEuropean ideas of chivalry. A samurai imbued with a true sense of bushido didn’t thinkabout his own life at all when considering his actions. Life and death were quiteincidental to any outcome, providing the act carried out was the right thing to do.Trying and dying in the process was more worthy than not trying at all, because theattempt had been made without concern for the personal consequences.

This didn’t stop some samurai from running away in battle (they were only human,after all), but it should be clear that bushido simply didn’t mean fighting to the bitterend regardless of any odds either. A samurai was expected to act intelligently as wellas bravely and simply throwing your life away wasn’t only wrong, it was foolish. Actsof apparent suicide — such as the fairly regular occurrence of a castle garrisonopening the gates and charging the enemy — need to be looked at from theperspective of bushido. Charging an enemy besieging your castle may be personallysuicidal, but if it delays the enemy and allows your lord to eventually beat the enemy,it is an act driven by loyalty and bravery, not by a self-destructive impulse. This is whatthe last 200 Tokugawa defenders at Fushimi Castle did in 1600 when they openedtheir gates and repeatedly charged the whole Western army! This, of course, is also anexplanation for the suicidal banzai charges made during the Second World War byJapanese garrisons on islands all across the Pacific. The code of bushido survived into

the 20th century in the Imperial Army and Navy.

Bushido, like all formalised codes of conduct, could also have a dark side to it. Samuraioften treated prisoners harshly because the captives had failed to live up to the codeof bushido. Many enemies were executed right after battles for just this reason.

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Unlike Medieval Europe, where it was accepted that a captive nobleman or knightwould be held for ransom (often for years), Japanese warfare never really developed asimilar system of cash-for-prisoners. A samurai or daimyo taken alive on the battlefieldwould generally expect to die ignominiously at the hands of his captors.

The books on bushido that have survived from the Sengoku period and later years fallinto three basic categories. Some are general “how-to” manuals of weapons handling,where bushido is largely reduced to a practical set of skills. The book Tanki Yoriaki(literally, “A Single Horseman”) is a work from 1735 that concentrates on arming asamurai before battle. The subtitle is Hi Ko Ben or “The Art of Armour Wearing” andit explains exactly what the book is about. Although written long after the Sengokuperiod, the inherent conservatism of the Tokugawa shogunate means that thetechniques described in it were still perfectly valid after more than a century.

Others are philosophical works where the mindset of combat is applied to the widerworld so that the ideas and theory of bushido can be used to achieve anything. Thethird category are the practical and mundane notes for running a castle and an army ofsamurai, but they also throw light on how bushido was expected to apply to everydaylife for samurai. The command of Kato Kiyomasa that “A samurai who practicesdancing… should be ordered to commit hara-kiri…” looks a little harsh, but perhapsKiyomasa had his reasons. Perhaps he wasn’t a very good dancer, or just felt that itwas a warrior’s task to devote his energy to the martial arts rather than the culturalones.

That said the “complete samurai” was expected to be a cultured man as well as askilled warrior. He was not only expected to be good with a sword, but equally goodat more sociable skills, including the tea ceremony and poetry. There was even aspecific type of poetry duel that samurai indulged in, sometimes even on thebattlefield! One samurai would make up the opening line and it was up to hisopponent to reply quickly. Clever puns and allusions were very highly regarded in thisgame of wits. Japan, of course, was a rather wealthy country, and samurai — beinghigh on the social ladder — had every opportunity to sample the finer things in life.The daimyo, of course, lived the kind of life that would have been recognisable in itsopulence by a land magnate of the time anywhere in the world.

Hara-Kiri: Death and Honour“In all forms of strategy, it is necessary to maintain the combat stance in

everyday life, and to make your everyday stance your combat stance.”

— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Water Book

Formal suicide is not just a Japanese idea. The Roman Emperors, for example, oftenallowed conspirators against them to commit suicide and so preserve their family’sfortune: being ordered to die by your own hand was punishment enough.

But among the samurai, things were slightly different. Death by your own hand was alegitimate way of keeping honour, as well as a punishment. Samurai often killedthemselves to avoid capture, or because their lord had died and they wished to showtheir utter devotion.

There was also the curious (to outside eyes) practice of samurai killing themselves toprotest against a decision that their liege lord had taken. This was seen as the height ofloyalty even if the lord in question took no notice of the act, although it was a rareman who didn’t reconsider his actions when a retainer had chosen to kill himselfrather than obey.

It should be immediately obvious that hara-kiri or “cutting the belly” is intenselypainful, and is intended to be so. The victim was expected to cut his stomach openwith more than one stroke. Self-disembowelment was so horrible that the samuraieventually modified the act so that it became a simple stabbing carried out by thevictim. Once the first cut had been made a friend or trusted retainer wouldimmediately deliver a mercy blow and cut off the victim’s head. Although thedeathblow was merciful, the first cut still required enormous self-discipline from theperson committing hara-kiri.

Hara-kiri wasn’t the only form that formal suicide took in Japan. Togo Shigechika, forexample, is a figure from samurai legend as much as from history, but his death wassingularly grisly! Having vainly attacked an enemy fortress, he was buried alive — fullyarmoured and on horseback — while swearing ghostly vengeance upon his foes!

Samurai & Ninja

“Foreknowledge cannot be had from ghosts or spirits, cannot be had from astrology,

and cannot be found by calculation. It must be obtained from people who know the

condition of the enemy.

“There are five kinds of spy: the local

spy, the inside spy, the reverse spy, the

dead spy and the living spy. Local spies are

hired from among the inhabitants of a

place. Inside spies are hired from

among enemy officers. Reverse spies are

hired from enemy spies. Dead spies give

false information to the enemy. Living spies

come back to make their reports.

“Therefore, no one in the army is treated as well as spies, no one is given rewards as

rich as those given to spies and no matter is more secret than the work of spies.”


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At worst, the ronin could end up selling their swords to the highest bidder, no matterwho that might be, or become bandits in their own right. The Seven Samurai in themovie of the same name are ronin. They have fallen on such hard times that they arewilling to sell their skills for a bowl of rice.

Arms & Armour“An army perishes if it has no equipment, it perishes if it has no food and it

perishes if it has no money.”


Samurai weaponry and armour are huge subjects that have filled books far larger than thisgame manual. This can only be a brief overview rather than a full account and if you want toknow more, you would be well advised to pick up one of the many books on the subject.

Samurai Heraldry“Heraldry” in Japan had exactly the same purpose as it did in the West. It was there tomake it easy to recognise “who was who” on the battlefield. Wearing armour tends tomake people look identical, so some clear means of working out which anonymousarmoured figures you should be killing and which ones are your friends was absolutelyvital.

To begin with, armies carried large coloured banners to show family allegiances. Buteven from the earliest times, the mon, a (usually symbolic) family crest was stencilledonto banners, painted onto armour or displayed on large wooden shields.

Unlike Western heraldry, the design of a mon was more important than its colour. Italso didn’t change once adopted by a family. In European heraldry the division of acoat of arms into halves, quarters and the like often showed the parentage of theowner. Likewise, the design would be modified by a first, second or third son, makingthe whole business of heraldry very complicated indeed. In Japan, all members of asingle family and all their retainers used the same mon.

By the Sengoku period, the use of mon by samurai families had become firmlyestablished. The Tokugawa clan used the aoi (a hollyhock) in a three-leaf design in acircle. Several families used the same variation on the tomoe (the comma shape usedin yin and yang symbols).

Mon were used on the sashimono flags worn on the back of individual samurai andashigaru. The background colour of the flag indicated which army unit the wearerbelonged to. Famous (or perhaps just overly proud) samurai sometimes had theirnames emblazoned on their sashimono rather than a clan symbol. They were alsoclearly displayed on the nobori, banners carried by standard bearers attached to units.The nobori was a long vertical flag that had a rigid crosspiece along the top. The monwould be stencilled on to the flag near the top. Other nobori for a unit might carry anappropriate motto.

No discussion of medieval Japanese warfare would be complete without mentioningthe master assassins and spies of the time: the ninja.

Ninja have become staple “bad guys” in martial arts movies, perhaps a little unfairly. Intheir fashion they were brave and skilful. It is, for example, claimed that ninja coulddislocate their limbs to escape from any bindings, that they could kill any target, hidein plain sight and even leave no trail that a man could follow. They also have “RobinHood” style legends attached to them of protecting peasants and the weak fromrapacious overlords. The number of tricks, traps and early warning devices that wereincorporated into castles and mansions shows that they were taken seriously as athreat at the time.

One, possibly apocryphal, story shows the level of danger ninja posed to those theytargeted for death. We’ve already seen that Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin foughta running series of battles for control of the Kawanakajima plains, but even after fivebattles nothing had been decided. Uesugi Kenshin however, did not live to enjoyanother contest. He was allegedly assassinated.

Naturally, samurai retainers had guarded Uesugi Kenshin night and day, but this didn’tsave him. His killer hid himself beneath Kenshin’s privy for several days, waiting in thelatrine pit for the right person (or rather, the right bottom) to appear. After severaldays — days that must have been remarkably smelly and unhealthy — the ninja’spatience was rewarded when Kenshin answered a call of nature. One swift upwardthrust was all that was needed to despatch the very surprised warlord! TakedaShingen may have been the person who commissioned his death, but there wereother daimyo with an equal wish to see a rival dead. It’s equally possible that OdaNobunaga had Kenshin killed, or that his death was from natural causes. Nevertheless, it is significant that a ninja could be credited with his assassination and insuch a fashion…

Death & Defeat of A DaimyoThe defeat and death of a samurai general or daimyo was usually catastrophic for his followers unless there was a son or heir to take over. Even then, problems could just be postponed if the successor wasn’t up to the standards of his illustrious predecessor.

It wasn’t completely unknown for samurai to kill themselves on the death of their lord as a mark of ultimate loyalty.

The end of a daimyo’s family often resulted in many of his former retainers losing their

positions and income. Samurai without a master were referred to as ronin, literally“men of the waves”. Most did not wander for long, as there was fierce competitionfor good warriors among the daimyo. However, it wasn’t entirely unknown for roninto set themselves up as petty warlords in a province — after all, this was how many ofthe great daimyo and their clans had got started on the road to power!

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Fashion, however, did play a part: after 1570jet-black dye became available and black-laced armour became popular. Armour, above all, was an important “tool of the trade” as far as the samurai were concerned, being there to keep the wearer alive in the very hostile environment on a battlefield!

“Good warriors make their stand on ground where they cannot lose and do not

overlook anything that makes the enemy prone to defeat.”


Samurai armour was made of many pieces that could be worn individually. The platesthemselves were often cleverly manufactured with more than one layer to them: abacking of soft iron to absorb impacts, a harder steel face and finally layers of lacquerto stop rusting. The sectional nature of the armour meant, for example, there was noneed for a samurai who was just on guard duty at his master’s mansion to wear fullarmour. He could manage for this task by simply using armoured sleeves beneath hiseveryday clothes. These flexible sleeves were made of small plates sown into silk orleather coverings, and worn with shoulder cords to hold them in place. Likewise,when an attack wasn’t expected he could still wear some armour (in camp, say) andsave putting on the heavier pieces until absolutely necessary.

Putting on full armour involved a set ritual specifying a hand, leg or arm to be coveredfirst. Apart from anything else, the ritual served a practical purpose in making sure thatthe samurai and his servants didn’t forget any part of the process. It also helped inorganising the armour so that the pieces put on later always overlapped theunderlying, earlier bits. As a result, the protection was maximised because any blowwould be deflected away from the wearer by a series of glancing surfaces that startedat the samurai’s shoulders and went all the way down his body. There was little thatstuck out from the armour for a blow to catch on and lead a blade towards thesamurai beneath.

Samurai helmets almost defy description. They could be enormous and frightening,ornate and completely “over the top”. They carried antlers, enormous crests, horns,huge feathers and sunbursts, suns and anything else to make the wearer moreintimidating and impressive. The heraldic mon was also a favourite device on helmets.Added to this stunning effect, protective masks were often terrifying renderings ofdemonic faces, or deliberately grotesque “cartoons” of the samurai under the mask!Few daimyo went quite as far as Date Masamune who gave his entire hatamoto(bodyguard unit) of 200 men gold-lacquered, pointed helmets that almost doubled theheight of their wearers!

Battle flags carried for units and the entire army could also include inspirationalmessages rather than just a drawing. One of the flags used by Tokugawa Ieyasu carriedthe Buddhist slogan “Renounce this filthy world and attain the Pure Land.” The text ofthe battle flag carried by Takeda Shingen’s troops is quoted in full elsewhere in thismanual. The sheer number of flags and banners carried by a samurai army could be impressivein itself. Every soldier could have his own sashimono. His unit would have one ormore nobori flags, and there were also other banners, streamers, flags and simpleextravagant insignia carried by the army. Fukinuki, for example, were brightly colouredand boldly designed cylindrical streamers on circular frames: they were almost thesame as modern windsocks!

ArmourSamurai did not wear plate armour in the European or mainland Asian style. Armourhad been brought from China but instead samurai armour came to be made of smallplates held together by silk or leather cords. Originally designed for mounted use thearmour, called yoroi, weighed around 30 kilos and was quite effective for a horseman.The wearer’s shoulders carried nearly all the weight and this made the armour a littlerestrictive when swinging a sword. However, given that the early samurai were largelymounted bowmen, this wasn’t much of a problem.

During the Onin War armour began to change so that its weight was more evendistributed across the torso. This helped when using a sword in particular, as shouldermovements no longer had to work against the weight of the armour as well as thesword. The distinctive lacing was kept, and it required enormous attention in bothmanufacture and day-to-day care to make it “work” properly. For a country that wascovered in paddy fields, having armour held together with laces might seem a littleodd. The laces themselves would become waterlogged quite easily, and therefore veryheavy. In cold weather, they could easily freeze.

They did, however, mean that the armour was flexible, easy to wear and relativelyeasy to repair. Coloured laces also made it easy to identify armies and individual unitsbelonging to specific clans on the battlefield, in exactly the same way as any otheruniform does. In the confusion of hand-to-hand fighting, being able to spot your alliesand your enemies quickly is rather important!

It is this lacing that makes Japanese armour so colourful and attractive to the moderneye. The samurai were naturally practical about their armour. The samurai didn’talways approve of colourful displays just for the sake of looking good. Apart fromanything else, some dyes weakened the silk and made the laces fall to pieces, whichlargely defeats the point of using them to hold armour together.

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The samurai used the katana to defend as well as attack and as a result never adoptedshields, unlike the knights of Europe. They never needed to, because of the superbmetalwork in the katana was good enough to act in both capacities. A samurai sword was carefully constructed out of many layers of steel and iron. Thetwo would be hammered out and folded over many times to produce a “sandwich” ofmany layers. Each repeated forging doubled the number of layers of metal in a sword,in some cases 220 — 4,194,304 — layers of metal would be the result. The maximumnumber of folds recorded is some 230 (or 10,736,461,824!) layers of forged metal. Thisgave the sword enormous strength when the iron and steel were welded together.The iron at the sides and back edge gave flexibility to the blade, while the steel corecould be hardened to make a perfect edge. The final process in the forging was particularly clever. The blade was coated with claybuilt up to a different thickness across the blade: thin at the cutting edge and thicktowards the back. When the sword — in its clay overcoat — was heated and thenquenched, it cooled at different speeds and the metal crystals in each part in the bladeended up as different sizes. They were large where the clay had been thick, whichmeant that they were flexible, but small at the cutting edge, so they would form ahard edge that could be sharpened. Once the sword blade was polished, the changefrom the softer steel and the harder edge would show up as the yakiba, a line thatresembles a breaking wave. Once the blade had been signed by the smith and hilt andguard fitted, the sword was ready for use.

The result of all of this was a sword that could cut a man in two — literally.Occasionally condemned criminals were used to test new swords, but it was morecommon to use a bundle of rushes and bamboo or to use corpses. Some swords haddetails of their testing carved into the tang (the piece of the sword inside the hilt).

Thanks to the resilience of such a blade, a samurai could block and turn blows thatwould have shattered any ordinary steel weapon. Its razor sharp edge gave him theability to cut through an opponent right down to the bone. These two contrastingqualities were the result of the skills and experience that Japanese sword smiths hadaccumulated over centuries. No other sword, even the famous blades from Toledo inSpain, ever equalled these Japanese weapons. The katana is still probably the besthand weapon ever produced.

A sword became the “soul of samurai” who carried it and many became familyheirlooms. As late as the Second World War some officers had their family bladesplaced in army-issue fittings then carried them into action. Officers’ swords that werecarried home by Allied soldiers as war souvenirs from Pacific battlefields are stilloccasionally identified as ancient, incredibly valuable blades even today.

It’s worth remembering, though, that some of the extremely decorative armours andhelmets that still survive would never have been worn near a battlefield. A samuraiwho could afford it (or a daimyo who could afford it for his men) would have almostcertainly equipped them with down-to-earth battlefield gear and other decorative,ceremonial items as well.After the arrival of the Portuguese there was also a fashion for “Christian” armouramong the samurai. In fact, this “Christian” armour was a Spanish pattern and, it canbe argued, not as technologically advanced as Japanese armour of the same period.Even so, there are illustrations of samurai using European armour. This, perhaps, wasa fashion statement as much as a practical decision, perhaps to show that the wearerwas extremely wealthy (armour carried all the way from Europe was always going tobe expensive!) and perhaps as an open mark of a new Christian faith. Survivingexamples of European armour from this period nearly always have a bullet marksomewhere on the breastplate. This doesn’t mean that the wearer was shot, but thata bullet had been fired at the armour to test it. The dent was left to show thecustomer that the gunfire test on his new armour had been successful.

Ashigaru ArmourMany ashigaru soldiers were often issued with standardised armour and weapons bythe clan they served (ashigaru had to provide a sword for themselves). To give them auniform appearance coloured lacquer was often used on the iron plates, and the clanheraldic mon would often be painted on the chest and back plates too. Of far cheaperconstruction than samurai armour, ashigaru armour was nevertheless a goodcompromise between protection and mobility, and much better than the equivalentpeasant in a European army of the time would have been given.

Ashigaru helmets were almost always the same low conical jingasa, a practical bit ofgear that, when turned upside down over a fire, could be used as a rice boiler.

The Sword“Cutting down the enemy is the Way of strategy, and there is no need for many

refinements of it.”

— Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, The Wind Book

The Sengoku period was a pretty lawless one. Even peasants habitually went armedwith all kinds of weapons.

However, samurai were the only people allowed to carry two swords, a pair calledthe daisho, (the “long and short”) as a badge of their unique warrior status. These twoweapons, the long katana and the shorter wakizashi, were worn together althoughrarely used as a pair of weapons in combat. Miyamoto Musashi, the sword-saint andwriter of the best-known book on swordsmanship, A Book of Five Rings, was unusual inthat his “Two Heavens” fighting style did use two swords at the same time. One othersword is worth mentioning at this point, the no dachi. These enormous two-handed weapons were only ever used on foot.

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Originally, the yari was about 3 or 4 metres in length, but as the Sengoku periodcontinued, it became longer as the daimyo experimented with its tactical use. TheDate family, for example, equipped their men with 5.4 metre (around 18 feet) yari.

The daimyo came to see the yari as a valuable “offensively” defensive weapon, thetheory being that enemy warriors couldn’t get into close combat past a row of sharpblades at the end of a long spear. Different clans also standardised on different lengthsfor their yari; for example, those used by Oda clan spearmen were also well over fivemetres long. This was partly thanks to their use as a “shelter” for arquebus-armedtroops, who needed yari-armed comrades to keep the enemy at bay while theyreloaded.

The Arquebus“Defence is for times of insufficiency. Attack is for times of surplus.”


The arquebus or firelock is almost as simple as firearms get. Powder, wadding and aball are rammed home down the barrel, the touchhole is primed and then asmouldering cord, the match, sets off the weapon. Unlike very early handguns, wherethe match was simply held in the gunner’s hand, the match on an arquebus was heldby a short arm-like lever and flipped into place at the touchhole when the trigger ispulled. There’s no flint or other relatively complicated sparking mechanism to gowrong. What could go wrong was that the arquebus could explode in the face of theuser (although this wasn’t too common), or that damp could get into the powder,making the weapon an expensive club. As a result, an army armed with arquebuseswas dependent on having good weather on a battle day.

All that said, once they had been introduced to the arquebus, the daimyo and theirsamurai retainers recognised its usefulness almost immediately. After 1542 it took verylittle time for local craftsmen to start making them for the samurai.

Many samurai carried the arquebus in battle, and used it to snipe (with mixed success,given the inherent inaccuracy of a smoothbore weapon) at important enemies.However, it was never the primary weapon of a true samurai. That remained thesword. As a weapon for individual (and in the early years, wealthy) samurai, it wasnever going to be truly effective in the hands of just a few samurai. Apart fromanything else, it was usually good for just one shot because there was rarely chance toreload on the battlefield, even with servants to help.

The weapon’s true utility came when it was used by massed ranks of ashigaru. Inmodern terms, great numbers of arquebuses made up for the weakness of theindividual weapon by turning it into a weapons system. When firing as a single mass orvolley firing, larger units overcame the fact that the arquebus — like all early firearms— was hugely inaccurate and slow. It was more by luck than judgement that anarquebusier could hit a man-sized target at 50 metres or so. Beyond 100 metres,anyone struck by a ball from an arquebus was unlucky rather than a victim ofdeliberate fire. By mass firing against massed targets, these limitations were overcomeand the weapon system that resulted changed Japanese warfare.

The Bow“The bow is tactically strong at the commencement of battle, especially battles

on a moor, as it is possible to shoot quickly from among the spearmen.”


Archery was the skill that the early samurai prized above all others, even more thanswordsmanship. They even used the term “The Way of Horse and Bow” to describetheir military calling. This dates back to the time when samurai were primarily cavalrysoldiers and fought as mounted archers. Over the centuries two slow evolutions tookplace so that cavalry became primarily armed with spears and many other samuraitook to fighting as foot soldiers. Using the bow well, however, remained the mark of awell-trained and disciplined warrior.

A samurai bow looks ungainly as the handgrip is not central, but two-thirds of thedistance along the bow, with the longer section above the handgrip. This oddappearance was quite deliberate, because it allowed a much more powerful bow tobe easily used from horseback. The short lower section could easily be swung across ahorse’s neck so that the samurai could fire at any target. A symmetrical bow wouldhave been smaller (and therefore less powerful) or been ungainly for mounted use.The bow itself was carefully laminated from deciduous wood and bamboo and thenbound for extra strength. The whole thing was carefully lacquered to keep out damp.Stringing a bow could take the combined effort of several men, so the whole bow hadenormous power.

The level of skill that a samurai archer could achieve was the product of long years ofpractice. Samurai were expected to hit small targets while riding at full gallop. This is askill that is still demonstrated today at yamasame festivals.

Arrows came in many types, but the most unusual were signalling arrows that had alarge wooden whistle fitted to the head. These made a warbling noise as they flewthrough the air and were fired at the start of battle to attract the attention of kami, orspirits, to witness the brave deeds that were about to be performed. Fire arrowswere also popular, particularly during sieges.

The Naginata & Yari“Nothing is harder than armed struggle.”


The naginata looks remarkably like a quarterstaff with a large sword blade fixed to one end. Thesohei warrior monks particularly favoured them, but in the hands of a skilled man (which is to saya samurai) they were devastating against almost any opponent. During the Sengoku period thenaginata fell out of widespread use as the yari became a popular weapon with the clans.

As with all Japanese weapons, skilled craftsmen often made yari. The yari’s shaft was often ofoak, surrounded by bamboo laminations and then covered with weatherproof lacquer.A razor-sharp blade completed the spear.

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No matter who fought with them, it was the samurai that eventually decided thecourse of a battle. It was traditional for samurai to advance into a fight shouting outtheir names and looking for a worthy opponent. When a samurai found one, he wouldengage him in single combat. The winner would move on, and his defeated foe wouldbe beheaded. The head would be tagged so that everyone knew exactly who claimedthe kill. At the end of the battle the victorious general would inspect all the heads andreward his followers according to their individual prowess — but woe betide anysamurai who accidentally killed an ally!

All of this led to many battles that were mass brawls rather than organised affairs.Brave samurai would be quite willing to charge into the ranks of the enemy looking foropponents to kill in the hopes of gaining recognition. Indeed, some individuals came tosee it as a right that they should advance and look for a worthy opponent, regardlessof any battle plan their generals might happen to be considering. This enthusiasmcould be a dubious benefit from the point of view of a general: it was sometimesimpossible to restrain headstrong troops from attacking the enemy. More than oneplan was ruined because the samurai decided to take the fight to the enemy withoutthought of the consequences.

Nevertheless, under the right commanders a samurai army was a formidableinstrument of war. It could be difficult to manage at times, but it was also a warwinner.

Tactics“When the enemy presents openings, penetrate immediately. Get what they want,

subtly anticipate them. Maintain discipline and adapt to the enemy to determine

the war’s outcome. At first you are like a maiden so that the enemy opens his door;

then you are like a rabbit on the loose, so the enemy cannot keep you out.”


All daimyo made use of their army’s best features in battle. The Takeda clan, forexample, was fond of beginning with a cavalry charge. Their mounted samurai wereamong the best in the country, and this simple tactic exploited that fact. It workedwell, for the most part, until they chose to charge across waterlogged ground towardsNobunaga’s arquebusiers at the Battle of Nagashino (1575). That day the Takeda clanlearned that warfare had changed. The Nobunaga clan, as might be expected, usedtheir arquebusiers to good effect and slaughtered their bogged-down enemies.

The important thing for any army was to attack as small a part of the enemy with asmany of its own samurai as possible. Although ashigaru made up the bulk of a clanarmy by a head count, it was the samurai who were the “arm of decision” in mostbattles. No ashigaru force could be expected to stand up to the same number ofsamurai in a straight fight. The samurai ethos of warfare and his superior trainingcounted for too much. After all, a samurai had been trained for warfare almost fromthe time that he could walk.

The effects of an arquebus wound, once the target was hit, could be very nastyindeed. The large shot fired (around 25mm in diameter) were hand cast, and as aresult were often flawed. A hand-cast lead bullet could quite easily break up once ithad entered the target and cause very severe injuries. Arquebus bullets also travelledrelatively slowly, so that nearly all their energy was delivered into the target, giving riseto shock effects as well. It was not uncommon for people hit in the arms or legs to diefrom the shock of the wound. By contrast, a modern bullet travels much faster andwill sometimes pass through its target completely. Not as much of its energy willdissipate into the person who has been hit, nor will it shatter into pieces on entry.

At the end of the Sengoku period firearm development was generally abandonedunder the Tokugawa shogunate. The samurai became the only warriors in the worldto turn their backs on gunpowder — the weapon system of the future.

Samurai Armies“I. All men, including those of the samurai class, in this country district are

ordered to come and be registered on the 20th day of this month. They are to

bring with them a gun, a spear or any kind of weapon, if they happen to possess

one, without fear of getting into trouble.

“II. If it is known afterwards that even one man in this district concealed himself

and did not respond to this call, such man no matter whether he is a district

commissioner or a peasant, shall be beheaded.

“III. All the men, from fifteen to seventy years of age, are ordered to come; not

even a monkey-tamer will be excused.”

— Recruiting orders issued by Hojo Ujiyasu (1515-1570)

Like the best armies have always been, a samurai army was a “combined arms” force.It included cavalry, missile troops and infantry (in varying proportions, depending uponthe clan in question) to act in concert on the battlefield.

As the Sengoku period progressed, the ashigaru became an increasingly important partof every clan army. On one level, this was inevitable: the simple need for fightersmeant that the samurai had to be supplemented in some fashion! But the samurai hadnever gone into battle alone anyway. From the very earliest times, servants hadattended each samurai. These servants (genin or shoju) acted as his “support team”,ready to bring him the right weapon at the right time, re-supply him with arrows, andeven count his conquests.

“Avoiding confrontation with orderly ranks and not attacking great formations is

mastering adaptation. The rule for military operations is not to face a high hill

and not to oppose those with their backs to a hill.”


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Keeping charge of an army was, at times, remarkably difficult. Flag signals, conch hornsignals and drums could carry simple orders to units, but mounted messengers carrieddifficult instructions to distant units. This was why set battle formations became soimportant. When every man had a set position in a battle — and this had beenrepeatedly drilled into him — the need to communicate with subordinates was lesspressing.

Fortunately, from their perspective, Japanese generals rarely had a problem withcowardice in the presence of the enemy. If anyone was likely to “cut and run” underthe stress of battle, it would be the ashigaru. A good general made sure that ashigaruwere never given the key position in any battle, and that there were troops behindthem to bolster their morale, act as a rallying point or just simply kill them if they didchoose to run.

Samurai would never voluntarily abandon a fight unless it was truly hopeless and dyingserved no purpose. Sometimes, this single-minded bravery could be slightlyproblematic. Samurai were known to break ranks and charge the enemy despite ofhaving orders not to do so, and despite it being pointless. There were times when“running away and living to fight another day” would have been the right thing to do instrategic terms, even if it meant losing a tactical battle. Such pig-headedness, whilecommendable on one level, could lead to the best-laid plans going awry throughfoolish dedication rather than failed morale.

Formations“The victorious general gets his troops to go into battle as if he was directing a

massive flood of water into a deep canyon. This is a matter of formation.”


Getting an army organised on the field of battle was an important drill that everygeneral would have had his troops practice. The process of getting an army out of amarching column and into some kind of battle line was helped because there werestandard formations for an army about to enter battle. The following six wererecommended battle formations that every army would know how to apply whenentering a fight.

All formations were based on older Chinese ideas for deploying armies, and all ofthem had elements in common. The taisho, or general, was always near the centre ofhis army, where his command skills could be best used to control his followers.Cavalry — and this meant exclusively samurai — were positioned where they couldcharge against vulnerable enemy units. A skirmish line of brave samurai and ashigarumissile-armed troops were in a forward position to harass and break up the enemy’sordered ranks as they approached. Most importantly, there would be a substantialcontingent held in the rear as a tactical reserve to be committed at a battle-winningmoment.

The chances were that an ashigaru had chosen the life of a soldier as an easier optionto endless toil in a rice paddy.For the most part, the great general of the Sengoku period, Oda Nobunaga wasn’t aformal tactician, but he did understand that discipline, drill and training were vital inmaking sure that an army worked together effectively. He also insisted that his soldierswore easily seen and highly coloured uniforms. These simple changes in armyorganisation and practices impressed his opponents at the time. In these simple ideas,he was ahead of many of his contemporaries.

Tactics and the Arquebus “When generals cannot assess opponents, clash with much greater numbers or

more powerful forces and do not understand the level of skill of their own

soldiers, they are beaten.”


The arrival of the arquebus and his use of volley fire also gave Oda Nobunaga’s tacticalinnovations added impetus. A good unit of arquebus-armed troops would be lucky toget off three shots in a minute. It was more likely that the rate of fire would be onlytwo volleys per minute. In between while the ashigaru were busy reloading, enemywarriors could close and engage. And an unloaded arquebus was only useful as a heavyclub.

All the daimyo had incorporated ashigaru arquebusiers into their armies but usuallyeveryone in a unit fired at the same time. This could be devastating, but it meant thatthe unit was effectively useless for the time the gunners were reloading. Nobunaga, onthe other hand, made sure that only some of his men fired at any one time. This volleyfire was an important innovation in battle practice: by having his soldiers fire in ranksor sections, Nobunaga was able to keep up a steady, continuous fire against theenemy. This made it dangerous to close with his troops because there was no “downtime” between shots from the ashigaru.

Japanese armies had also begun to evolve along the same lines as the European “pikeand shot” armies of the same period. Spearmen were used to protect thearquebusiers while they reloaded. The tactical solutions that arose weren’t identical inEurope and Japan. The Japanese never, for example, ended up with spearmen (pikes)fighting in units that were 30 or or more ranks deep. “Push of pikes”, that hugeshoving match that many European battles degenerated into, never became a majorpart of a samurai battle. The presence of samurai each armed with a katana made sureof that.

“On level ground take up positions where it is easy to manoeuvre, keeping the

higher land to your right rear, with low ground in front and high ground behind.”


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taxing trade with the Chinese mainland. Koku, however, are a good standard measurefor wealth in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition. An army is made up of a mixture of unit types, simply because each style of fightinghas its own strengths and weaknesses. A skilled general takes into account thestrengths of each kind of unit while being aware of their weaknesses. By making surethat the weaknesses of one sort of unit are screened or compensated by another unit,a strong army can be built up.

“Those who use an army skilfully do not raise troops twice and do not provide

food three times.”


The exact mix of units in an army depends on the personal command style of thedaimyo in charge. The Takeda clan, for example, used to include quite a highproportion of cavalry in their armies because it was their standard (and oftensuccessful!) tactic to begin a battle with a full-blown cavalry charge into the enemy.The shock effect of this cavalry charge often demoralised an opposing force before thereal battle began, making victory an easier proposition. The mix of units in your armywhen playing Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition will depend on the tactics that youwant to try out, what opponents are fielding against you, and what units you canafford to train.

A good taisho also kept his army intact as far as possible. There was little point inwinning a battle if the victory has cost too much blood. Because warriors in Shogun:Total War gain experience when they fight, it is a sensible policy to try and keepcasualties to a minimum. Units that are bled white in battles not only lose soldiers;they also lose valuable combat effectiveness as the knowledge of how to fight — andwin — dies with the warriors who are killed.

“Getting soldiers to fight by letting the force of momentum work is like rolling

rocks or logs… When troops are skilfully led into battle the momentum is like

that of round rocks rolling down a high mountain. This is force.”


Finally, when looking at these different types of soldier, remember that the samuraiwere the living embodiment of a simple military principle. Weapons are useless unlessused well, and the warriors carrying the swords and guns are more important than theweapons they carry. It almost goes without saying that a unit of samurai is much betterin terms of quality than any ashigaru force, no matter what their armaments. Both,however, are necessary when building an army because having many “cheaper” men isoften useful in battle and in holding ground once it is taken.

Ganko — This is a flexible and powerful formation that can quickly changeinto a defensive pattern called onryo by a series of pre-arranged moves.The units of samurai could be pulled back at an angle to make the secondformation.

Gyorin — Effectively this is a “blunt arrowhead” formation similar to thehoshi. Typically, an army that was badly outnumbered by its opponentswould use this formation.

Hoen — This was a keyhole-shaped formation that was widely regarded asthe best counter to the hoshi arrowhead. The enemy drawn into thecentre and destroyed in detail.

Hoshi — This is an attacking formation, and regarded as one of thestrongest. The arrowhead brings the maximum pressure to bear against asmall portion of the enemy battle line.

Kakuyoku — This is another strong formation that can be quickly changedto suit the emerging battle situation. As it stands, the kakuyoku is equallygood for offence or defence. Without too many movements by thecomponent units, the entire army could be changed into a hoshi and sentagainst the enemy.

Koyaku — Another flexible formation that, thanks to the split vanguard, is capable of absorbing an enemy initial attack for long enough for the enemy’s true intentions to become plain. Once they were, the army could adapt its tactics to match.

Army units“The consummation of forming an army is to arrive at formlessness. When you

have no form, spies cannot find anything out and the enemy cannot produce a

strategy.”


All the units below are included in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition. All the units will beproduced at a stockade or castle of one kind or another within the producing clan’sdomains. Some units also require that the castle be upgraded with specialist weaponmakers or dojo — specialised training establishments.

A clan’s resources must be sufficient to pay the cost of the unit in koku. Some of theseunits might seem “cheap”, but that’s only until you remember that a koku is thequantity of rice used to feed one man for a whole year. That’s not to say that a unit ofcavalry archers needs several warehouses full of rice to keep them going, but that thisis the level of wealth that’s needed to pay for their training and upkeep. Rememberthat not all the clans necessarily get their money in rice from the peasants.

The Takeda were lucky enough to own a gold mine, while other clans made money by

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No Dachi SamuraiEvery samurai carried two swords as a mark of his class. Samurai armed with the no dachi went one better, as this was a large two-handed sword that could cut down almost any opponent when used with skill. Samurai armed with the no dachi are used as shock troops to break into enemy formations. They can also be used very effectively against troops whose moraleis already suspect — an attack by a unit swinging two-handed

swords can cause even the sternest heart to quail! No dachi samurai, then, are superbwhen used to take an attack to the enemy, but they are less effective when useddefensively.

Warrior MonksReligious certainty and samurai training are a potent combination. The sohei — Buddhist warrior monks — had a tradition of getting involved in wars that didn’t necessarily concern them. Many monasteries also had a tradition of producing brave and fanatical warriors, men who were certain that death on a battlefield would not mean defeat, disgrace and failure but a certain place in paradise.A unit of warrior monks is a powerful fighting force, motivated as it

is by religious devotion. It also uses a “portable shrine” in place of a battle flag as itsstandard. The presence of this shrine makes other troops reluctant to attack them, ifonly because of the potential sacrilege. However, Christian samurai units (that mayexistent after the arrival of the Portuguese in 1542 and the subsequent appearance ofthe Jesuits) don’t suffer any penalties when attacking warrior monks.

cavalry archers Armed with swords and bows, cavalry archers are a potent skirmishing force. Being mounted, they have excellent mobility; being armed with bows, they can shower opponents with arrows; being armed with swords, they can close with the enemy; being samurai, they are dedicated and fearless! However, cavalry archers lack the “weight” to charge home successfully against properly organised defenders, but against poorly

positioned, badly managed or already “wobbly” troops they can be deadly. They canbe used to harass the enemy with missile weapons, manoeuvred to threatenvulnerable flanks, or sent in to break wavering troops.

As with all cavalry, however, cavalry archers need careful handling when going upagainst arquebusiers. They can be quickly shot to pieces.

“Attack without warning where the enemy is not expecting it, and while his spirit

is undecided follow up your advantage and, having the lead, defeat him.”


Samurai ArchersThese troops are among the most useful in Shogun: Total War asthey can be trained quickly and are relatively inexpensive. They areextremely useful in any army. As samurai, their morale and fighting skills are excellent. They are also armed with both bows and swords, meaning that they can stand off and shower enemy forces with arrows, then close in and fight hand-to-hand when needed. Their armour is also of good quality and their morale as

samurai is exceptional, making these among the most useful soldiers daimyo can haveunder their command, especially early in the game.

Most clan armies will include a good number of these units simply because of these allround abilities.

“Standing your ground to wait for the enemy who is far away, waiting for the

weary in comfort, waiting for the hungry with full stomachs, is mastering strength.”


Naginata SamuraiThe naginata is a dangerous weapon in the hands of a samurai. Its reach may not be as long as a yari, but it is “handier” for close combat and has a greater attack range than a sword. This makes it a terrible weapon to face: for example, a single sweep from a naginata can neatly decapitate a charging horseman or cripple his horse. In either case, the horseman has been defeated!

Samurai who used the naginata often used heavier armour than was usual whichmakes them a little less mobile than other samurai units. It does, however, give themdefensive bonuses in combat.

Yari SamuraiThe yari is a long spear tipped with a razor sharp blade. Originally, this was simply a slightly sturdier version of the lance-like spear used by mounted samurai, but over the years it became a different and heavier weapon. Once battle had been joined samurai equipped with the yari were equally adept in close combat as long as the unit kept good order in its ranks.

Yari samurai are extremely effective against cavalry. It is, after all, very difficult to forceeven the best-trained cavalry horses to charge into a mass of spear points! Thus, theytend to be used “defensively”. In an ideal world, the enemy would be tempted intocharging onto the spears, dashing themselves to pieces against a foe which who is justa few metres away beyond the range of a sword swing.

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As with many European “pike and shot” armies, yari-armed troops were used tocreate a “wall” of spear points for other soldiers to shelter behind. It takes some timeto ready an arquebus and the enemy can be kept at bay during reloading by yari-equipped troops.

Arquebus AshigaruThe coming of the arquebus in 1542 led to a revolution in the waythat clan armies were armed and organised. Properly used in largenumbers, arquebuses could be devastating missile weapons, even though it was out-ranged by, and slower than, a traditional bow.

Early arquebuses were very heavy, and often needed a stake-like support for the barrels. In turn, this made them cumbersome to move and deploy, as they certainly couldn’t be used without such supports. This also means that arquebus-armed ashigaru aren’t

very effective in hand-to-hand combat. Their firepower can inflict heavy casualties onanyone who comes near, but if the enemy gets close enough, the arquebus-armedashigaru are at a huge disadvantage in hand-to-hand combat. They will, quite simply,be cut to pieces.

Because arquebus-armed ashigaru require a trading post to be constructed in a clan’sdomain, they can only be produced after the arrival of European traders in Japan: thePortuguese arrive in 1542, while the Dutch land in 1561. European traders were quitehappy to sell guns to the daimyo warlords, but their European gun makers were at theother end of a very long and hazardous sea voyage. Local gunsmiths did manage tocopy European arquebuses, but not immediately in large quantities. This is part of thereason for the relatively long training time for arquebus-armed ashigaru. It’s not hardto teach troops to use the weapons, but getting hold of enough arquebuses plus goodquality powder and shot can be headache!

Musketeer AshigaruQualitative improvements in gunpowder weapons and (just as importantly) their tactical use mean that later in the Sengoku period — and in Shogun: Total War — an improved form of arquebus-armed ashigaru can be trained for inclusion in your army.These troops have a slightly greater range with their gunfire and a higher rate of fire. By this point the arquebus has become a more refined and — most importantly — a lighter weapon that can be aimed without the need for an extra support.

Note: Clearly, arquebus-carrying units are not available in campaigns. from theMongol invasion era.The term "musketeer" isn’t strictly correct because these ashigaru aren’t technicallyarmed with muskets as such but with a lighter, improved type of arquebus. However,"Slimmed-Down-But-Improved Arquebus Ashigaru" is a bit of a mouthful for a unittitle!

Heavy CavalryHeavily armed and armoured, these samurai are an elite. Able to take nearly any enemy and win, they have the speed, weight and power to be powerful shock troops when they can come to grips with an enemy. Relatively speaking, they are less effective against troops armed with yari (who can hold them off at a distance beyond the swing of a katana), and against arquebus-armed ashigaru. “Relatively”, however, is the key word here. If heavy cavalry are in

close combat against anyone, they will do severe damage to their opponents. Heavycavalry are also well able to defend against most attacks. Nearly all clan armies willinclude heavy cavalry. They are simply too threatening not to include in an army.

Historically, the Takeda clan made great use of cavalry to deliver a punishing charge inthe first few moments of a battle.

Yari CavalryThese samurai shock troops fall somewhere between their light and heavy comrades in arms. They can be used to break infantry formations, as their lances give them a reasonable “reach” in combat. The lance used by mounted samurai is the direct “ancestor” of the yari carried by infantry. It is, however, shorter andlighter than the foot samurai and ashigaru version of the spear, but it does mean that lancers are at less of a disadvantage against yari-armed warriors.

Overall, they are potent units, but lack the defensive bonuses of the heavy samuraicavalry. Again, they are forces that need to be carefully handled when attackingarquebusiers. If a charge is poorly timed, any cavalry unit will be shot to pieces beforeit can attack itself.

Yari AshigaruAt the start of play in Shogun: Total War, most clans will receive a yari ashigaru unit “free of charge” as the start of their army.The yari, or long spear, was popular as a weapon among the daimyo for their ashigaru because it was relatively easy to train large numbers of peasants to use it. Learning to hold a spear (and point it in the right direction) doesn’t take anything like as much time as learning to use a sword properly! Yari Ashigaru should not be compared directly to samurai warriors

armed in a similar fashion. Ashigaru fighting ability, morale and general levels ofequipment are markedly inferior to those of true samurai. On the other hand, theashigaru are relatively cheap soldiers and can be trained in great numbers quitequickly. Ashigaru soldiers of this type are usually present in clan armies in considerablenumbers for just these reasons.

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NAGINATA CAVALRYA further refinement of heavy cavalry came about when samurai beganusing naginata polearms from horseback. This gave them many of theadvantages of a sword, with the reach of a spear!

Naginata Cavalry can only be trained at a location where there is aFamous Horse Dojo (i.e. one that has already been improved) and a

Spear Dojo.

KENSAIKensai is the term for "sword saints", the almost superhuman mastersof the sword that only years of training and dedication can produce.Although he lived at the end of the Sengoku period, Miyamoto Musashiwas one such figure. These men were capable of taking on manyopponents at once and emerging victorious and often untouched. Fewnations have ever produced such skilled swordsmen, and possibly only

the very greatest fencing masters in Europe could ever be judged to have the samelevel of skill with their chosen weaponry.

Kensai, as masters of swordsmanship, can only be trained at the most exalted of dojo:a Legendary Sword Dojo. They appear on the battlefield as single warriors, but don’tbe deceived — they are truly deadly!

BATTLEFIELD NINJAUnlike the other ninja in the game who operate as "strategic" piecesand carry out assassinations, Battlefield Ninja do exactly what theirname suggests: they can be deployed like any other troops on the fieldof combat.

Well, perhaps not quite like any other troops, since they have superiorstealth abilities and can therefore hide very effectively from enemy forces. As such,their position is only revealed when they finally attack.

ASHIGARU CROSSBOWMENAshigaru rossbowmen are described in more detail in the section onThe Mongols, as they only appeared in that historical time period.Their training requires a Bow Dojo.

MONGOL UNITSAll the Mongol units are described in the section on The Mongols, asthey only appear in battles and campaigns of that historical period.

All the Mongol troop types land as reinforcements in Japan, spiritedacross the ocean from mainland Asia. The Mongols never train newunits on the map, so there are no building requirements for them.

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techniques of taking a castle were simple and rather brutal: the attacking armysurrounded the castle, attempted to burn it down with fire arrows and, at some point,mounted an infantry assault over the walls or against its gate. By and large, thedefenders only had to wait out the siege and hope that their enemy would give up ashis troops deserted or disease took its toll. Often, however, the defenders didn’t waitaround for the attackers to leave. Japanese history is full of accounts of samurai leavingthe safety of their castles to take the fight to the enemy, often with mixed results.

By the Sengoku period, castles had been built along the same principles for centuries,and siege techniques hadn’t changed all that much either. After all, there was no realneed to change a design that worked. A tradition of building stone castles was neverreally developed before the Sengoku period, possibly for the good reason that Japan isone huge earthquake zone, but also because it simply wasn’t really necessary. A goodset of compromises between wood and stone did eventually emerge, with stone beingused to create “artificial hills” on top of which castles were built.

The key feature in castle design, its defence and in siege warfare remained the rangeof a fire arrow. The ability to burn down a castle was all-important, as was the abilityto keep the defenders far enough away from vulnerable internal buildings so that theycouldn’t burn them down. All this changed, of course, with the introduction offirearms. Now both defender and attacker had to take into account snipers, as well aslarger siege guns, of which there were some in Japan.

One thing didn’t change during the Sengoku period, and that was the same willingnessof the defenders to charge out of the castle to meet their enemies on an open field.Given the influence of bushido upon a samurai’s actions, it is less surprising that somany chose to fight in the open than act in a completely defensive fashion!

Some castles of the Sengoku period could be enormous. Toyotomi Hideyoshi’sfortress at Osaka was truly vast, and the equal of any defensive structure in the worldat the time. It used the river nearby as part of its defences, and had defensive outerwalls some 18 kilometres long. Within, a series of baileys meant that an attacker wasforced to besiege one inner wall after another to have any hope of taking the place.

Artillery In JapanIn the eyes of a 16th or 17th century European general one thing would seem to bemissing from a samurai army. Where is the field artillery? In Europe, gunpowderweapons were expensive to manufacture and difficult to use, at least when firstcreated, so artillery was in use before handguns became common. In Japan, however, matters were largely reversed. This was thanks to earlier Imperialedicts against wheeled transport of all kinds. Japan had become a society whereeveryone walked, or rode on horseback or was carried by palanquin. Without a good, wheeled carriage, it is very nearly impossible (and definitelyimpractical) to move field guns around open countryside. Try carrying a car’s back axleand transmission across a muddy field while (a) several hundred people try to kill youand (b) you try to keep the whole thing dry and then you’ll have some idea of thepractical difficulties of dealing with artillery on a samurai battlefield!

The daimyo took to arquebuses with enthusiasm, but artillery never really got used as

Castles & Siege WarfareThroughout Japanese history, warfare nearly always involved castles. Shogun: Total War— Gold Edition includes both castles and the battles that were fought over them.

In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, you won’t have to sit and watch a long siege, asall the details will be handled for you by the strategic game system. If your forcesinvade a province with a castle, they will have to fight the province’s garrison asalways, but victory doesn’t automatically take control of the province.

Instead, the defeated defenders retreat into the castle and the province becomescontested by the two daimyo. This stops either side getting any tax income from theprovince, but it also stops the defender building any new military units there as well.

As long as there is an attacking army in the contested province, the castle is besieged.You, as commander of your clan, don’t have to worry about the details of the siege. Aslong as the castle is besieged, the defending troops will suffer attrition losses as theystarve or your own men conduct small-scale attacks. This is a slow but fairly certainmethod of taking a castle. Of course, you can always order an assault that will result inanother tactical battle or decide that a siege is going to take too long and try adifferent strategic approach.

It might look like the defenders, on the other hand, have no choice but to sit thereand wait to be starved out, but there are options for them too in Shogun: Total War -

Gold Edition. The first of these is, naturally enough, just to sit there and hope theattackers give up! This may, however, be only postponing the inevitable. Thedefenders can sally forth and fight it out on the battlefield, but defeat will let theattackers into the castle. Alternately, the defenders can also be aided by anotherfriendly army acting as a relief column to raise the siege. The arrival of a relief columnwill also trigger another tactical battle in the province.

Assuming that the attackers are successful, they will gain control of the castle, but itwill have been damaged as a result of the siege. This may mean that some of thecastle improvements (as explained later) will not function until the castle is fullyrepaired.

As you can see, castles are hugely useful in slowing down the advance of an attackingarmy because it will take time to besiege or assault a castle. This is quite apart fromthe benefits they give to their owners as training grounds for new troop units.

Historical CastlesCastles in historical Japan were naturally built to be defensible when under siege, andnearly all the early castles in Japan were built in the most awkward places (for theattacker) that could be found. Early castles were almost always wooden stockadeswith a few stone reinforcements. Hilltops and even mountaintops were fortified, andthe nearby availability of suitable wood and stone undoubtedly helped the builders.

Unlike in Europe, the defenders were lucky in one respect. They never had to worry about lots of siege machines other than battering rams. The

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to ninja assassination attempts. Taisho are definitely assets worth using (andprotecting) on the battlefield.

EmissaryEmissaries are samurai who have been specially selected for their loyalty and given training to be courtiers as well as warriors. Their diplomatic skills have been honed to a fine pitch, and they can be trusted to treat daimyo with respect and honour when negotiating with them. Every time an emissary succeeds in a diplomatic mission, his experience increases; this both increases his chances of success in future and makes him slightly less vulnerable to

assassination attempts by ninja.Finally, there is always the risk that an emissary will not only fail in his diplomaticmission, but that he will become a “rejection note” himself. One possible result ofsending an emissary to see a daimyo is that his head — and just his head — will besent back! This definitely means “no!” whatever the question!

NinjaNinja are spies and assassins par excellence. It’s a foolish daimyo that doesn’t at least consider using ninja against his rivals. Ninja can be sent out to kill important people in other clans, including emissaries, taisho and the daimyo himself. The more important a target the ninja is sent against, the lower his chances of success. Master and legendary ninja who have already carried out many successful missions can also be used during sieges.

They can sneak into a castle and open the gates for the attackers!Each time a ninja manages to complete a mission he gains experience and will have ahigher chance of success the next time he is sent out — assuming that he isn’t caughtand executed (in some appropriately horrible fashion) by the opposition, of course!

a separate “weapon system” for the battlefield. There were large guns but these wereused in siege warfare. Changes in castle building techniques mostly kept ahead ofartillery practices. This is why large field guns haven’t been included in Shogun: TotalWar - Gold Edition. Artillery pieces just weren’t that significant in Japanese battlefieldwarfare at this time.

Note: You can play with gunpowder if you undertake any of the Mongol invasionscenarios! You’ll have the opportunity of unleashing the fear of the difficult to use, butdeadly, Korean Thunder bombers upon your opposition!

Naval Forces In JapanIt would be fair to say that that the samurai were never consummate masters of navalcombat, because they never really needed to become expert sailors. A fleet wasn’tgoing to make its owner the shogun, but a samurai army might just do the job!

Warships were built and used, but they weren’t really a decisive factor in the Sengokuperiod. As a result, Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition doesn’t include naval forces.During the game you can build shipyards in coastal provinces, but these are neededfor transport and trade between the main islands of Japan.

Strategic Units In Shogun:Total WarIn Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition the following units are deployed on the strategicmap of Japan. With the exception of the taisho, a general, they don’t appear on tacticalbattlefields. They do have skills and abilities that a wise daimyo is well advised to useto full advantage, as you’ll see!

TaishoDrawn from the ranks of the most able samurai, a taisho is a general given command of part (or all) of a clan’s army. The taisho shows the position of the army on the strategic map of Japan, and he is also present on any battlefield involving units under his command. On a battlefield, a taisho has a small group of bodyguards (his hatamoto) to protect him. A general has an influence on all the units under his command.

As he gains honour and experience, the units a taisho commands receive bonuses totheir morale.

Generals can be killed on the battlefield by enemy troops and they are also vulnerable

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Jesuit PriestJesuit priests can be used as emissaries, and are especially effective when used in this fashion on diplomatic missions aimed at securing treaties with Christian rulers. No matter what the result of his diplomatic mission, a Jesuit will never be killed and his head sent home in a bag by a Christian daimyo. A Buddhist daimyo, however, is under no obligation to respect the sanctity of the church or its representatives!

ShinobiThe shinobi is a spy, sent into enemy territory to gain information and cause dissent. Without owning a province, a daimyo in Shogun: Total War won’t have access to any information about that province unless, that is, he sends a shinobi to spy out the land. This spy can give reports on the value of the province (its productive value), any improvements that have been built there, and some military information too.

The other purpose of a shinobi is to encourage revolt against the province’s overlord.A province that revolts doesn’t automatically change allegiance, but instead it becomesindependent with its own standing army of peasants and ronin.

Used “defensively” a shinobi acts as a kind of secret policeman, making sure that thedaimyo’s enemies never get the chance to spread dissent and dissatisfaction to thepeasants in a province. Endless rebellions can, of course, destroy the domain of adaimyo just as surely as an army marching across it.

The Legendary GeishaThe Legendary Geisha is the supreme diplomat, spy and assassin. She can be sentas an emissary to see another daimyo, but while in his castle also acts as a spy, obtaining information normally only available to ninja sent as spies. What’s almost insulting to the “victim” daimyo is that he knows that the Legendary Geisha is up to no good, but can do nothing aboutit other than having her assassinated by a ninja of his own! It’s worth remembering

that geisha were not openly prostitutes or courtesans, but “educated escorts andentertainers” — the perfect people for overhearing sensitive information…

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PROVINCESEven given the scale of the strategic game in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, theprovinces are functionally different. Each province in the game is valuable in itselfbecause of the money (measured in rice koku) that it produces, because of itsstrategic position and because of the prestige that ownership gives the controllingdaimyo. This is true no matter where the province happens to lie. The daimyo setsthe tax rate across his whole realm, but rich and properly developed provincesobviously give the maximum tax income. At the same time, a daimyo has to be carefulin balancing his obvious need for money to pay for his armies, fortifications, spies, andall the rest against the risk of starting a peasant rebellion. The Ikki defence leagues ofpeasants and ji-samurai are not going to remain loyal forever if their overlords donothing but squeeze them for taxes!

A province like Yamato or Hida on the main island of Honshu is useful strategicallybecause it allows its owners to attack in many directions; this same strategicusefulness can also be a liability to a weak overlord because the same province can beoverrun from all sides. Conversely, one of the provinces on Kyushu is excellentdefensively, but isolated from the centre of Japan with many (often heavily) defendedprovinces between it and the centre of power in Kyoto. Both kinds of province havetheir uses to skilled daimyo that think in larger terms than just winning the next battle.

“A wise general strives to feed off the enemy’s land. Each bushel of food taken

from the enemy is equivalent to twenty carried from home.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarProvinces also differ from one another in one other important respect. In Shogun: TotalWar - Gold Edition many provinces have what can be termed a “special ability”. Someprovinces contain gold or other valuable mineral wealth that can be mined, forexample. Others are home to natural horsemen (and so cavalry units are easy toproduce there) or have a tradition of producing ninja assassins. It’s a good idea todecide if the special conditions in a province make it worth capturing, either because itwill further your own plans or deprive an enemy of a valuable resource.

You can use a shinobi to discover the details of a province before you attack it. Boththe strategic position of a province and its revenue need to be considered before it isadded to your holdings! There is, of course, a double benefit to attacking enemyprovinces. Not only do you get the use of the territory, your opponent is deprived ofits income and many improvements that he has built there. Taking a province actuallyshifts the balance of power by “two provinces’ worth” in favour of the conqueror(plus one for the conqueror, minus one for the defeated party), and may open upfurther strategic opportunities to divide an enemy’s domain.

One of the other nice things about capturing a province is that you also capture anycastle that happens to be there.

3: THE LAND OF THEDAIMYO

“Terrain is to be assessed in terms of distance, difficulty or ease of travel,

dimension and safety.”


Land has always been at a premium in Japan.The basis for nearly all wealth and prestige infeudal Japan was land and the rice that the peasantry grew. It’s worth remembering thatthe population of Japan was greater than thatof the whole of Medieval Western Europe — Japan has always been a relatively crowded nation, and this has given extra impetus to the demand for land.The country itself is made up of four main islands: northern Hokkaido, the main island

Honshu, and the smaller islands of Shikoku and Kyushu. Shogun: Total War - GoldEdition doesn’t include Hokkaido for the simple reason that control of this islandwasn’t strategically or tactically important during the Sengoku period. It was stilllargely a cold, barbaric “backwater”, inhabited by the Ainu people, the originalinhabitants of Japan. Honshu was the most important of the islands (and remains so tothis day). It was control of the provinces of Honshu that brought victory to theTokugawa clan. It would, however, be a mistake to dismiss Shikoku and Kyushu asirrelevant, as powerful daimyo arose on both islands. The straits around those islandsmake superb protective moats behind which quite a powerful army can be trained!

“A victorious army first wins and then seeks battle. A defeated army first battles

and then seeks victory.”


The Asian mainland is just far enough away to the west to be “inconvenient” forinvading armies, as the Mongols found out to their cost. This allowed the daimyo tofight each other without really having to worry about the arrival of a Chinese orMongol army in their midst, eager to take advantage of a Japanese civil war. Perhapsthe Sengoku period would never have happened if the daimyo had been forced toconsider external threats. Then again, the Ancient Greek cities squabbled continuouslyeven though the Persian Empire regularly tried to invade.

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Watchtowers & Border FortsThere are two “non-economic” improvements that a daimyo can make in Shogun:Total War - Gold Edition. Firstly, he can build a watchtower in any province that hecontrols. This doesn’t help defend the province, but it does act as a permanent spy inall the adjacent provinces. Secondly, he can build a border fort, which acts as apermanent counterspy in the province where it is built. This stops enemy spies fromobtaining any information about the province. Watchtowers and border forts also helpimprove the loyalty of the local peasants.

DisastersJapan has always been a country where Nature can turn on the works of mankind and destroy them in an instant. There is always the risk that an earthquake can strikeand wipe out some or all of the buildings and improvements in a province. Fortunately, earthquakes aren’t very common. Equally dangerous and expensive when theydo strike are typhoons (the word itself is a direct transliteration from Japanese). These

terrible storms can sweep across the Pacific and make landfall with damaging effects incoastal provinces. However, the western coast of Japan faces China and the seas theresimply aren’t big enough for these storms to really get going. As a result, the westerncoastal provinces are safe from any typhoons.

Rebellions, Peasant Revolts& RoninNot all provinces in the game are actually commanded by one of the daimyo. Just as inthe historical Japan, there are provinces where the Ikko-ikki have kicked out theiroverlords, or where more generalised peasant revolts have taken place.

Every province in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition has a loyalty rating. This measureshow the peasants and ji-samurai feel towards their current ruler, and it can be affectedby a number of factors. Nothing is likely to cause more damage to loyalty in the longrun than consistently high taxes. It’s a great way to raise income, but keeping the taxrate too high can lead to unrest. After the arrival and spread of Christianity, religioncan also have an effect on the people’s loyalty, as you’ll see in a later section.Rebellions also have a nasty tendency to spread if left unchecked, as peasants in oneprovince will see that their near neighbours are getting away with rebelling and try it

As you’ve already seen, though, it’s not necessarily a fast or easy process to capture acastle. You’ll either need to fight at least two battles or starve the garrison intosubmission through a protracted siege. Naturally, the castle itself will be damaged inthe process of being captured (it will be reduced by one level, in fact), but this is oftenmuch cheaper than having to build a new structure from scratch. Any militarystructures associated with the castle will also be captured, unless the castle itself is nolonger prestigious enough to be a home for them. Thus, taking a province can alsoslow or cripple an enemy’s war production and give your own production capacity analmost-instant boost too!

Improving ProvincesIn addition to being great commanders, the daimyo were also great landowners. Theyhad to be, as maintaining an army in the field was a hugely expensive proposition. Likeall sensible landlords, the daimyo kept an eye on their holdings and regularly investedin schemes to increase their worth and, in the process, the taxes that they could raisefrom a province.

In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, you can also improve provinces by spending kokuon them. Any province can have its farmlands upgraded at least once (and up to fourtimes in most cases) to produce more annual revenue. Provinces with mineral wealthcan also have mines built in them. There’s nothing quite as useful as finding gold orother mineral riches in your domain! This was what allowed the Takeda clan to be somild in their taxes and yet build up a substantial cavalry army.

One thing that doesn’t need improvement is the permanent garrison that is found inevery province. Even without having an army in the field, a daimyo can rely on a“scratch force” of local peasants, ashigaru and ji-samurai to protect his interests.Effectively, these people become an extra couple of units on any battlefield when adaimyo is on his own territory. Even when a daimyo doesn’t control a province, it’sgarrison remains in place to protect their own homes.

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These soldiers might look like rebels, but they are actually self-interested warriorsonly after extending their own powers. They can be among the most dangerous“independent” forces in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, but fortunately the ronindon’t tend to be that co-ordinated in their actions. The ronin in each province willgenerally act in selfishly and not come to the aid of any neighbouring ronin who arecurrently being attacked.

ReligionSooner or later every daimyo in Shogun: TotalWar - Gold Edition will have to make adecision about his religious convictions, and this can have profound consequences onthe loyalty of his people. The arrival of RomanCatholic Christianity with the Portuguese, andin particular the arrival of the Jesuits, madesure that the accommodation betweenBuddhism, Shinto and Zen that had beenarrived at in Japan would have to change.The Society of Jesus — the Jesuits — had been formed in Europe as “soldiers of theCounter-Reformation” to defeat the rise ofProtestantism on all levels. They were not only a militant order, but were often superbscholars, consummate diplomats and very occasionally good soldiers as well. Jesuitswere often involved in journeys of exploration simply because they made such superbpapal representatives.

themselves. Just to make life difficult, peasants can sometimes rebel if their harvestshave been poor or a natural disaster has struck. After all, it is better from their pointof view to keep all of a poor harvest and face a daimyo’s wrath than starve to deathafter handing over most of a poor harvest in taxes.At the same time, there are things that a daimyo can and will do to make his provinceshappier with his leadership. On the military front, keeping a garrison in a provincehelps suppress some disloyalty, and is very useful in itself as a “tripwire” force shouldany of your neighbours decide to invade. Shinobi can also be used as “secretpolicemen” to weed out malcontents in a province and suppress dissent as well.Border forts and watchtowers will also make the peasants feel better about their lot:at least they can see that their taxes are being spent on something to protect them,and not just on a daimyo’s fancy army. Likewise, spending money to make thepeasant’s lives better in the long run by improving their farms also makes a daimyopopular.

There’s also one other factor in whether rebellion breaks out or not: a just-conqueredprovince is likely to rebel and declare loyalty to its former owner if the peasants aregiven half a chance. Not keeping a garrison force (and possibly a shinobi) in a recentlyconquered province is likely to cause a revolt. A “change of ownership” takes fiveyears or so to take hold in the hearts and minds of the local population in a province,so bear this in mind when setting tax rates and moving troops around.

Sooner or later, however, it’s likely that someone, somewhere will revolt when you’replaying Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition. Depending on the cause of the revolt, it mayturn out to be a direct threat or a problem that can be ignored for a little while (butnot too long, remembering that rebellion can spread!).

The least dangerous revolt, from a daimyo’s viewpoint, is a peasant rebellion. Thiscauses the Ikki in the appropriate province to raise an army of ashigaru spearmen todefend their homes. With a bit of care, a samurai army should be able to crush thiskind of rebellion.

Religious rebellions are slightly more dangerous, in that they tend to produce betterquality field armies of fanatical believers. A rebellion by Christians puts a militantsamurai army in the field and these troops are often supported by ashigaruarquebusiers. A Buddhist Ikko-ikki revolt, on the other hand, doesn’t have anyarquebusiers (as these are a “Christian” weapon), but it can have substantial numbersof warrior monks in its army. In both cases, these can be tricky revolts to put downquickly because of the quality and quantity of the rebel forces involved.

Finally, and only in recently conquered provinces, there is the risk that a “loyalist” (tothe old daimyo) faction will take control of the province. This can be a double-edgedsword, depending upon whether you are the victim of the rebellion or the daimyo forwhom the loyalists have declared. If you’re the victim, as soon as a province begins aloyalist revolt, you’ll find yourself facing a new samurai army loyal to the previousdaimyo. If you benefit from the loyalist revolt, you’ll suddenly find yourself in a controlof a brand new samurai army in your old province!

Finally, after the death of a daimyo (without any heir) his domain doesn’t simplydisappear. It dissolves into independent “mini-statelets” under the control of ronin, thedaimyo’s former soldiers.

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“Those skilled at the unorthodox are infinite as heaven and earth, and as

inexhaustible as great rivers. When they come to an end, they begin again, like

days and months. They die and are reborn, like the four seasons.”


Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition doesn’t include the battles that arose from siegewarfare because the long, slow business of laying siege to a castle doesn’t make a veryexciting game. Sieges are covered in the strategic game in a straightforward fashion sothat you don’t have to worry about the details. Siege warfare was often neither heroicnor dramatic. In fact, most of the time it was a fairly squalid affair. If you want toimagine what a siege would have been like, think of the most overcrowded campingholiday you’ve ever had or heard about, with utterly dreadful food, no toilets, noreliable fresh water, constant bad weather, no chance to wash for weeks on end andno chance to move somewhere more interesting. Now add in random bouts of illness(caused by the food, bad water, bad weather, lack of hygiene and overcrowding) andrandom episodes of small-scale violence when the people you are besieging try to killyou or you try to break in and kill them. Of course, none of the intricacies (and boredom) of siege warfare mattered on manyoccasions. At Osaka in 1615, for example (and at other sieges), the troops inside thecastle left the protection of the walls to fight it out with the enemy on an openbattlefield. Sometimes this was a good move, breaking the siege in one climacticaction. At other times, such as Osaka Castle, it simply meant the defenders were cutdown outside the walls rather than being starved or slaughtered within them.

Samurai CastlesThere are four levels of castles in Shogun Total War, but they all perform the samefunction. They are the bases for armies and the visible signs of the daimyos’ power,

honour and control of provinces. Without a castle to act as an administrative centre, no other military structure can be built ina province. The simplest (and cheapest) castle type in the gameis the castle (castle 1). All other types of castle are developments of the basic castle. A castle is roughly the equivalent of a wealthy landowner’s fortified manor house. At the other end of the scale, the citadel

(castle 4) is a truly awe-inspiring structure equal in scale andgrandeur to Osaka Castle. In all probability, there won’t be more than one or two citadels built during the course of a single game of Shogun: Total War -Gold Edition. As well as their more obvious defences, Japanesecastles were also designed with tricks and traps to defeat ninja assassins. All castlesadd to the honour and prestige of their owners. They are visible symbols of wealth,power and permanence and as such send a powerful message to friends and enemiesalike just by “being”.

In Japan their martial spirit was immediately appealing to the samurai, and this was alegacy from their founder, Ignatius Loyola, who had been a military man.Christianity, however, demanded that other belief systems be put aside, and the oldcompromises were not acceptable to true believers. As a result, friction grew upbetween the followers of the new religion and the more militant elements of the olderfaith, Buddhism. In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition this tension is reflected in the damage that can bedone to the loyalty of a province if the religion of the majority of its population doesn’tmatch that of its ruling daimyo. Simply put, a Buddhist daimyo has an easier time inruling (and collecting taxes from) a predominantly Buddhist population. The sameholds true for Christian daimyo and Christian populations, of course. Each religion brings its own benefits: becoming a Christian daimyo gives easier accessto guns earlier in the game (at least until the arrival of the Dutch traders, who don’tcare about much except a man’s gold). Remaining as a Buddhist allows fanatical andskilled warrior monks to be used in a daimyo’s armies.

In either case, the majority religious affiliation of a province will tend to drift towardsthe faith that is “in charge” (i.e. the faith of the province’s daimyo), and be affected bynearby Christian Churches and Buddhist Temples, which influence nearby populationsinto supporting the appropriate faith.

And finally (on this subject) as was noted earlier, it’s quite possible for religiousdifferences between a daimyo and his people to become a key factor in triggering arebellion!

Military Buildings in Shogun:Total WarJapanese buildings have always been constructed with the need to withstandearthquakes in mind. The wooden construction used for traditional buildings was asensible and practical solution to preventing earthquake damage. A lighter, woodenbuilding stood a better chance of “giving” and moving with a quake rather than simplyfalling down!

This isn’t to say that stone buildings didn’t exist in Japan. Stone construction cameabout as a response to the arrival of gunpowder on a large scale. As in the rest of theworld, Japanese castles began as purely defensive structures and only graduallybecame homes as well as fortresses. Over the years castles became increasinglyelaborate as military tactics developed. The best of the Japanese castles built at theend of the Sengoku period were certainly the equal — if not the superior in terms ofcomfort and facilities — of any fortresses in the rest of the world at the time.

Before rockets and cannon arrived in Japan, the main method of attacking a castle wasto shoot fire arrows into it and hope that the fire caught. By and large, with woodenbuildings within archery range, this was a tactic that worked. With the arrival of stonecurtain walls, the inner defences were kept beyond the range of the enemy firearrows.

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Bow DojoSamurai originally defined themselves by their skills at archery, especially archery from horseback. The magnificent asymmetrical longbows of the samurai needed highly skilled craftsmen to construct them. It was in the interests of every lord to make sure that such craftsmanship was encouraged — and well paid — in his domain, and that the sensei neededto train men to use them were also available. A bow dojo is also one of the fundamental military improvements that can be constructed at any castle.

By the Sengoku period, archery was beginning to fall out of favour, a process thatwould accelerate with the arrival of the arquebus. A Bow Dojo allows the castlewhere it is located to produce Samurai Archers, and it can be improved to famous orlegendary status in larger castles, allowing the training of higher honour SamuraiArchers.

“When you know sky and earth, victory is inexhaustible.”


Church And CathedralThe Portuguese not only brought advanced military technology in the shape of guns, they also imported a religionas well: Roman Catholicism. The Jesuits who came to Japan spread a very militant variety of Christianity, as they were formed in Europe as “soldiers of the Counter-Reformation”. Their leader, Loyola, had been a military man and he imbued

the whole order with a martial spirit that was appealing to the samurai. Within a fewyears of their arrival, the Jesuits had converted substantial sections of the localpopulation. The persecutions of the Tokugawa shogunate lay in the future.

With a flock of converts, the Jesuits lost little time in makingsure that there were churches for the newly faithful as a visible sign of their influence. Daimyo who build Jesuit Churches must have adopted Christianity as their religion. Once built, Churches help to spread the doctrine of Christianity to the local population, increasing the number ofChristians in nearby provinces and, in the long term,

reducing the chance of a religious revolt. A church allows the training of Priests. It canbe eventually improved to become a Cathedral, which has consequently greaterpower in spreading Christianity.

Each type of castle can have a number of military buildings and functions attached to it, as described below. As a general rule, the larger and more prestigious a castle is, the better the quality of its associated buildings, and the better their products. A small stockade, for example, can only have the most basic type of each building attached to it, while the larger castles attract master and legendary craftsmen and sensei to work in them. These highly trained individuals help to train better quality troops and a greater variety of them too.

In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, you’ll probably find that it iswise to create one or two large castles within your domain thatact as specialised “centres of excellence” for one or two kinds offighting unit, rather than create a castle in every province andhope to make them all perfect. Remember that it’s quite easy to run out of money: harvests and taxes come once a year, but the money can be spent all the year round! Remember too, that castles and themilitary buildings can only support your efforts to become shogun. In order to win,you’ll need soldiers, not just the places to train them!

“There are routes not to be followed, armies not to be attacked, citadels not be

besieged, territory not to be fought over, civilian instructions not to be obeyed…”


ArmourySamurai nearly always provided their own armour and weaponry. The same, however, was not true of the ashigaru who were drawn from the lower, poorer classes. The importance of providing standardised equipment to their soldiers was realised by the more astute daimyo during the Sengoku period. Apart from the obvious benefits of making

sure that their troops were properly equipped, there was an additional benefit interms of creating an esprit de corps among the ashigaru.

In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition, an armoury improves the armour values of anyunits trained at the castle where it is located. An armoury can also be improved tofamous or legendary status in larger castles with subsequent armour benefits for units.

“The important thing in war is victory, not persistence.”


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Ninja HouseThe secretive ninja require their own dojo (of sorts) to learn their black arts of assassination and spying. Their weapons and skills are so specialised that only a master ninja can hope to teach his followers, and even then it may take many years of training starting in childhood to produce one of these lethal killing machines.Once a fortress has been built, an Infamous Ninja House can be constructed.

PortA port can be built in any coastal province that contains a castle. It allows the training of emissaries and spies, and also gives a trade revenue bonus. It also allows the transport of military units by sea to other provinces.

A port is a necessary building before the Trading Post and Gun Factory improvements can be constructed at larger castles.

Portuguese & Dutch Trading PostsWhile the samurai had experience of Chinese gunpowder weapons,including a primitive form of hand grenades seen in the hands of Korean Thunderbombers in the Mongol invasion period battles, it was the arrival of Portuguese traders that brought the arquebus into Japanese warfare. Japanese craftsmen made most of the guns used by samurai and ashigaru

troops, but these weapons were copied from the samples provided by Europeantraders. In addition, European gunpowder was regarded as being superior to thelocally produced item, which means that a Trading Post is a very useful asset for anambitious daimyo to have in his lands.

By the time the Dutch arrived in Japan, the Portuguese and the Jesuits had been therefor some time. The Dutch were the same in their willingness to provide arquebuses toany daimyo who was willing to trade for them, but they differed in not bringing RomanCatholicism as “part of the package”. As a largely Protestant nation, the Dutch didn’thave quite the same religious drive to convert the world that the Jesuits brought. Forthe Dutch traders it was enough to make money without worrying about the souls oftheir customers! There must be a Port present at the castle where a Trading Post is established. A daimyo can have either Portuguese traders or Dutchmen in his domain, but notboth.

Geisha HouseWhen all the trappings of culture have been built at a castle (a Temple, a Tranquil Garden and a Legendary Tea House), a daimyo can add the final flourish: a Geisha House. These can only be built at the very largest castles, and help train Geishas for use as spies and messengers.

Gun FactoryOnce knowledge of arquebuses was generally available, the daimyo wasted little time in setting up their own craftsmen to make them. The European weapons were perfectly acceptable,of course, but rather expensive after travelling halfway round the world. Within a remarkably short space of time Japanese

armourers had mastered all the skills they needed and were producing arquebusesthat were as good as anything from abroad.In Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition a Gun Factory can only be created at the largest ofcastles.

Horse dojo

Cavalry require large numbers of horses, both for use in battle and for transport. A battle is a frightening and confusingexperience for a man let alone an animal, and training a horse so that it was willing to charge the enemy took time and skill. Horses were also trained to kick and bite foes. This means that a samurai warrior would require at least two horses and probably more. A battle-hardened animal was too valuable

(and probably dangerous) to be ridden simply as a means of getting from A to B, sothe samurai would need at least one more ordinary riding animal to get him to abattle.A Horse Dojo cannot be built at a basic castle (level 1 Castle), but it does require aBow or Spear Dojo to have been built on the same site. It can be upgraded to famousand legendary status. A Horse Dojo will produce Cavalry Archers and Yari Cavalry.With an Armoury, a Master Horse Dojo can also train Heavy Cavalry.

“Fight going down hill, not climbing up.”


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“To master the virtue of the long sword is to govern the world and oneself, thus

the long sword is the basis of strategy. If he attains the virtue of the long sword,

one man can beat ten men. Just as one man can bear ten, so a hundred men can

beat a thousand, and a thousand can beat ten thousand. In my strategy, one man

is the same as ten thousand, so this strategy is the complete warrior’s craft.”


Tea House“Pen and sword in accord” is a simplification of the Samuraiway, but it is a convenient one. Samurai were not only expected to be to be skilled warriors, but highly cultured men able to produce a haiku verse or officiate at the tea ceremony. One of the reasons, of course, for Japan’s descent into the turmoil of civil war was the Ashikaga

shoguns’ love of the tea ceremony and other pleasures over good governance! A Tea House can be upgraded to famous and legendary status at larger castles.

Buddhist TempleAlthough religion often leads to a contemplative life of meditation, there have always beenreligious orders that have valued military prowess as much as prayer. In Japan, severalorders of Buddhist warrior monks were the equal of any other warriors at the time, andshowed no reluctance to become involved in politics beyond the Temple walls.

The Nobunaga clan, as we’ve seen, had trouble with warrior monks from time to time. As allies the monks wereextremely valuable, but as the section on Japanese history shows, keeping control of them could sometimes be a problem.A Temple helps to support the doctrines of Buddhism

among the people of nearby provinces and can “roll back” the presence ofChristianity. A Temple allows Monks to be trained. Famous Temples and eventuallyTemple Complexes can be constructed at better castles, and these in turn train moreexpert Monks. Famous Temples and Temple Complexes also help counter Christianityin a much more effective fashion.

Spear DojoA dojo is a place of training where a sensei — a master in a particular skill, craft or art — can impart his knowledge to students in the proper atmosphere of calm and learning. This is as true for the martial arts as for any peaceful pursuit. The best of the sensei were always encouraged to settle by daimyo and begin their teachings, not only for the

practical benefits of spreading their skills, but also for the reflected glory and honourthat a true sensei could give to his patron.Both Yari Ashigaru and Yari Samurai are trained at the Spear Dojo. It can be upgradedto famous and legendary status at larger castles, and once it has attained Famous SpearDojo status it can also be used to train Naginata Samurai, providing there is anArmoury at the castle too.

Sword DojoThe sword is the weapon mostly closely associated with the samurai, and mastering its proper use takes time and endless practice. Many schools of swordsmanship existed inJapan, and adherents of particular styles were not above duelling against one another to prove who was the best. Even Miyamoto Musashi, the sword-saint, killed his fair

share of opponents when he was young in such duels, largely to prove that hisparticular teachings were the best method of using the sword…

A Sword Dojo can only be built when a samurai in the daimyo’s army has become alegendary swordsman by killing many opponents in battle. This is one more good reason formaking sure that troops not only survive, but also prosper! Just like a Horse Dojo, a SwordDojo cannot be built at smaller castles, but once constructed it can be used to train NoDachi Samurai units. It can also be improved to famous and legendary status.

Swordsmith

Once a large castle has been built in a region, a wise daimyo will enlist the services of an experienced swordsmith. Swordsmiths will enhance the attacking ability of all the troops produced in the region. The swordsmith has rediscovered the lost arts of blade making, and produces weapons of such quality that they will never be surpassed. This building can also be improved to famous and legendary status.

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Battlefield Ninja DojoThe Battlefield Ninja Dojo extends the teaching of the black arts of the Ninja beyond the usual skills of spying and assassination. Instead, the units of this dojo are taught practical fieldcraft that allows them to hide and act as “special forces” on the battlefield. The Battlefield Ninja thatare trained here are a force to be reckoned with!

The Battlefield Ninja Dojo requires a Sword Dojo (of any kind) and an Infamous NinjaHouse to be present in the province where it is constructed.

Tranquil GardenMost temples and large, formal houses in Japan included space for a garden as a placefor rest and reflection. Gardens are also, of course, the perfect place to have a privateconversation with agents, spies and emissaries away from the ears of guards andservants — not something that is necessarily very easy in a Japanese building with thinbamboo and paper screens rather than solid stone walls!

A Tranquil Garden can be built in any castle, but it is also a pre-requisite beforebuilding any kind of Temple or Church.

Border DefencesAs your empire expands, it will become necessary to ensurethat your hard-earned provinces are adequately defended. Border Watch Towers are particularly useful for seeing far into the neighbouring provinces. Passing tradesmen and peasants are questioned at these points and

information on the location of enemy armies and other units isgathered. Border forts serve the added function of effectivelysealing your borders and making it more difficult for enemyspies to infiltrate.

Drill DojoThe training of soldiers is more than just imparting skills to an individual. Soldiers must be taught how to fight as a coherent group in order to get the best from them, and all armies have developed their own form of drill in order to instil this group cohesion and discipline. Although formalised, drill is usually based on the most practical

methods of weapons handling when in a group. After all, when a large group of peopleare all wielding long spears, they had better think and move as one, or chaos will bethe end result!

A Drill Dojo allows the castle where it is located to produce units with improveddiscipline. It requires a Palace to be in the same location.

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A Tactical RevolutionAlthough guns and gunpowder had been in Japan for years, it is during these threecampaigns that the arquebus becomes an important factor — perhaps the deciding factor — in samurai warfare.

There were many reasons for this move to the use of arquebus-toting troops inarmies, but the main one was the same reason that archers had already declined innumbers in European warfare of the period. It takes time and constant practice for a man to master the bow even though, once hehas done so, he can fire several arrows with accuracy in the time it takes anarquebusier to get off one barely aimed shot. It also takes a great deal of practice timeto keep any skill in using a bow, and not everyone has the basic strength and dexterityneeded. On the other hand, almost anyone can be taught to hold and fire anarquebus. The training may be rigorous and disciplined, but armies are focussed uponthe training of troops, and it is hardly a difficult weapon to gain a degree ofcompetency with. For these reasons, the arquebus became the perfect weapon forthe daimyo with a large ashigaru contingent in his army.This led to changes in the way that samurai armies were organised and deployed onthe battlefield. The days when individual samurai would charge forward shouting outtheir names in the hopes of meeting a worthy opponent rapidly passed away. In theplace of individual honour was coming an era when an almost “professional”, practicalattitude to the business of slaughtering one’s enemies would hold sway. It was achange brought about by the increasing inclusion in every samurai army of ashigaru.Those ranks of lesser warriors who had no need of a concept of individual honour.Indeed, the ashigaru themselves were evolving from a rabble recruited just for asummer’s warfare to a major part of the standing army of every clan. The ashigaruthemselves were becoming a professional force that did nothing but fight for pay.

“Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult”

— Carl von Clausewitz, On War

Where the great daimyo — and Oda Nobunaga was one of these — distinguishedthemselves was in the recognition that to be truly effective one had to develop whatwould now be termed “a weapon system”. This meant that the arquebus-armedashigaru had to be in the front line of the army. However, this was the position ofhonour that had, previously, always been reserved for the samurai warrior caste.Nobunaga, who was a strategist and a realist rather than a dogged traditionalist,grasped quite clearly that arquebuses had to be used to break an enemy before othertroops moved against them.

4: Three Samurai CampaignsThe three historical campaigns featured in Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition all come fromthe latter years of the sengoku jidai, the “Age of the Country at War”. It was at this time that the main historical players in the struggle to control Japan came to prominence and crushed their rivals in truly cataclysmic fashion. In earlier chapters of this manual, we’ve already witnessed Oda Nobunaga’s ruthlessness in the face of his enemies

and what a cunning warrior he could be.

These campaigns give you the opportunity ofseeing the nitty-gritty of samurai at their best—engaged in a battlefield situation. You’ll beable to match the achievements of OdaNobunaga, Tokugawa Ieyasu and ToyotomiHideyoshi, the three pivotal figures thatbrought an end to the sengoku jidai andimposed their will upon Japan. Their careersalso crossed many times, both as rivals andallies, so you’ll notice, for example, that Tokugawa Ieyasu was present at Anegawa(one of Oda Nobunaga’s classic battles) as a young man.

“The battle victories of good warriors are not noted for cleverness or bravery.

Their victories are not lucky, because they position themselves where they will

surely win, prevailing over those who have already lost.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarHistorians who consider alternate and “counterfactual” versions of history often askthemselves questions such as “What would have happened if Tokugawa Ieyasu hadn’t risen to become the undisputed shogun of Japan?” (the chances are thatanother daimyo would have taken his place and a different family of shoguns wouldhave controlled Japan). Counterfactual historians also make an equally important pointabout history. There is no path of predestination that meant that events had to unfold as they did.There were no guarantees for Oda Nobunaga that he was going to win, just as thereare no guarantees that you will triumph when fighting out his battles. There weremany moments of decision that could have sent history along a different path, andthese campaigns show the kind of battlefield crises that each of these three powerfuldaimyo faced and mastered. Now you can attempt to match their achievements andtake your place among the greatest of the daimyo!

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“If you outnumber the enemy by ten to one, then surround them; five to one;

attack, two to one, divide the enemy forces. If you are equal, then fight if you are

able. If you are fewer, then keep away from the enemy. If you are not as good as

the enemy, flee if you can. If the smaller force is stubborn it will become

prisoners of war.”


The battles in Shogun: Total War — Gold Edition, however, show his rise to dominancefrom the stunning victory at Okehazama in 1560 (detailed below), to his decisiveconfrontation with the Takeda clan at Nagashino in 1575. Along the path betweenthese two battles, we’ll see how the Nobunaga clan broke the power of the Asakurafamily at Anegawa in 1570. Nobunaga also had little time for religion when it wasused to oppose his will, and he turned against the Ikko-ikki at Nagashima in 1573.Finally, the battle of Nagashino demonstrates the classic victory of firepower overtradition, as Nobunaga’s men defeated the massed cavalry of the Takeda clan.

Okehazama, 1560“When you do battle, even if you are winning, if you continue for too long it will

dull your forces and blunt your edge… If you keep your armies out in the field for

a long time, your supplies will be inadequate.”


By June 1560 Imagawa Yoshimoto had assembled an army for his advance towardsKyoto. Unfortunately for him, in his path lay the lands of Oda Nobunaga. Yoshimoto

forces advanced quickly and destroyed theborder forts at Washizu and Marune; thenthey camped in a narrow gorge at a spotcalled Dengaku-hazama in Owari province. Itwas there that Nobunaga’s scouts foundthem, in territory that he knew well.His cunning evident even at this stage in hiscareer, Nobunaga prepared an ambush.Leaving a dummy army ahead of theImagawa, he quietly took his much smallerforce to their rear. Thanks to the hot day, theImagawa sentries were sleepy rather thanwatchful, and their guard duties weren’t

made any easier by a terrific summer thunderstorm that broke as Nobunaga’s menmade their final approach to the Imagawa camp. Under the cover of the rain,Nobunaga’s men got close enough to charge home just as the weather cleared.Panicked by the sudden appearance of an unexpected army to their rear, the Imagawasoldiers fled. Imagawa Yoshimoto was left entirely unprotected in his fieldheadquarters at the centre of the camp. He didn’t have time to worry about this,

This didn’t mean that an army had to be made up only of ashigaru armed with arquebuses — far from it. His army

contained all types of troops. But under Nobunaga a trend emerged that was leading, slowly and surely, to the other types of ashigaru, and even samurai warriors, becoming supporting troops to the arquebusiers. Massed fire was becoming the deciding factor in battle. Had the Sengoku period not come to a

dramatic end, it’s quite possible that Japanese armies would have evolved intosomething based entirely around fire tactics, rather than the tactics of bow and swordused in conjunction with the arquebus.

To put it concisely, Nobunaga’s true tactical revolution was his realisation that victorywas more important than honour and tradition. Being prepared to use ashigaru as thearm of victory rather than samurai can be seen as a sign that Nobunaga wasn’t thinkingin a hidebound way at all. To achieve victory, then, his practical revolution was in usinggunpowder weapons effectively in large numbers so that they would have the greatestpossible effect. He wasn’t the only man to identify that the arquebus was a weapon ofthe masses, but he did seem to have a clearer appreciation than his contemporaries asto its uses. He was, after all, the only daimyo to have his troops use volley fire so thata constant barrage against the enemy was set up and maintained. While one section ofarquebusiers reloaded, they would be covered by fire from other sections. Hisenemies had an all-or-nothing approach to gunfire, which gave the enemy a chance toclose in while all the army’s arquebusiers were reloading.

The Battles of Oda Nobunaga,1560-1575Oda Nobunaga showed little interest in ruling his clan when he inherited at the age of 15. It took the suicide (as a protest against the young man’s indolence) of his loyal retainer Hirade Kiyohide to startle him into working for his clan. Once he had begun to lead, however, Nobunaga cut a path to the top with amazing feats of arms and, at times, quite stunning brutality towards his enemies. His death was as brutal as his life in many ways, as he was (according to one version ofhis death) ambushed and shot dead by arquebusiers on the orders of a turncoatgeneral from his own army, Akechi Mitsuhide.

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personal grudge against Nagamasa and meant to settle it!Thanks to the long summer days, the battle began early and rapidly became a hugemelee in the middle of the shallow river. For a time, it appeared to be two hugemelees, as the Tokugawa contingent fought an almost separate battle against theAsakura clan, while the Oda forces battled the Asai. The battle moved back and forthacross the river, which, according to eyewitnesses, ran red with samurai blood until aTokugawa force under Honda Tadakatsu and Sakakibara Yasumasa managed to takethe Asakura in the flank and completely surround the Asakura general, Kagetake. The Asakura army was forced to withdraw to the northern bank, its retreat coveredby just one (!) man, Makara Jurozaemon Naotaka. He was a giant of a man whocarried a no-dachi; his shouted challenge for an opponent from the Tokugawa ranks wasalmost a traditional diversionary tactic, but it still worked. While he and his son foughtoff repeated challengers, the Asakura withdrew from battle and retreated inreasonable order. Such heroism was bound to be suicidal, however, and eventuallyeven they were cut down. Meanwhile, things had gone the other way in the Oda-Asai confrontation. For reasonsbest known to himself, Nobunaga did not wear full armour during the battle and wasalmost killed by a samurai in Asai service named Endo Kizaemon. His troops were also being pushed back before the Tokugawa forces, with theAsakura driven off, fell upon their flank. This turned the tide in favour of Nobunaga’sforces and even the force sent to besiege Yokoyama came back to attack the Asai!

Unlike Nobunaga’s other battles, it has to be said that Anegawa was a bit of a mess,tactically. It wasn’t so much an organised fight, more a mass brawl over which acommander could have very little direct influence once the fighting had started. Herein Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition the object of this battle is an old-fashionedvictory, pure and simple. You would be well advised, however, not to put too muchfaith in the morale of the troops commanded by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, even thoughyou can’t give them direct orders. Neither will you be able to give direct orders toforces under Tokugawa Ieyasu. But if you do get into serious trouble, pray that he’sthere to save your neck!

Mt Hiei:“In battles, when the armies are in confrontation, attack the enemy’s strong

points and, when you see that they are beaten back, quickly separate and attack

yet another strong point on the periphery of his force. The spirit of this is like a

winding mountain path.”


In 1571 Oda Nobunaga decided to put an end to the troublesome monks of theTendai sect temples at Mt Hiei. Being close to the capital, they always threatened thecentre of his power structure when he was dealing with more dangerous foes at theperipheries. He resolved to not only destroy them, but to make such a boldstatement about the consequences of dissent that all Japan would be left in no doubt

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however, as he was as confused as to the true state of affairs as his own men, andassumed that some kind of drunken brawl had broken out between factions among hisown troops! This assumption speaks volumes for the lack of discipline in the Imagawacamp.

By the time Yoshimoto realised that all was not well, it was far too late. After trying toorder Nobunaga’s men to return to their duties (assuming they were his own troops)he was cut down, along with all but two of his senior officers. In the space of oneafternoon, the heads of the Imagawa clan had been quite literally parted from theirbodies! They were never to be a significant force again.

Oda Nobunaga’s forces at this battle were outnumbered by more than three-to-one,yet he managed to crush his enemy most convincingly by striking quickly with well-trained and well-motivated troops from an unexpected direction. In the Shogun: TotalWar - Gold Edition battle, the Imagawa clan start with shaky morale, and if you cankeep up the pressure they will crack. Once they are on the run, the battle can be woneither by completely driving them from the field or, in a manner appropriate toNobunaga, killing Imagawa!

Anegawa, 1570“Anger can revert to joy, wrath revert to delight, but a nation destroyed cannot

be restored to existence and the dead cannot be restored to life.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarNote: This Battle is accessed through the Historical battles section of the game ratherthan the Historical Campaigns.

The Battle of Anegawa was a family affair on one level: Oda Nobunaga had launched an attack against his brother-in-law, Asai Nagamasa! Aiming to take Odani castle, by mid-July 1570 the bulk of Nobunaga’s army reached the southern banks of the Anegawa River where they camped to await reinforcements under Tokugawa Ieyasu, who was marching from Mikawa province. Part of the Oda army was sent to besiege Yokoyama castle as a diversionary attack.

At the same time, Asai Nagamasa had received support from the Asakura clan andthey sent an army to meet his forces on the northern bank of the Anegawa. The scenewas set for an inevitable showdown.Once Tokugawa Ieyasu arrived, it was clear that Nobunaga had a numerical advantageover his enemies, but some of his soldiers were unreliable at best and possiblytreacherous at worst. They had been drawn from lands that once belonged to theAsai clan. Nobunaga put the ever-reliable Toyotomi Hideyoshi in command of themand took direct command of the troops that were opposite the Asai clan. He had a

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inflicted. The Ikko-ikki are also well-motivated troops, often much better quality soldiers inmany ways than the Oda clan forces standing against them.

Nagashino, 1575“Those generals who face an unprepared enemy with their own preparations in

place are victorious.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarThe Battle of Nagashino came about as Oda Nobunaga lead a force to relieve the siege of Nagashino Castle. Takeda Katsuyori, whose forces surrounded the castle, turned away from the siege to confront the newly arrived force in open battle, even though his men were to be outnumbered by some three to one. The Takeda clan, however, were renowned as master cavalrymen and almost certainly felt happier fighting on an open field than undertaking a prolonged siege.

The weather looked to be in their favour too, as we’ll see in a moment.Oda Nobunaga’s preparations for the battle did everything to make sure the Takeda clanwould have every chance to attack, and be defeated as they came forward. The position hehad chosen was behind the slow-moving and shallow Rengogawa River that, nevertheless,had steep banks to impede horses. In addition, he had made sure that his substantialnumbers of arquebusiers were behind a temporary palisade. He planned to make use oftheir numbers by keeping up a constant rolling volley as the Takeda approached, rather thanhave all his forces fire at once and then be useless while they reloaded.

The Takeda clan planned to carry the battle with their usual tactics — a crushing cavalrycharge followed by a mopping up operation by their foot soldiers. Their plan wasn’t quite ashare-brained as it eventually turned out to be. The night had seen heavy rains and the daypromised further showers. Takeda Katsuyori had good reasons to hope and believe thatmost of the arquebuses carried by Nobunaga’s men were sodden and useless. Once thearquebusiers had fired, ran his reasoning, they would all be defenceless until they hadreloaded and during that time his own cavalry could easily close with them and kill them.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t quite the case and at the point he chose to attack, there werethree arquebusiers behind defences for every mounted Takeda samurai charging down onthem. They were under orders to fire in sections as a kind of rolling barrage, not as a singlegroup, so there was never a time when some fire wasn’t coming from their ranks. Thesethree-to-one odds look bad to a modern observer and it is even worse when it isremembered that the Takeda clan had to get within a sword’s length of their opponents tokill them, all the time under a hail of lead shot.

Whatever else can be said about the Takeda clan that day, they definitely tried to win. Theircasualties can only be described as horrendous, as they lost around two-thirds of theircommitted forces. Even samurai armies rarely lost that many soldiers in a single engagement

as to the consequences of any future dissent. He ordered that every last man, womanand child on Mt Hiei should be put to death. Nothing less would have the desiredeffect.

Nagashima, 1573“Among armies there are those who rush, those who tarry, those who fall, those

who crumble, those who riot and those who get beaten. These are not natural

disasters, but the faults of generals.”


Note: This Battle is accessed through the Historical battles section of the game ratherthan the Historical Campaigns.

The Ikko-ikki had long been a thorn in Oda Nobunaga’s side when he decided to dealwith them personally in July 1573. If only because they would never accept his

authority, he was going to have to dosomething final about them sooner or laterHis army in this campaign had been raisedmostly from Ise province, although the exactnumbers involved aren’t known. What isknown is that Nobunaga sent a force ofarquebusiers along the main roads intoNagashima, hoping that they would blast away through the enemy. These forces werecovered to the west by troops under SakumaNobumori and, once again, his faithfulashigaru general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Nobunaga’s plans went wrong when the weather turned against him. A suddendownpour meant that the vast majority of his forces’ arquebuses were soaked throughand completely useless. The fanatical Ikko-ikki lost no time in launching an attack,driving back Nobunaga’s leading men into the bulk of his army. Then the weatherchanged again and, as it cleared, the Ikko-Ikki were able to bring their ownarquebuses to bear on Nobunaga and his men.

Eventually, the Oda clan forces were forced to withdraw from the battle, but notbefore Oda Nobunaga had nearly been shot. Indeed, one of his personal retainers wasshot dead, which shows that Nobunaga was in the thick of the fighting, given the shortranges at which an arquebus was effective. Even the western covering forces wereeventually forced back and, for the second time in two years an Oda army was drivenoff a battlefield. Was Nobunaga losing his touch? In this case, almost certainly not, ashis atrocious luck with the rain had to be a major factor in the battle.

No general could expect to do well when his major striking power was disabled in thisfashion. Here, though, you must do much better than Oda Nobunaga to defeat thewarrior monks of the Ikko-ikki. Remember that they are fanatics and the only way tostop them is to kill large numbers of them — at least 50% casualties will need to be

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The Battles of ToyotomiHideyoshi, 1582-1590“When opponents are numerous, they cannot be made to fight. So study them to

find out their plans, both successful ones and failures. Incite them into action in

order to find out the patterns of their movement and rest.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarFrom his humble origins — he was from the ashigaru class rather than a samurai bybirth — Toyotomi Hideyoshi rose to be the first daimyo to rule the whole of Japan. Aloyal ashigaru general for Oda Nobunaga, Hideyoshi served him well, fighting besidethe older man at all his battles.

It fell to Hideyoshi to avenge Nobunaga’s assassination by defeating Akechi Mitsuhide.This put him in the strongest position to be considered as the “natural” successor toNobunaga, but he managed to fall out with many of the Nobunaga’s old supporterswho chose to back Tokugawa Ieyasu in the struggle for control of Japan. The struggleproved indecisive and once a truce had been declared, Hideyoshi turned to otherpressing matters, such as the destruction of the Hojo clan. He was, however, a littletoo ambitious in his invasion plans for Korea and the overseas expedition came tonothing — he did not manage to create a mainland empire for Japan. His death in 1598 didn’t end the struggle between his clan and TokugawaIeyasu, but there was no one of Hideyoshi’s stature to head up the clan at the end ofthe day.

The battles in Shogun: Total War — Gold Edition that involve Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s forces all come from the period after Oda Nobunaga’s death. Of course, Toyotomi Hideyoshi appears as Nobunaga’s ally in some of his overlord’s battles, but the ones that follow concentrateon his career as an outstanding commander in his own right.At the Battle of Yamazaki in 1582, Hideyoshi took revenge for the treacherous

assassination of Oda Nobunaga, by decisively defeating the rebellious Oda generalAkechi Mitsuhide, the so-called “Thirteen-day shogun”.

His battle at Shizugatake in 1583 settled scores with one of his rivals to beNobunaga’s successor. He then consolidated his position as the inheritor ofNobunaga’s military and political power by turning on Nobunaga’s son at the battle ofKanie in 1584! His attack at Negoroji in 1585 was to punish a sect of warrior monkswho had made a poor choice (as far as Hideyoshi was concerned) in who they hadchosen to support. At both Takajo and Sendaigawa in 1597, Hideyoshi turned hisformidable military might against the Shimazu clan.

and no European force at the time could have sustained that level of loss. More than half ofthe 97 samurai known by name as being in their service died and eight of the clan’s famed“Twenty Four Generals” died too. Nobunaga’s triumph was complete.

In the game version of the battle, you will have toinflict an equivalent defeat on the Takeda clan,which won’t necessarily be as easy as you mightexpect. Remember that the weather can turn atany moment and render your arquebus-armedtroops useless for a time!

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With this battle more than many others, you should notice that it really is winner takesall! The legacy of power that Oda Nobunaga left behind was there for the taking bywhoever won this battle.

Shizugatake, 1583“There are five traits that are dangerous for generals. Those who are ready to

die can be killed; those who are intent on living can be captured; those who are

quick to anger can be shamed; those who are noble can be disgraced; those who

love their people can be troubled. These five things are faults in generals.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarThere were other contenders for the role of“chief successor” to Oda Nobunaga. Amongthese was Shibata Katsuie, who opposed Hideyoshi’s bid for power. Hideyoshi constructed a line of forts along the mountains at Lake Biwa’s northern end to guard against any military action by Shibata Katsuie. On the highest of the peaks was Shizugatake, under the command of Nakagawa Kiyohide. Despite the difficult nature of the terrain, Shibata Katsuie sent a

force under his nephew, Sakuma Morimasa, to attack. Shizugatake was the second fortthat he attacked. He knew that Hideyoshi was busy besieging Gifu Castle andcalculated that he would have three days to take the fort before Hideyoshi could getany kind of relief force into position. He ignored his uncle’s order to withdraw.

Hideyoshi, however, obviously wasn’t using the same calculations and managed to geta cavalry army to the fort in a day. Despite the fact that the garrison commander,Nakagawa Kiyohide, was killed, the defenders were still holding out, as were agarrison at nearby Tagami. Sakuma Morimasa was forced to abandon his siege andtake up defensive positions against the coming attack.

The battle did not go well for Sakuma Morimasa and rapidly turned into a bloodypursuit rather than a fight. Sakuma troops abandoned arms and armour in an effort toget away through the dense forests. Shibata Katsuie was astounded by the state of hisreturning army and committed hara-kiri.

As commander of Hideyoshi’s troops, it is up to you to make sure that the defeatinflicted on Sakuma Morimasa is just as damaging as the historical result.

Negoroji, 1585“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious,

even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the

opponent’s fate…”


Finally, at Odawara in 1590 he succeeded in crushing the Hojo clan once and for all.His position as the “strong man” of Japan was secure, although he could never hope tobe Shogun himself…

Yamazaki, 1582“To be violent at first and wind up fearing one’s own side is the epitome of

ineptitude.”


After the murder of Oda Nobunaga by Akechi Mitsuhide’s troops, Hideyoshi lost little time in taking revenge. Akechi Mitsuhide had also marched to Nijo Castle in

Kyoto and killed Nobunaga’s son and heir, andthen had himself appointed regent by theCourt. When the news of what had happenedreached Hideyoshi he realised that he hadonly days to make a stand against AkechiMitsuhide, otherwise power would pass tothe traitor, regardless of how he had arrivedin a position to take it. Mitsuhide hadprudently waited until his potential rivalswere far from the centre of power beforemaking his bid to be the next shogun.

Ten days after the assassination word came to Mitsuhide that Hideyoshi’s army wasapproaching. He decided to meet them on the battlefield rather than be penned insidehis two castles under siege by superior forces. The scene was set for theconfrontation on the road to Kyoto. By meeting Hideyoshi in open battle with thecastles to fall back on, Mitsuhide calculated that he had a good chance of victory.Hideyoshi had also decided that battle was preferable to a siege. His eye for a goodbattleground led him to seize a wooded hill at Tennozan, near the village of Yamazaki.Mitsuhide’s forces took up positions along the Enmyojigawa, a small river nearby. That night ninja raiders caused confusion in Mitsuhide’s camp as they set fire tobuildings and generally caused mayhem. It was not a good start for Mitsuhide.

The next morning, the 13th day since Nobunaga had died, Hideyoshi’s army advancedon the Enmyojigawa River while a fierce battle began at Tennozan. Hideyoshi’s troopsheld the hill and then the right flank pushed forward in an encircling movement. It wassuccessful and, as the left wing of Hideyoshi’s army followed the Akechi forces brokeand ran. The panic even reached as far as Mitsuhide’s own tent and he fled for his life.It was not to be his day at all, as he was hunted down and slaughtered by bandits, thetype who normally preyed on wounded and dying samurai.

Hideyoshi had managed to dramatically destroy the “Thirteen Day Shogun”. His tacticsat the battle had been assured, his army easily controlled from the vantage point onTennozan and even before the battle his forced march approach had been a model ofefficient strategic manoeuvre. Hideyoshi finished the day with his position asNobunaga’s avenger fixed in everyone’s mind. It was a political advantage for him indeed.

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enemy’s rear. They set up a dummy armythat appeared to cut off any chance of retreatfor the Shimazu forces. Faced with this threatto their line of retreat, the Shimazuconducted a fighting withdrawal and theirarmy escaped to Satsuma, even though it hadbeen bigger than the force it was facing!

Sendaigawa, 1587“Invincibility is in oneself. Vulnerability is in the opponent. Therefore, generals

are able to be invincible, but they cannot make enemies vulnerable.”


After Hidenaga’s success, Hideyoshi joined him and their combined force movedtowards the Sendaigawa River that formed a natural moat to the north of Kagoshima.It was here that Niiro Tadamoto led a Shimazu army against Hideyoshi’s advancingarmy. Although he was outnumbered some thirty to one (or more) Niiro Tadamoto wasn’tdaunted. He lead the Shimazu forces into a wild charge against the Toyotomi army. Itwas a futile gesture, but undeniably brave. As darkness fell, the survivors fell backtowards Kagoshima, which was to be surrounded by the Toyotomi.

In the end, Kagoshima was never assaulted, because the historical outcome of thecampaign was decided by negotiation.

Odawara, 1590“When you cannot see the enemy’s position, indicate that you are about to

attack strongly, to discover his resources. It is easy then to defeat him with a

different method once you see his resources.”


By 1590 the doom of the Hojo was upon them. The third and final siege of Odawarawas the biggest and most impressive of all.

When the Hojo daimyo realised what was about to happen, he used forced labourfrom the surrounding villages to strengthen the defences, even though they had beenconstantly improved from 1582 onwards.

Hideyoshi’s army was massive. Hideyoshi wrote to his wife that “We have surroundedOdawara with two or three rings and have constructed a pair of moats and walls, and

Warrior monks of various sects always seemed to be a problem for the daimyo at one time or another. They could be valuable allies, but they could also — and more often — be pestilential enemies. Hideyoshi did have allies among the warrior monks of Ishiyama and Kyoto, but he had fought bitter battles against the Ikko-ikki alongside Nobunaga. In 1585 there were surviving sects that did not support Hideyoshi, but unwisely

chose to back Tokugawa Ieyasu. Among thesewere the monks of Negoroji and Saiga, whoactively helped Ieyasu in his campaigns in 1584.Hideyoshi’s reaction took a year, but it wasbrutally effective. His armies marched into Kiiprovince and destroyed four minor outposts,then advanced towards Negoroji from two

different directions. While the warrior monks were skilled fighters, many chose totake shelter in the Saiga Ikki’s formidable Ota castle. Those that remained stayed tofight.

Hideyoshi’s tactics were crude but very effective. He burned the priests out of thewooden buildings of Negoroji. Those that stayed were burned to death. Those thatfled were cut down.

The victory conditions for this battle are starkly simple: the complete destruction ofthe enemy.

Takajo, 1587“I have heard of campaigns that were clumsy but swift, but I have never seen one

that was skilful and lasted a long time. It is never good for military operations to

continue for a long time.”


Hideyoshi’s attention eventually turned to the defeat of the Shimazu clan. He had sentan army to Kyushu under his half-brother, Hashiba Hidenaga, to directly oppose theShimazu, but they had withdrawn behind the Takajo Castle in Hyuga province.Hashiba Hidenaga then took it upon himself to lay siege to Takajo, at which point theShimazu about turned and marched to relieve the siege.

Hidenaga turned his army away from the siege to face the Shimazu forces from behinda rough stockade. Part of the Shimazu army was ordered to demolish the barricadesand then act as a decoy force, allowing the Shimazu cavalry to pour in through thegap. It was a good plan, and looked like working until the Shimazu were themselvesfooled by a ruse. Hidenaga sent a small detachment of Toyotomi soldiers into the

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“To become the enemy’ means to think yourself into the enemy’s position. In the

world people tend to think of a robber trapped in a house as a fortified enemy.

However, if we think of ‘becoming the enemy’, we feel that the whole world is

against us and there is no escape.”


The battles covered in Shogun: Total War — Gold Edition for Tokugawa Ieyasu are a measure of how many different opponents he fought against, and show the reappearance of some familiar foes. At Azukizaka in 1564 he took on Oda Nobunaga’s old enemies, the Ikko-Ikki and acquitted himself bravely. In 1569 he faced some of his erstwhile allies, theImagawa clan, at Kakegawa. At Mikata ga

hara in 1572 he faced the powerful Takeda clan and their paths cross again atYoshida (1575) and Temmokuzan in 1582. The last of Ieyasu’s battles is the definingmoment in the struggle for control of Japan after Hideyoshi’s death, the Battle ofSekigahara in 1600 — the day that assured Ieyasu would be shogun.

Azukizaka, 1564 “The rule of war is not to count on opponents not coming, but to rely on having

ways of dealing with them; not to count on opponents not attacking, but to rely

on having what cannot be attacked.”


Tokugawa Ieyasu’s battle against the Ikko-ikki was at Azukizaka in Mikawa province. As aloyal lieutenant of Oda Nobunaga he had little sympathy with the fanatical monks whoopposed him.

The fighting must have been fierce and Ieyasu took part in the close personal combat.Several bullets actually hit him although (fortunately for him) none of them did any lastingdamage. His armour didn’t actually stop the shots but the bullets were slowed sufficientlythat they were caught in his undergarments! Given the wounds caused by badly madebullets, Ieyasu certainly had a lucky escape. Air bubbles that were often formed insidebullets during casting had a tendency to make bullets expand or split apart when they hit atarget or once they had penetrated. The effect on a fleshy target could often be similar to amodern explosive bullet or dum-dum hitting home.

As always when fighting Ikko-Ikki, in this battle you would do well to remember thatthe warrior monks are fanatics. This makes them dangerous in combat because oftheir high morale and a hard force to break and force from the field. Inflicting heavy

we do not intend to let a single enemy out”. The camp followers outnumbered thearmy and the besieging camp came to look like a small city that had been put downoutside the fortress. Entertainment of all kinds was available to the Toyotomi soldiers and the sounds of riotous enjoyment from thismust have been a powerful psychological weapon against the trapped defenders!

During the long siege, the enormous numbers of troops involved would havebeggared any European state of the time that had tried to put that many men in thefield.

Overall, the Toyotomi force numbered some200,000 men! While the siege itself was aslow, patient affair, there were manyskirmishes around the castle walls, and atleast one memorable occasion whenToyotomi miners from Kai province managedto bring down enough of the wall to allow theinvaders inside.

After three months of siege the Hojo realisedthat there was little chance of victory andeven less chance of escape. They surrenderedthe castle to Hideyoshi.

“To unfailingly take what you attack, attack where there is no defence. To

unfailingly secure what you defend, defend where there is no attack. So in the

case of those who are skilled in attack, the enemy will not know where to defend.

With those who are skilled in defence, their opponents do not know where to

attack.”


The Battles of TokugawaIeyasu, 1564-1600Tokugawa Ieyasu, the eventual victor in the struggle to become shogun of Japan, had acareer remarkable even by the standards of his time. He began his military experiencewhile still (technically) held hostage by the Imagawa clan to ensure his family’s goodbehaviour. However, he took the field for the Imagawa as part of their army and evenfought against the soldiers of Oda Nobunaga! The subsequent death of ImagawaYoshimoto freed Ieyasu from any (forced or otherwise) obligations and he became aloyal follower of Oda Nobunaga. Pragmatically, he had recognised that the older mancouldn’t last forever, and once Oda died, there would be a chance to take power.When Oda did die, he and Hideyoshi manoeuvred against each other and both hadtheir moments of triumph as detailed in the history section of the Way of the

Daimyo. It was Ieyasu, however, who was to take the title of shogun and it was hisdescendants who ruled Japan for another 250 years.

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The Takeda clan formed up to the north of the fortress on high ground at Mitaka gaHara in what is reported in the Koyo Gunkan as gyorin, or fish scales, formation.

This layout is supposed to induce the enemyto attack. Outnumbered by around three to one, Tokugawa Ieyasu drew his forces into aline and waited. On his left were three fine Mikawa generals: Matsudaira Ietada, Honda Tadakatsu and Ishikawa Kazumasa; on his right were troops supplied to him by Oda Nobunaga.

Despite the fact that he was outnumbered, it was the Tokugawa troops who began the battle, but very late in the day as the lightwas failing and the snow falling. By firing on the Takeda samurai, the Tokugawa soldiersstung them into action. On the Tokugawa left, the Takeda troops got the upper hand,at which point Takeda Shingen calmly withdrew his tired troops and sent in fresh mento continue the fight! With night coming on and the Tokugawa troops being forcedback, Shingen then ordered a general attack by the main body of his army. Soon theTokugawa army was in retreat all along the battle line. It was at this point thatTokugawa Ieyasu ordered that his personal gold fan standard should be set up to act asa rallying point for his forces. This was done where the high ground dropped awaytowards Hamamatsu. For his own part, he was quite ready to charge into the mass ofTakeda warriors and kill as many as he could to reach his surrounded comrade,Mizuno Tadashige. He was prevented from doing so and hustled into the castle by his retainers. Defeatlooked total as Ieyasu arrived at the castle with only five men.However, he was cunning enough to hold on to the castle. He ordered that the gatesbe left open for any more of his army who might make it back and for braziers to belit as signal fires. A huge drum was also beaten. When the advanced guard of theTakeda army reached the castle they were confused by the apparently confident air ofits garrison and suspected some kind of trick. One was being played, but not the onethat they thought. The Takeda army didn’t attack but camped for the night atSaigadake. They must have assumed that they were safe now that the battle was overbut the ground at Mikata ga Hara has a narrow canyon or gorge at this point. TwoTokugawa retainers lead a raid on the Takeda camp and managed to drive many of theTakeda samurai and their horses into the gorge. There they were easy targets. TheTakeda army withdrew the next morning, leaving Hamamatsu to Ieyasu — but onlyjust.

In Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition, this battle has the potential to turn into abloodbath. Defeating the Takeda clan is almost impossible as there are simply toomany of them to fight all at once. It is, however, a prudent strategy to hang on for aslong as possible with some of the army and make an orderly withdrawal towards thecastle with the rest. A fighting retreat is never easy, but if the castle is lost, the battle islost.

casualties is often the only way to defeat them.This battle, by the way, is usually referred to as the Second Battle of Azukizaka, theFirst Battle having been in 1542 between the Oda and Imagawa clans. Many Japanese battlefields were “reused” in this fashion over the years, if only because of the constant warfare and the fact that suitable sites for a good fight were hard to find!

Kakegawa, 1569 “Do not follow a feigned retreat. Do not attack elite warriors. Do not eat food

left by enemy soldiers. Do not stop an army on its way home. Leave a surrounded

army a way out. Do not press a desperate enemy. These are the rules of military

operations.”


In what must have seemed like a settling of old scores for his years of living on Imagawa sufferance, Tokugawa Ieyasu laid siege to Imagawa Ujizane in the castle at Kakegawa. Ujizane was the son of the Imagawa Yoshimoto who had held Ieyasu hostage years earlier.Despite this personal stake in the battle, Ieyasu knew that control of the castle was more important than simply killinghis enemies. Negotiations began and a deal was eventually struck.

The Imagawa abandoned the castle without a further struggle in return for Ieyasu’ssupport in another matter: the return of Ujizane’s lost territory’s in Suraga. By thistime, however, Ujizane’s power and influence were very much on the decline and hewas forced into retirement a year later by a defeat at the hands of the Takeda clan.Ieyasu almost certainly got the better end of the deal by gaining control of the castle!

When fighting this battle, it’s important to remember that occupation and control ofthe castle is all that matters. The battle in Shogun: Total War – Gold Edition followsIeyasu’s original design to take the castle by force of arms rather than talking. It’sdefinitely worth bearing in mind that taking the castle is almost pointless if too many ofyour men die in the process.

Mikata ga hara, 1572“Any military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent,

appear incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarAlmost inevitably, a confrontation with the Takeda clan involved lots of cavalry.

The Battle of Mitaka ga Hara was a direct consequence of Takeda Shingen moving inforce against the fortress at Hamamatsu, which was controlled by Tokugawa Ieyasu.

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hand was just as dead as he would have been by any other method.

The victory conditions for this battle are quite simple: crush the Takeda clan and drivethem from the battlefield. It would be even better to kill Takeda Katsuyori before hehas a chance to kill himself! It isn’t possible to give orders to units under Nobunaga’scommand, although these troops will fight bravely alongside your own men.

Sekigahara, 1600Sekigahara was the decisive battle of over a hundred years of warfare. The day’sfighting made sure that it would be Tokugawa Ieyasu who became shogun, bringing toan end the Sengoku period of “The Country at War”. It was also a day of fog, mud,confusion and treachery.

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the commander of the Eastern Army, an alliance of formerToyotomi and Oda loyalists and allies who preferred to have one of their own as ruler of Japan,rather than an Imperial courtier. The Western Army under Ishida Mitsunari, theImperial courtier in question, was made up of clans just as sure that they didn’t wantto see Tokugawa Ieyasu as the ultimate power in the land.

By late October 1600, the preliminary sparring of the armies was over; there hadbeen a series of marches and counter-marches, along with some bitterly contestedsieges. The Tokugawa (Eastern) garrison at Fushimi Castle distinguished themselves bytheir superb defence, for example. When the last two hundred defenders realised thatthey couldn’t hold out much longer, they left the castle and charged the besiegers timeafter time.

At the other extreme, at Tanabe Castle the revered scholar Hosokawa Yusai Fujitakawas besieged along with his Eastern garrison. The attackers were a little half-heartedin their efforts to take the place with such a respected man inside and at risk. Severalof the Western generals reputedly “forgot” to load cannon balls before firing at thecastle, which did nothing to help the siege or make sure that they were available tofight a pitched battle when needed!

Eventually, however, the main bodies of the two armies met at the narrow pass ofSekigahara in Mino province. By early in the morning of 21 October 1600, the twoarmies were on a collision course, as Ishida Mitsunari made a forced night march toreach the spot. Ishida Mitsunari had chosen the ground as a good place to meetTokugawa Ieyasu, as the Eastern army could be controlled and met before it wouldhave a chance to deploy properly. He drew up his forces in position to attack anyonecoming through the narrow pass.

The weather was appalling; both armies were damp and cold in the fog and visibilitywas very bad. The fighting started at around breakfast time, with a volley being firedinto the centre of the Eastern army.

The Easterners were slowly driven back but then managed to rally and the fightingsettled into a mud-soaked slugging match. The Easterners then began to push towardsIshida Mitsunari.With nearly all his Western Army now fighting, Ishida Mitsunari lit a signal fire to callhis reinforcements under Kobayakawa Hideaka into the fight.

Yoshida, 1575“A good leader does not mobilise when there is no advantage, does not act when

there is no gain and does not fight when there is no danger.”


In 1575 Tokugawa Ieyasu was still fighting against the Takeda clan, although his oldenemy Takeda Shingen was dead. Shingen had been the chief architect of much of hisclan’s success, so his passing was undoubtedly a relief for his many enemies!

Shingen’s son, Takeda Katsuyori, however, was still an aggressive foe at times, even ifhe lacked his father’s skills and drive. In 1575 Katsuyori raided Mikawa province and besieged the castle at Yoshida, which looked (when his attack had been planned) to have a weak garrison. But Tokugawa Ieyasu had anticipated the attack and heavily reinforced the Yoshida garrison. Rather than facing a small force, the Takeda clan ran straight into a tough and professional

Tokugawa army. The hand-to-hand fighting outside the walls of the castle didn’t helpthe Takeda clan take the upper hand and the Tokugawa garrison were too wily toleave the walls for a full pitched battle. Eventually, frustrated by his inability to take thecastle or have a “proper” battle, Takeda Katsuyori broke camp and moved northtowards Nagashino.

This Shogun: Total War — Gold Edition battle needs you to delay the Takeda forces foras long as possible and inflict as many “niggling” casualties on them as possible. TheTakeda clan can be driven off by a combination of outlasting their patience and killing afew of them! Of course, to do this successfully, you must preserve your own armyfrom destruction at the hands of a superior force.

Temmokuzan, 1582“When an army moves swiftly it is like the wind, when it goes slowly it is like a

forest; it is terrible as fire, immovable as a mountain. It is as hard to know as the

dark; its movement is like peals of thunder.”

— Sun Tzu, The Art of WarFor Ieyasu, full victory may have taken a little time to come but eventually he got to see his Takedaopponents humbled and destroyed.

As the combined forces of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu closed in on the Takeda clan,Katsuyori realised that the game was up.

He had burned his castle at Shinpujo to keep it from falling to his enemies and fled into themountains. He had hoped to find some measure of security and sanctuary at Iwadono castle,which was held by his old retainer Oyamada Nobushige. Instead, the gates were locked againstKatsuyori. His remaining loyal retainers turned and held off the Oda and Tokugawa armies for longenough to allow Katsuyori to kill himself. Although Nobunaga and Ieyasu didn’t have thepleasure of killing their opponent, it is unlikely that the two of them, being practicalmen, would have been that bothered. An enemy who destroyed himself by his own

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5: The Mongols“The horde of the Tartars is numberless. When one is killed, another ten spring

from the hell whence he came. Each of them has the head of a dog, and carries

with him sufficient weapons for three or four warriors.”

— Benedict the Pole, writing in 1240

Benedict the Pole, like other Europeans of his day, may have made a technical mistake when he lumped all steppe barbarians into the category of “Tartar” but he had good reason to be afraid of what was heading his way. Threatened people from as far apart as

Poland and China gave the same excuses for their fears: the Mongols weren’t like the restof humanity. The Mongols were savages, hardly human, fiends from hell. But above all, the Mongols

couldn’t be stopped.The Mongols have been described as the Khmer Rouge of their day — willing to killanyone and everyone who opposed them and reduce all urban civilisation (which inpractice means all civilisation, full stop) back to the level of the peasant toiling in thefield.

That the Mongols could be cruel, uncompromising and brutal is beyond dispute. Itneeds to be remembered that the Mongols did not create most of the existingaccounts of their exploits, but it is difficult to feel that history has treated them toobadly. Their victims left the historical records but, even allowing for someexaggeration, the Mongols’ reputation seems deserved. Being conquered by theMongols was very traumatic indeed, always assuming that there were any survivors tobe traumatised…

Who were the Mongols?Like the Huns centuries before, the Mongols were one of many steppe peoples —tribal nomads who roamed the Asian plains and periodically overran their moresettled, civilised neighbours. This pattern had repeated itself for generations, withoccasional aberrant times when a leader could hold his tribe together beyond the firstlooting spree and the nomads stayed to become the new nobility. The Chin kingdomin Northern China had come about precisely in this fashion, for exampleAnd again likethe Huns, who produced a terrible, feared leader in Attila, the Mongols producedtheir own great conqueror in Genghis Khan.

The two men had the vision and unstoppable drive to create empires, but where thetwo differed was in what happened after their respective deaths.

The Kobayakawa troops were stationed on the high ground to the Western Army’sright and should have moved to swiftly crush the left flank of the Tokugawa/Easternforces. Instead, Kobayakawa Hideaka did nothing. Tokugawa Ieyasu had heard reports that the Kobayakawa forces were prepared todefect but simply not moving wasn’t the same as changing allegiance. He sent a smallforce to “sting” the Kobayakawa into action by firing on them. With a decision of some kind now needed, Kobayakawa Hideaka changedsides and attacked, falling on the flank of his former Otani allies. Otani Yoshitsuguseems to have expected some sort of treachery, as his men turned and managed tofight off the traitors without being surprised. It was at this point that Tokugawa Ieyasuordered a renewed attack and two more factions in the Western army, the Kuchikiand the Wakizaka, changed sides as well. The Otani were soon being attacked fromthree sides and Otani Yoshitsugu ordered one of his retainers to kill him; he couldn’tdo it himself, as he was crippled by leprosy.

The Western army was now in disarray, except for the Shimazu who managed to cuttheir way clear and retreat towards Ishida Mitsunari’s reserves. These Westernreserves were already wavering or coming out in support of Tokugawa Ieyasu and,with the battle lost, the very reinforcements that could have won the fight for IshidaMitsunari marched away from Sekigahara. It had been an epic battle and it sealed thefate of Japan. By the afternoon, Tokugawa Ieyasu was counting the heads of his slain enemies.Nearly everyone capable of mounting a credible challenge to his authority was gone,his power broken. Ishida Mitsunari’s challenge was over. The daimyo that survivedprospered in direct relationship to their allegiances at the battle. It would take anotherthree years before Ieyasu was declared shogun but there was no doubt as to who wasthe master of Japan.

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submitted and in 1206 Genghis Khan was proclaimed supreme Khan of all Turkish andMongol tribes in eastern Asia, complete with divine approval thanks to the usefulintervention of a shaman. The problem was now what to do next. Genghis Khan had afine war machine at his command, but it had to be used and used now before thetribes started fighting amongst themselves as was their wont.

On one level, the decision to keep on conquering new lands — or possibly even thewhole world — was a practical solution to this problem. At first, those to beconquered were the other nomadic peoples of central Asia, such as the Kirghiz tribe.Some, like the Uighur, saw the way the wind was blowing and submitted voluntarily. Indoing so, the largely literate and cultured Uighur flourished within the Mongol empire.

Into ChinaChina was far from being a monolithic state at this time. The Mongols took fulladvantage and raided into the Kingdoms of Chin (centred around Peking) and Hsi-Hsiain Western China. These first attacks on Chinese territory did force Hsi-Hsia torecognise Genghis Khan as overlord but the campaigns were not an unmitigatedsuccess. The usual Mongol tactic of massacring defeated enemies was highly effectiveagainst steppe nomads, where people were virtually the only “wealth” and walkingresources of a tribe, but faced with the millions in China, what was the point? Norwas their much point in recruiting Chinese peasants into the army because they weresimply too unwarlike. The Chin rulers were still warlike however (being nomadconquerors themselves!), and backed by Chinese science and war-making skills. Eventhe sacking of Peking in 1215 didn’t break the Chin; resistance continued againstGenghis Khan and his successors.

To the West, the Kara Khitai fell and Genghis Khan’s generals were shrewd enough touse religious tensions to their own advantage. Muslims in the region had beenpersecuted, but all that stopped under the Mongols. They were welcomed asliberators by a substantial part of the population. Beyond the Pamir mountains laymore Muslim lands: Transoxania and Persia.

The First Assault on Islam“…To cut my enemies to pieces, drive them before me, seize their possessions, witness

the tears of those who are dear to them and to embrace their wives and daughters.”

— Genghis Khan’s greatest pleasures in life, according

to the Muslim historian Rashid al Din

Beyond the mountains, Genghis Khan found himself facing a man just as warlike as himself,the Khwarazmshah Ala al Din Mohammed. Having beaten both the Khitai and his own rivalsin Afghanistan, Ala al Din was in no mood to submit and become a vassal of the Great Khan.Whatever his reasons, his strategic assessment seems to have been flawed, as he onlyseems to have expected a prolonged raid by the Mongols in 1219 (perhaps believing thatthe Mongols would attack China instead). Although the Khwarazmian army outnumberedthe Mongols, it was tied down in defensive garrison duties.

Attila’s steppe empire collapsed almost before the funeral feast was digested. In thecase of Genghis Khan, his children and grandchildren kept the empire intact and itssuccessor sub-states dangerous and expansionist.

TemujinAt the start of his career, however, Genghis Khan was far from being a world conqueror,or even a leader of his people.He was born Temujin sometime in the period 1155-67 and named after a Tatar (no middle “r”) chieftain his father had killed. The Mongol tribes — the Naiman, Kerait, Uirat, Merkit and Jalair — had a way of life that was hard, but no worse than many other nomadic people.

They were, however, the hereditary foes of the Tatars who had the support of theNorthern Chinese kingdom of Chin. He took charge of his family at the age of 12 or 13 when the Tatars killed his father.His father’s men would not follow a child and he was forced into a grim struggle forsurvival alongside his brothers. Early tales tell of him losing the family’s entire wealthof nine horses, for example, but managing to steal them back again. Just how grimTemujin could be is illustrated by the fact that he and his younger brother Qasarambushed and killed their half-brother Bektar. Bektar’s only crime had been to steal afish and a bird from Temujin’s traps. An unforgiving nature was part of the Mongoltradition…

Eventually, Temujin did manage to gather a force of loyal warriors by his skill as aleader and a raider and by the loyalty and generosity he returned in more than fullmeasure. He would give a man the coat from his own back, it was said. His earlycampaigns were as an ally of Togrul, the khan of the Kerait tribe and against theenemies of his blood, the Tatars. (The name Tatars was corrupted in translation to“Tartars” in Europe and applied — wrongly — to the Mongols. Perhaps the Europeanshad the suspicion that the steppe barbarians were really from Tartarus, an abyssal hellwritten about by Homer, rather than of the true Earth!)

Temujin and Togrul eventually broke the Tatars with the support of the Chin kingdom.The Tatars were all but wiped out, with only a few being spared the sword andabsorbed into the Mongol tribes. It was around this time that Temujin adopted thetitle of Genghis (“Oceanic”) Khan of the purely Mongol tribes. A break with the Keraitunder Togrul was not long in coming and Genghis Khan and his most loyal followerswere forced to retreat into Siberia and wait for the Kerait alliance to fall to pieces.This happened when Togrul was killed by accident when he wasn’t recognised as he crossedinto Naiman territory, and the Kerait people accepted Genghis Khan as their leader.

He, on the other hand, was not so accepting of their loyalty and went to great pains to split up the tribe. Genghis now turned on the Naiman, the only tribe thatmight have been able to stand against his rise to power. After a bloody campaign, they

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they killed everyone that crossed their path so that the Great Khan would not beshort of servants in the afterlife. Forty beautiful girls from leading Mongol families alsoaccompanied him into the afterlife when they were sacrificed. Along with thehandmaidens, horses and everything else the Great Khan would need were alsoburied. The final slaughter of the Hsi-Hsia was announced over the grave, which hasnever been found.

Leadership of the Mongol empire remained with Genghis Khan’s relatives, the GoldenFamily. His son Ogadai and grandsons Kuyuk and Mongke would rule before his mostfamous grandson, Kublai Khan, would take control.

The Mongols, however, did not stop their aggressive expansion in all this time. Theymarched into the Middle East and also came west across the steppes, towardsEurope.

The West SparedOn 9 April 1241, a force of Germans, Poles and Teutonic Knights marched out of theLiegnitz to attack a Mongol army that had been advancing rapidly westward. Initially,the heavily armed and armoured Christian knights appeared to break the Mongols,who fled. Then they made the mistake of pursuing and were sucked into a perfectambush.

The knights died, almost to the last man.

One day later, and hundreds of miles away, King Béla of Hungary and his army weresurrounded by another Mongol force. They had been lured on to their doom by theMongols appearing to retreat and the Hungarians were now trapped in a fortress orlaager of wagons. Another disaster was in the making. The Mongols surrounded theHungarians but seemed to leave a gap in their lines. The Hungarians made a break forit and, as it looked as if some were actually escaping, a panicked retreat destroyed anysemblance of order in the Hungarian position. The Mongols then closed in on theconfused mob that the Hungarians had become and another European army wasdestroyed. A lucky few did escape: King Béla didn’t stop running until he reached anisland in the Adriatic. With sea between him and his Mongol enemies, he finally feltsafe!

With Hungary under their control, the Mongols stopped to rest and fatten theirhorses. It seemed as if all of Europe was about to fall to the barbarians once more.Vienna and the Danube lay ahead, and beyond them the rich lands of Germany, Franceand Low Countries. With little prospect that any European monarch was capable ofraising an army to stand against them, things looked very black indeed.

For the Europeans, waiting for the inevitable onslaught, it looked as if the scourge ofGod was about to fall upon them. The Mongols would not stop until they reached theAtlantic.But the Mongols turned away at the last instant. Although they controlled an empirethat stretched from the Danube to China, they were still a nomadic people. A singlechance event took them home: Ogadai, the third son of Genghis Khan was dead. Thisbrilliant, but drunken, successor had managed to not only hold onto his father’sterritory, but also keep the momentum of conquest going into the Middle East and to

All that happened was the garrison cities were destroyed one after another. Bukharafell and the garrison was slaughtered to the last man. The pattern was repeated timeand again, and even where a city surrendered, the military, civic and religious leaderswere put to the sword. If a town resisted virtually everyone was put to death,regardless of age, sex or status. The only people to be spared were artisans andcraftsmen with useful skills who were immediately pressed into service for the nextsiege. The cities themselves were burned, either accidentally during the looting thattook place or as the result of a deliberate policy of arson. This deliberate applicationof terror was a strategy that succeeded in destroying the morale of the Khwarazmianpeople and army.

Eventually, even Ala al Din Mohammed fled and died in 1220 of exhaustion, a brokenspirit or sheer despair at what was happening. Even then, the Mongols’ depredationscontinued. Genghis Khan even had the tombs of his enemies’ forefathers destroyed. Itseemed as if nothing was to be left untouched. It fell to Jalal al Din, the son of Ala alDin, to carry on the fight. He managed to inflict one defeat on a Mongol column, butwas eventually trapped against the Indus River. Genghis Khan, strangely enough,allowed Jalal al Din to escape, explaining that the man was a hero worthy of beingemulated by his own sons. The Mongols ravaged Muslim India before returning north.

It was at this point that the city of Herat revolted, hoping that Jalal had turned thetide. He hadn’t. As unforgiving as ever, the returning Mongols besieged the city for sixmonths before the citizens, after a desperate defence, could no longer keep them out.It is claimed that 1,600,000 people were killed when the city fell.

In 1223 Genghis Khan returned to the steppes of Mongolia with thousands ofprisoners in tow. Without any means for the Mongols to feed so many mouths, theywere methodically slaughtered: skilled craftsmen and scholars who had been of use tothe Mongols were simply killed now there was no need to keep them around.Slaughter was a tool of statecraft for Genghis Khan.

His armies, however, rode on. A force that had earlier been despatched to hunt downAla al Din Mohammed simply kept going, plundering Western Iran and going on intoChristian Georgia. It marched up the Caspian Sea coast and into what is now southernRussia. Here, there were steppe nomads, the Turkish Kipchaks, who tried to allythemselves with the Mongols. It didn’t work and the Kipchaks were forced to appealto the Russian Princes for help. The Prince of Kiev was captured and, after beingtreated with due deference, was smothered to death beneath a vast pile of carpets. Itwas a honourable execution as far as the Mongols were concerned, as the Prince’sblood was (carefully) not spilled. The Mongol columns moved on, crushing anyone andanything that stood in their way until they rejoined the Khan.

The Death of Genghis KhanBy 1226, Genghis Khan was an old man, but he still had the strength of purpose toonce more turn against China. This time the Hsi-Hsia kingdom was overrun, using thesame methods that had worked so well against the Muslims. But before he could goany further, Genghis Khan died, apparently from complications after a fall from hishorse. His death was kept completely secret until the Hsi-Hsia campaign was finished.It is reported that, as his funeral cortège made its way towards the Kentei Mountains,

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He also gave his brother Kublai a free choice of conquered territory in China. A third brother, Hülegü, was given command of the Mongols in the Middle East,although this was never a primary concern for the Great Khan and the invasion ofEurope was never to be repeated.

Mongke and Kublai set about a joint campaign of conquest against Sung China. It wasto prove a tough, long and hard-fought war. Southern China was populous, rich andhad a large number of strong-walled cities. The terrain was not best suited to thestrategy and tactics of a fast-moving army based primarily on horse archers. Even theclimate meant that there were strange (to the Mongols) diseases waiting to strikethem down. They would have to adopt Chinese methods of warfare, and this they didin a remarkably adept way. They had already been exposed to Chinese ideas throughthe Uighur people, but now they recruited Chinese infantry, engineers and otherspecialists.

Before moving directly against the Sung, however, Mongke struck at the kingdom ofNanchow, in the hope of outflanking the Sung and cutting their trade routes to Indiaand Burma. Kublai was given overall command and made sure that the campaign waswell planned and carefully prepared — something that would become a trademark ofhis later wars on the mainland. While the Mongols moved swiftly to reach Ta-li, thecapital of Nanchow, they did not follow the usual practice of putting everyone to thesword. On the contrary, Kublai, supposedly influenced by a tale told to him by hisChinese teacher of a general who had taken a city without killing a single inhabitant,declared he could do the same. His troops marched into Ta-li behind banners thatread: “On pain of death do not kill.” The Hangchow commanders killed the Mongolenvoys that had come to demand the city’s surrender and were executed in turnwhen the Mongols rode into the city, unopposed. These were the only people to diewhen Ta-li fell. Perhaps the Mongols fearsome reputation as to what happened whenthey were opposed or thwarted helped Kublai’s stratagem, but he was clever enoughto see that mercy was as potent a weapon as massacre.

By 1257 the Mongols were in position to attack the Sung. They were briefly and, itcould be argued, foolishly, diverted into attacking Annam in northern Vietnam. TheMongol experience of Vietnam should have served as a lesson to all Great Powers thatever involved themselves in that country. The Mongols managed to win severalbattles, including against a force of Annamese elephants!

But of the 100,000 men who started the campaign less than 20,000 survived thejungle, disease and constant guerrilla attacks. Vietnam has been the graveyard formany armies in history. This wasn’t to be the last time that the Mongols tried toconquer Vietnam, but none of the attempts were to be any more successful.

Kublai Khan had also been investing considerable time in ruling his northern Chinesepossessions, which included building a new capital, some ten days from Peking atShang-tu (the Xanadu of Coleridge’s poem). Kublai also gave increasing authority tohis Chinese advisors and servants while keeping full control of the military. This policyof allowing greater power to the Chinese did not make him popular among other,traditionally-minded Mongols, and eventually Mongke had his brother’s governmentinvestigated; many of the prominent Chinese administrators were executed. Kublaiand Mongke looked as if they were heading for civil war but good sense prevailed:

the borders of Europe.

Eventually he had drunk himself to death. His passing showed the fundamentalweakness in the Mongol political system. They were nomads still, bound by a personalloyalty to the person of the Khan and not by any modern notion of loyalty to the stateor nation. With the Khan dead, the Mongols returned to their homelands to elect anew leader from the Golden Family. At the very moment when Europe could have been overrun, the Mongols went homeand did not return. The Poles, by the way, still see Liegnitz as a day of defeat thatsaved Europe.

Instead, the efforts of the Mongols were to be concentrated against China and theEast…

Kublai KhanIn Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree Where Alph, the

sacred river ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea

Ancestral voices prophesying war

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

At the height of his power, Kublai Khan was the richest, most powerful man in theworld. He was wealthy beyond any mundane measure and did indeed have a “statelypleasure dome” in Xanadu. Kublai Khan’s actual summer palace at his capital city of Shang-tu, surrounded by a huge and well-stocked hunting preserve, wasall the more magnificent because of its reality. Marco Polo was stunned by this and somuch else that he saw at the Khan’s court. Kublai Khan ruled a domain that stretchedfrom the Danube in the West to the Pacific coast of China, and from Siberia to theIndian Ocean. He was the acknowledged overlord of all the Mongol Khanates. He wasalso a true grandson of Genghis Khan and just as efficient as a conqueror. Unlike hisgrandfather, however, he concentrated on taking control of China and then onextending Chinese influence (under Mongol leadership) into new possessions. He wasalso to unify China under a single emperor and found a new dynasty.

The Conquest of ChinaResistance to the Mongols had stiffened immediately after Genghis Khan’s death. It hadtaken hard campaigning by virtually the entire Mongol forces to destroy the last Chin province in the North in 1234. The ruling Chin, after all, were still steppe nomads atheart. The Kingdom of the Sung, south of the Hwai River, was a Chinese nation:ancient, civilised and not a pushover. It would take more than 40 years to defeat theSung.But with Ogadai’s death in 1241 (his excessive drinking finally killed him), theMongol Empire looked like dissolving into a set of warring tribal groups. Mongke, oneof Genghis Khan’s grandsons, eventually seized power and was proclaimed the GreatKhan. A grim warrior, Mongke immediately set the Mongols back on the path ofconquest.

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surrounded and then taken. The siege of Hsiang-yang was historically epic: the Mongols encircled it for five years before it fell. It was the turning point of thecampaign, although it took until 1276 before the Sung Dowager Empress surrenderedher seals and the city of Hangchow.

The final defeat of the Sung took another three years, when the last Sung emperor, aboy of only nine years old, was finally cornered with the remnants of his fleet in 1279.The leading Sung admiral jumped overboard with the child in his arms rather than becaptured by the Mongols. With the final defeat of the Sung, China was reunited for thefirst time since the T’ang dynasty had fallen in the tenth century and, despite achequered history, it has remained one nation ever since.

At the same time, of course, the Mongols under Kublai Khan had been expanding inother areas as well. The Koreans had begun by fighting hard against the Mongols aftertrying to bribe them to stay away. This resistance had worked for a while but Koreahad become a part of the Mongol Empire (although a Korean royal family was left incharge, ruling in the name of the Great Khan). The previous Ch’oe dynasty in Koreahad been so unpopular that its own people had seen the Mongols as liberators!

The Invasion of JapanIt was Korea that was to make Kublai Khan look at the possibility of conquering Japan. Japanesepirates had always raided Korean shipping and the coast, but these raids had stopped when theMongols took control — no one was foolish enough to provoke the Great Khan. This wasn’tenough for Kublai Khan and he sent embassies to Japan in 1266 and 1268 demanding that theJapanese recognise him as their overlord. The reaction in Japan was one of surprise; after all,they had their own divine Emperor and didn’t need a foreign one.

Japan in the Age of the MongolsAt the time of the Mongol invasions, Japan was still a nation geared for war, eventhough the struggle for power was confined to the Imperial Court. The samurai,however, ran the country on a day-to-day basis, even though their skills as warriorshadn’t been needed for many years.At the top, the power structure was one where the appearance of power concealed the true state of affairs.

The Emperor, while retaining his divine status, was a figurehead for the shoguns whowere supposed to be in charge.By the time Kublai Khan’s emissaries arrived, however, the shogun was anotherfigurehead and real power lay elsewhere. The actual ruler of the country was the shikken, or regent. The Hojo family actuallycontrolled the country, having disposed of the Minamoto shoguns in a campaign of conspiracies and outright murder. They were not in any mood to give uppower to anyone, even someone as mighty as Kublai Khan.

In 1274 the first attempt to invade Japan was organised in Korea, but the country wasin no condition to support such an operation, recovering as it was from the Mongolconquest. A relatively small fleet was sent to Japan, carrying Mongols and some

they agreed to attack the Sung instead.

Their planned strategy was interesting.

They didn’t simply plan to ride over the Sung territory, destroying everything in theirpath in the usual nomad fashion. Instead, they planned to isolate the Sung heartland ineastern China and force their surrender.

This was not the kind of strategy that the Mongols would have once pursued andshows that they were far from being the simple barbarians that they had once been.With the campaign going well, Kublai was besieging Wuchang when news came thatMongke was dead, killed during the conquest of Ho-chou by dysentery or by a Sungcrossbowman (there are conflicting accounts).

It looked as though the Sung had been saved, because the Mongols would now bemilitarily paralysed while a new leader was chosen from among the Golden Family orthe Empire went into a civil war. It was not to be. Despite a call to return to a grandquriltai, or meeting of all Mongols, to choose a new leader, Kublai pressed on againstthe Sung. He had realised that a significant military success would ensure his electionas Khan. He managed to cross the Yangtse against stiff opposition despite thesummons to the quriltai, knowing that it could hardly start without him. There wereother claimants to the Khanate but only Kublai and his brother Arik-Böke had armiesclose to the site of the meeting. Kublai, however, was not the automatic choice asKhan: he was too fond (in the eyes of the Mongols) of China and things Chinese andArik-Böke was equally determined to be the Great Khan.

In the end, Kublai had his army declare him to be the Great Khan at Shang-tu in 1260.Arik-Böke persuaded the more traditional tribal leaders in Mongolia that he was theGreat Khan. A civil war flared up, which Kublai rapidly won, but he refused to huntdown his younger brother who eventually surrendered in 1264 and was then kept as aprivileged captive until he died two years later.

In the meantime, Kublai Khan also had himself crowned as the “Son of Heaven”, thetraditional title for a Chinese Emperor in the Chinese, not Mongol, fashion. He also issued adeclaration that, although Mongols were better warriors, they needed Chinese skills forgovernment. With both these actions, the future of the Mongols was clearly identified aslying in China and the East; Mongol affairs and campaigns in the Middle East and Europewere now clearly secondary. The Golden Horde would remain a threat in the West butMuslims and Christians would not have to face the full fury of the Mongols.

The Conquest of the SungKublai Khan returned to his attack on the Sung in 1264. He was meticulous in his planning, as he wanted to take southern China intact and not as a depopulated wasteland. The campaign was long, hard and very unpleasant. The climate hardly helped the Mongols as they fell prey to every local infection and parasite in the humid terrain. There was almost no grazing for their horses and few open battlefields for cavalry anyway. Chinese infantry were needed in huge numbers, andproved to be exactly what was needed in the climate and siege conditions.

The Mongols also had to recruit a huge number of specialist siege troops from acrossthe Empire (from as far away as Iraq!) as almost every Sung city had to be individually

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no way the Mongol invasion could recover from this kind of disaster and Japan hadbeen saved by the “divine wind” of heavenly favour, the kamikaze (hence the use ofthe name for the suicide pilots of the Second World War, who were supposed to beequally destructive of Japan’s enemies).

Despite his horrendous losses in the second campaign, Kublai Khan was all for makinga third attempt. Only the stubbornness of his underlings in opposing the idea and thenhis death stopped the third invasion from taking place. With all his otherachievements, Kublai Khan should not have felt too badly about Japan slipping awayfrom his grasp. The myth of Mongol invincibility had, though, been severely damagedthroughout Asia.

“What if?” The Mongol Invasion inShogun: Total War – Gold EditionThe Mongol Invasion in Shogun: Total War — Gold Edition makes one simple, butcrucial change to history. What if the storm of 15 and 16 August 1281 had never happened? From this changecomes: what if the Mongols had managed to stay ashore in Japan? Would they havewon? Would Japan have become another province of the Mongol Empire?With better weather, the chances are that the Mongols would have been able toreinforce their invasion force at will from the Chinese mainland. They should also havebeen able to break out from their initial landing areas and carry the fighting deeperinto Japan. Faced with an army that was professional, highly disciplined and adept atusing terror as a strategy, would the Japanese have been able to stop them?

Forty years before, the Mongols had destroyed an army of elite Christian knights atLiegnitz in Poland. The knights were almost exactly the same kind of men as thesamurai of Japan in the time of Kublai Khan — warriors who were unwilling tosacrifice their personal honour and status to any notion of abstract, military discipline.The samurai “system” produced talented, deadly individual warriors. It could noteasily produce armies that were capable of opposing the Mongols. Individual samuraiwould have undoubtedly fought on until killed, as their martial code would have calledfor that kind of resistance. It would have been exactly the kind of behaviour toprovoke a general massacre by the Mongols…

Admittedly, Kublai Khan’s Mongol army was not the same force as had been availableto his grandfather. It was ethnically far more diverse, for a start. But it was just asdisciplined and probably more tactically flexible than the “old” Mongol horde had everbeen. But it was still a strikingly modern-looking force, as we’ll see in a moment.

The Impact of the Mongols The effects of a Mongol invasion can’t be overestimated in the lands they conquered,plundered and destroyed. Where they passed, the locals felt as if everything had beendestroyed, that life was pretty much over. They were seen as being a plague upon theworld.

The Mongols were quite capable of methodically slaughtering just a part of a

Koreans. It has to be said that the Koreans were far from enthusiastic about fightingfor Kublai Khan or against the Japanese. The expedition landed at Hakata Bay aftersome successes on the small islands of Tsushima and Iki and drove off the Japaneseforce that came to push them back into the sea. The Mongols, however, were unableto expand this small bridgehead.

When the weather began to change, and a massive storm was obviously brewing, theMongols were persuaded by their Korean naval officers that the best course of actionwas to re-embark and ride out the storm at sea. The advice proved disastrous, and13,000 men are estimated to have drowned. When the storm passed, the survivorssailed back to Korea and the Japanese celebrated.

The weather had been to blame for the Mongol setback, not the Japanese. Thesamurai were out of practice in large-scale warfare because they simply hadn’t neededto fight any battles for decades!

The Japanese and Mongol ways of fighting were also too different for the Japanese toreally counter a Mongol army. The Mongols were a disciplined professional forcewhere individual honour meant nothing. This was a shock to the samurai. It simplywasn’t the way that a decent war was fought. War was a matter of honour between,for want of a better term, gentleman warriors, as samurai on the battlefield made apoint of announcing their heritage, exploits and worthiness. They were seeking out anequally worthy opponent to fight as an individual; the concept of fighting in anorganised army was understood, but not really important. The other shock to thesamurai had come in realising that their opponents had better weaponry. TheMongols’ compound bow was superior in many ways to the Japanese longbow, addedto which the Mongols brought gunpowder weapons.

All that said, the first invasion had not been a success. When the Mongols came again,they would do so in greater numbers and with more determination.

The KamikazeThe second invasion had to wait until the Sung had been defeated, and for a while itdid look as if the Japanese were going to repay the compliment and assault Korea.Instead, in 1281 Kublai Khan organised his second invasion.

This was a much larger expeditionary force, although the preparations seem to havebeen uncharacteristically rushed. Two fleets were organised from southern andnorthern China, which were to converge on the island of Iki before attacking the mainJapanese islands. The commanders of the two fleets quarrelled and the invasion forcesnever really coordinated their actions. The two fleets landed at each end of HakataBay where the Japanese had built a 20-kilometre-long wall.

Although both invasion forces made it ashore, the Japanese were able to containthem. The Chinese and Korean troops among the invaders did not fight overly hardand the Japanese managed to get their small ships into the Mongols’ anchorage. Thefighting continued from 23 June to 14 August 1281 and then, during 15 and 16 August,another typhoon struck the Mongol invasion fleets. Around half the southern fleet wasdestroyed, along with a third of the northern fleet. Those who were trapped orwashed ashore were either killed out of hand or enslaved by the Japanese. There was

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The Mongol Army“The sentry who is inattentive will be killed. The arrow messenger who gets

drunk will be killed. Anyone who harbours a fugitive will be killed. The warrior

who unlawfully appropriates booty for himself will be killed. The leader who is

incompetent will be killed.”

— the Yasak, Genghis Khan’s code of law

When Genghis Khan died in 1227, various estimates put the size of his field army ataround 130,000 men plus supporting troops (guarding communications) addinganother 60,000. This 130,000 has to be treated with some caution because medievalarmy numbers are notoriously inaccurate. This didn’t stop the Mongols’ enemiesclaiming that they were “numberless” or “beyond counting” but then no one likes tothink they were beaten by warriors who were simply better.

The “numberless horde” was a careful ploy by successive Khans. Genghis Khan simplytold visitors that his armies were numberless and was apparently believed. (On theother hand, anyone looking doubtful at his claim was probably risking death.) Theword “horde”, by the way, comes from the Turkish word “ordu”, which simply meanstented encampment without any connotations of size.

There were a variety of reasons why observers did have difficulties in judging the sizeof the Mongol army. The Mongols’ collective speed on the march didn’t help, ofcourse, because most people just didn’t believe that they cover ground as quickly asthey did — the Mongols managed to travel 270 miles in just three days in the middle ofwinter when they invaded Hungary, for example. A modern army would find it difficultto match such a move and be ready to fight, even with mechanised transport. It wasquite easy to believe that there were far more Mongols around than was actually thecase when they could be seen hundreds of miles apart in the space of a few days. Thiswasn’t how other armies operated at the time. This isn’t how armies operate now!

The Mongols also used techniques of “strategic misinformation” to help conceal theirnumbers. Each Mongol had four or five ponies with him at any one time as remounts,and this too created the impression of a much larger force in the minds of opponents.The Mongols regularly tied brushwood to their horses’ tails to raise huge columns ofdust and also used straw dummies tied to the backs of spare mounts to increase theirapparent numbers. These simple tricks apparently worked, as did other ruses.

In 1204, for example, before the battle of Chakirma’ut, each Mongol Warrior was toldto light five fires where the enemy could see them. The creation of doubt and fear inan enemy’s mind always helped in the Mongol way of warfare.

Because of the way the nomadic Mongols were organised as a society, the percentageof adults who could be considered as active warriors was extremely high — some60% of the total. A nomadic people are easier to mobilise for war than those who aresettled and tied to a piece of land. It was also thanks to the active part women playedin society, freeing men to be fighters. Some women even fought alongside their men and formed units of their own. Finally, all Mongol men were warriors simply by virtue of having grown up as Mongols. They learned to ride and hunt almost as soonas they could walk — skills that would stand them in good stead as warriors.

conquered people, taking some into captivity and leaving the rest to manage as bestthey could in a shattered land. This calculated brutality of only killing the majority of apeople seems to be crueller even than slaughtering everyone. The Russian suspicion offoreigners, for example, can probably be traced back to their treatment at the handsof the Mongols. Cities were destroyed and huge tracts of countryside systematicallydepopulated.

When the Mongols under Hülegü (Kublai Khan’s brother) eventually took Baghdad, itceased to be the centre of Islamic culture.

The Caliph was tied in a leather sack and trampled to death by Mongol horsemen,breaking centuries of religious tradition.

It was symbolically respectful as far as the Mongols were concerned since it technicallyavoided his blood being shed. Perhaps the same fate might have awaited the Emperorof Japan or the Pope if the Mongols had reached Edo and Rome respectively. In theMiddle East, the Mongols also destroyed the know-how to keep the water flowingthrough the qanats (canals) beneath the desert. They had already burned crops andstorehouses to create famines and kill their enemies, but without water a persistentpattern of deprivation was established. Without organised irrigation, agriculture couldnot restart, as there were no reliable rains to help. Some Islamic scholars argue thatthe region has never really recovered from what was done by the Mongols all thosecenturies ago.

China’s population is estimated to have declined by some 30 percent during theMongol conquest and, given the size of the Chinese population, this is a huge numberof people. This decline includes those who were simply killed out of hand, but alsomust include the people who starved to death and the “missing generations” whowere never born at all. The short-term and localised destruction caused by theMongols undoubtedly helped this process but it was accelerated by a variety ofdiseases that came hand-in-hand with unrestricted warfare.

Had the Japanese failed to contain the Mongol invasions and the weather not been sokind, the chances are that they would have suffered similarly. While paddy fields areharder to destroy than qanats, the chances are that most Japanese would have died inthe invasion or as a result of the Mongols’ proven ruthlessness. Few survived whereresistance was prolonged, regardless of their complicity in that resistance, and thechances are that the samurai would have fought on to the bitter end.

They wouldn’t have understood any other course of action.

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Strategy, Tactics and Weapons Like other nomadic peoples, the Mongols relied on horse archers and superb cavalry skills in war. The bulk of their forces fought as light cavalry archers, with little or no armour, armed with a compound bow. This was the way warfare had always been onthe open steppes — Attila the Hun would have had little difficulty in commanding aMongol army. That said the Mongols were, in many ways, a strikingly modern army ina medieval world.Their strategy and tactics were based around their highly mobile troops. As we’vealready seen, they were capable of marching immense distances (even by modernstandards) in days rather than weeks. To modern eyes, the Mongols didn’t carry muchwar gear at all and each man always had extra horses at his disposal. The standards ofhorsemanship among the Mongols were such that a man could — and was expectedto — change horses at the gallop. This immense strategic speed would have beenpointless but for the Mongol mastery of what is now termed C3I — Command,Control, Communications and Intelligence. Command always went to the ablest men.Control over underlings was absolute and rigidly enforced. Communications were the province of the “arrow-riders” who regularly rode 120miles per day (Marco Polo claims that these messengers could manage to cover 300miles a day, but this is probably an exaggeration). They maintained contact betweenwidely separated columns of riders and allowed them to operate as a single force —something that other armies of the time just couldn’t manage. Within the Empire, thesame riders acted as a postal service or pony express, dashing between remountstations on all the major roads. In most armies, command, control andcommunications was directly related to how loudly the nobleman in charge couldshout!

Intelligence was a natural Mongol skill — one picked up during the hunts that were aconstant pursuit of all men.

Even when, under Kublai Khan, Mongol armies included a large proportion of Chineseinfantry, they still managed to travel “fast and light” by the standards of others. TheMongols had grasped the important military dictum of “getting there fastest with themostest…”

On the battlefield, Mongol cavalry tactics were inevitably based on their light horsearchers. These disciplined troops could be relied on to perform quite complexmanoeuvres, and not to act on their own spurious “initiative” (as, say, the samurai ofJapan and knights of Europe were known to do, ignoring orders and battle plans in thehope of getting to grips with an honourable foe). The Mongols would try to surroundthe foe or, where that didn’t work, they would attack with a barrage of arrows, wheelaway and be replaced by fresh units. They also made extensive use of feints,pretended retreats and misdirection to draw the enemy out where they could beambushed and destroyed in detail. This method of fighting always led to disparities incasualties between the Mongols and their defeated enemies. Mongol forces werenever expected to get into serious hand-to-hand fighting; their killing was done at longrange.

Later, under Kublai Khan, this training would be formalised, but it always guaranteed asupply of outstanding soldiers for the Khans.The Mongols were organised from the start as a highly disciplined army in units of 10, 00, 1000 and 10,000 men. At all levels command was given only to men of provenability. Being a member of the nobility was no guarantee of gaining a commandposition (unlike virtually all other armies of the period) and even members of theGolden Family had to prove their worth. Once given command, a Mongol leadercould expect complete obedience from his troops. Again, this is not something thatwas ever really the case in other armies of the time. Battlefield discipline was one ofthe great advantages that the Mongols had over their more settled, civilisedopponents!

As the Mongol Empire grew, the nature of the Great Khan’s army inevitably changed.It had to become more ethnically diverse as, firstly, other tribes of steppe nomadswere incorporated into it, and then as Chinese and other nationalities were recruitedfor specialist roles. By the time of Kublai Khan, the “Mongol” army included not onlytraditional nomadic Mongols but Mongols from settled colonies, Chinese infantry andother levies, Muslim engineers and artillerists, Kirpaks from the steppes of Russia,Christian and Iranian Alans in Kublai’s own bodyguard, Koreans and many others.

Supplying all these troops was a logistical nightmare, and that it was done at all has tobe counted as a success for Kublai Khan. That it was done well, as is shown by hiscampaigns against the Sung, is a triumph. Horses always remained an obsession and aproblem, particularly in China. Raising large herds of horses was never a Chinesestrength (much Chinese land just isn’t suitable), but their Mongolian overlords neededhorses all the same. One in every hundred horses had to be sold to the Mongolgovernment at a (low) fixed price. At some times and places, horses were simplyconfiscated. There were severe penalties for concealing horses and for smugglingthem out of China. Still, even with these problems there are records of 10,000 horsesat a time being shipped off to field armies.

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Either way, on a thirteenth century battlefield the huo-p’ao grenades were dangerousweapons, and quite understandably gave the samurai a nasty surprise when they firstencountered them. There are also sources that mention something called the hui-huip’ao, and this seems to have been some sort of grenade launcher that threw ironpowder-filled grenades, although whether it was a crossbow- or gunpowder-basedlauncher isn’t clear.Oddly, when it came to fortifications, Kublai Khan didn’t appear to pay much attentionto the need to defend against explosives,cannon fire or other artillery. The Mongols certainly used stone-throwing artillery against the Sung cities, but only anearth rampart and two inner walls, for example, defended Peking, rather than moresubstantial fortifications. The efficient use of even quite primitive artillery could havesmashed a hole for an assault force to enter, assuming that an enemy ever reached thecity, of course. This may be an indication that gunpowder itself was a Chineseinvention, but that its use as a propellant for missile weapons can be traced back tothe Middle East and the Muslims. Or it could be that the Mongols were simply secureenough in their Empire not to worry about any attackers reaching their cities.

This way of fighting still needed close combat troops, and the Mongols always had anelite force of heavy cavalry. Their job was the same as any other shock force: to ridedown enemies already on the edge of defeat and kill them.

All of these tactics required the right weapons and equipment, and in this the Mongolswere well served by their sturdy ponies and compound bows. Steppe horses havealways had a reputation for being tough animals, and the Mongols were fine stockmenas well as cavalrymen.

The compound bow of the steppes was a truly superb weapon, easily more effectivethan the English longbow and the asymmetric bow of the samurai. Rather than being asingle piece of carefully shaped wood, it was built up of layers of horn, sinew andwood that gave it tremendous power. It was short, and so could be used fromhorseback, and yet it had very impressive range: a good bowman could easily send anarrow 300 yards. The compound bow relied on the speed an arrow was released forits killing power — not on the weight of the arrow. This speed, along with the smoothrelease of power inherent in the compound shape, made it an accurate weapon in thehands of an expert. And the Mongols were, almost without exception, experts.

Under the Khans all of these tactics and skills were retained and new ones added tothe Mongol repertoire. They rapidly learned new tricks and techniques from thepeople they conquered and adapted well to, say, the need for siege warfare and theuses of massed infantry. Their use of these techniques, however, was copied from theMuslims and above all the Chinese.

GunpowderIt’s worth considering gunpowder as a separate subject, if only because of the awfulshock it gave to the samurai and the sheer indiscriminate danger of using the stuff!

The origins of gunpowder as a weapon are largely unknown, but by 1000CE Chinesewarriors were certainly using a kind of flamethrower on the battlefield — probablysomething like the “Greek fire” used by the Byzantine Empire. Just over 100 yearslater, Chinese soldiers were using bamboo tubes filled with an incendiary powder.These couldn’t have been that safe for the users! It’s another hundred years or sobefore something that is recognisably a firearm appears, still based on the bambootube but with small bullets fired at the enemy. These were decidedly handguns, butrather primitive and probably just as dangerous to the user as the earlier weapons!

At the same time, a kind of firecracker was also in use, but not as a simplenoisemaker. This type of firecracker explosively spread lime into a chemical fog on thebattlefield and in sieges, making it one of the earliest chemical weapons in the world.The caustic effects on any human or animal target would have been extremelyunpleasant, not to mention difficult to treat.

By the time of the Mongol invasion of Japan, these chemical firecrackers haddeveloped to the point where they did explode properly with a loud bang and lots ofsmoke. These were true grenades called huo-p’ao. It isn’t known whether or not theyincluded pieces of iron or stone to give a fragmentation effect or just relied on theconcussive effects of the explosion.

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Mongol SpearmenMongol spearmen are, like Japanese spearmen, a good defensive force against cavalry. In terms of quality, they are not as good as samurai spearmen but can be relied on to give a good account of themselves in most circumstances.

Mongol Guardsmen(Chinese) Guardsmen are the assault infantry units available to the Mongols. Although relatively slow moving, they are better armed and equipped than the Spearmen and are armed with a large glaive-like pole arm. This is a broad-bladed cutting weapon on a pole anything up to 2.5 metres in length, but it isn’t quite as effective as the samurai naginata. These troops are well able if deployed in a melee, but will take casualties closing with missile troops of any kind.

Thunder-bombersThe grenades carried by the Thunder-bombers need nerve and skill to use properly — or a complete lack of fear and common sense! These grenadiers can be devastating, but their explosive weapons have a very short range. Grenades can also be a bit wayward (to put it kindly) in use, and there’s no guarantee that only the enemy targets will be blown to bits! The Thunder-bombers could easily blow themselves or nearby friendly units to pieces as well. They are also very vulnerable in melee and will be rapidly overwhelmed by any enemy unit that manages to close with them.

Japanese Units in the MongolCampaignsAshigaru Crossbowmen

The crossbow was a Chinese weapon that the Japanese copied and used from time to time. As with other peoples, they found that it was a weapon with its own particular set of advantages and drawbacks. Unlike a bow, a crossbow doesn’t require long trainingfor the user, or continual practice to maintain skill and strength. Virtually anyone can be taught to use a crossbow, providing he’s strong enough to cock it; and there are numerous levers, stirrups

and clever chain mechanisms to make this process really easy. Unlike a bow, however,it can be slow and clumsy to fire. The laborious process of cocking and loading acrossbow makes sure of that.

Mongol Military Units inShogun: Total War - Gold EditionMongol units are not built in the same fashion as Japanese units. They are created off-map and shipped in by convoys from the mainland. The number and type of units thatcan be created depends on the map areas controlled by the Mongols. But rememberthat the pool of available warriors in China and Mongolia is not bottomless.

Mongol Light Cavalry These are the archetypical nomad warriors. They are all skilled archers and excellent horsemen. They are intended to harass and ambush enemies and are ideally suited to the hit-and-run tactics favoured on the battlefield by the Mongols. Their superior manoeuvrability gives them the ability to mass swiftly, attack, withdraw and repeat this cycle as often as needed. They are neitherheavily armed nor armoured and cannot fight at all well in a melee.

Mongol Heavy CavalryMongol Heavy Cavalry have the traditional role of “nobility” on the battlefield: the breaking of lesser troops through shock and impact. All superb horsemen, these heavy cavalry are heavily armed with spears and well protected by armour and shields. They are best used to attack infantry formations and to ride down units that are already on the point of breaking.

Mongol SkirmishersSkirmishers are heavily armoured troops who carry javelins, shieldsand a sword, although they are not really intended to fight in hand to hand combat. The best use for skirmishers is to attack units witha hail of javelins, while their armour allows them to survive (in theory) any returned missile fire. Their javelins can be devastating weapons, but the skirmishers can only carry three “rounds” apiece.Once that’s spent, they generally pull back.

Strictly speaking, the skirmishers are unlikely to be ethnic Mongols, but are mostprobably Chinese levies, as they made up a substantial proportion of Kublai Khan’sarmies.

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Ashigaru Crossbowmen are cheap to produce but they can only be raised wherethere is a Bow Dojo. They are fairly deadly missile troops (even if their rate of fire is alittle slow), but far from effective in melee. If other troops manage to close with them,the Ashigaru Crossbowmen will perish in large numbers!

“Missing” Units: Ashigaru Arquebusiers, Musketeersand OthersThe Mongols’ grenadiers came as a nasty surprise to the samurai, who had previouslynever seen any kind of practical gunpowder weaponry. The obvious implication of thisis that the samurai don’t have gunpowder weapons of their own.

The Mongol campaigns and battles take place some 300 years before the Sengokuperiod of Japanese history and the arrival of European firearms in Japan. As a result,Japanese armies don’t include any Arquebusier or Musketeer units. The Japanese can’tbuild these units or the buildings that produce them in this period.

There are also other unit types available in Shogun: Total War - Gold Edition that areunavailable to the samurai when facing the Mongols. In addition to gunpowder-equipped troops, the samurai can’t build Warrior Monks, Ninja and AshigaruSpearmen.

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(f) reverse engineer, derive source code, modify, adapt, translate, decompile, disassemble, or create derivative works ofthe Game Software or any part of it (save as the applicable law expressly permits whereupon all and any modification,adaptations, improvements etc shall belong to, vest in and be the exclusive property of Sega on creation in any event);

(g)remove, disable or circumvent any proprietary notices or labels contained on or within the Game Software; (h)export or re-export the Game Software or any copy or adaptation in violation of any applicable laws or regulations; (i) create data or executable programs which mimic data or functionality in the Game Software; and(j) otherwise use, copy, transfer or distribute the Game Software or part of it except as expressly permitted by this

Licence.You agree to read and abide by the Game Disc Precautions and Maintenance Instructions and the Safety Information whichis set out in the documentation accompanying the Game Software.

4. WarrantyThe Game Software is provided without any warranties or guaranties save as specifically provided in these conditions andto the extent permitted by the applicable law. This Licence does not affect your statutory rights as a consumer.

5. LiabilitySega and its licensors will not be held responsible for the risks connected with lost profit, damage to property, lost data,loss of goodwill; console, computer or handheld device failure, errors or loss business or other information as a result ofpossession, use or malfunction of the Game Software, even if it has been advised of the possibility of such loss.Sega and its licensors will not be held liable for any damage, injury or loss if caused as a result of your negligence,accident or misuse, or if the Game Software has been modified in any manner (not by Sega) after it has been bought. The liability of Sega and its licensors shall not exceed the actual price paid for the Game Software.Sega and its licensors do not seek to exclude or limit their liability for any death or personal injury arising from theirnegligenceIf any of the conditions in this Licence are held to be invalid or void under any applicable law, the other provisions of theseconditions will be unaffected and remain in full force and effect.

6. TerminationIn addition to other rights of Sega and its Licensors that may be available to them, this Licence will terminateautomatically if you fail to comply with its terms and conditions. In such event, you must destroy all copies of the GameSoftware and all of its component parts.

7. InjunctionBecause Sega and its licensors could be irreparably damaged if the terms of this Licence were not adhered to, youacknowledge that they, together or alone, may take such action as may be deemed to be required, including seeking aninjunction and other equitable remedies, in addition to any other remedies available under the applicable law.

8. IndemnityYou agree to indemnify, defend and hold Sega, its licensors, its partners, affiliates, contractors, officers, directors,employees and agents harmless from any claims, costs and expenses (including legal expenses) arising directly orindirectly from your acts and omissions to act in using the Game Software otherwise than in accordance with the termsof this Agreement

9. MiscellaneousThis Licence [together with the Subscriber Agreement that you will enter into if you wish to play the Game Softwareonline] represents the complete agreement between Sega and yourself in relation to the use of the Game Software andsupersedes all prior agreements and representations, warranties or understandings (whether negligently or innocentlymade but excluding those made fraudulently). If any provision of this Licence is held to be unenforceable for any reason, such provision shall be reformed only to theextent necessary to make it enforceable and the remaining provisions of this Licence shall not be affected.

Nothing in this Licence gives or claims to give to any third party any benefit or right to enforce any term of this Licence,and the provisions of the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 (as amended or modified from time to time) areexpressly excluded.

This Licence is governed by the laws of England and is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Courts.

WARRANTY: SEGA Europe Limited warrants to you, the original purchaser of the Game, thatthis Game will perform substantially as described in the accompanying manual for a period of90 days from the date of first purchase. If you discover a problem with the Game covered bythis warranty within the 90 day period, your retailer will repair or replace the Game at itsoption, free of charge, according to the process identified below. This limited warranty: (a)does not apply if the Game is used in a business or for a commercial purpose; and (b) is voidif any difficulties with the Game are related to accident, abuse, virus or misapplication. Thislimited warranty gives you specific rights, and you may also have statutory or other rightsunder your local jurisdiction.

RETURNS WITHIN A 90 DAY PERIOD: Warranty claims should be made to your retailer fromwhere you bought the Game. Return the Game to your retailer along with a copy of theoriginal sales receipt and an explanation of the difficulty you are experiencing with the Game.At its option, the retailer will either repair or replace the Game. Any replacement Game willbe warranted for the remainder of the original warranty period or 90 days from receipt,whichever is longer. If for any reason the Game cannot be repaired or replaced, you will beentitled to receive your direct (but no other) damages incurred in reasonable reliance but onlyup to the amount of the price you paid for the Game. The foregoing (repair, replacement orlimited damages) is your exclusive remedy.

LIMITATIONS: TO THE FULL EXTENT ALLOWED BY LAW, NEITHER SEGA EUROPE LIMITED, ITSRETAILERS OR SUPPLIERS ARE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, INDIRECT ORCONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING FROM THE POSSESSION, USE OR MALFUNCTION OF THISGAME

Information in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, is subjectto change without notice. Unless otherwise noted, the example companies, organizations,products, people and events depicted herein are fictitious and no association with any realcompany, organization, product, person or event is intended or should be inferred. Complyingwith all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rightsunder copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into aretrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express writtenpermission of SEGA Europe Limited.

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Shogun: Total War manual

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