Useful 28mm Samurai Scenery.

Some lovely weapon stands for the Sengoku samurai period, I thought these were from Kingsford Miniatures but couldn't find them on their catalogue, any ideas?

28mm Ronin.

What about this heat in the UK (28C yesterday and talking about 31C today, not good for a flame haired pale Irishman)), feels like I have a reservoir in my underwear, no air conditioning and takes me back to my days in the kitchens but anyway...........

A Ronin was a Samurai with no lord or master during the feudal period (1185-1868) of Japan. A samurai became masterless after the death or fall of his master, or after the loss of his master's favour or privilege.

The word Ronin literally means "wave man". The term originated in the Nara and Heian periods, when it referred to a serf who had fled or deserted his master's lands. It then came to be used for a samurai who had lost his master.

See here for a tale of the most famous Ronin  47 Ronin

The figures are mostly Old Glory I believe, the rest of my collection are Perry Miniatures, during the games my fellow rejects could not tell the difference between leaders and heroes and regular troops so I had to colour the bases so they stood out a little.

 

Ninja.

Some of the ninja from my collection, the rest (40-50 I think) are in black and I will take pictures of them at a later date, always considered this one of my favourite parts of the samurai warfare period.

 A ninja (忍者^?) or shinobi (忍び^?) was a covert agent or mercenary of feudal Japan specializing in unorthodox arts of war. The functions of the ninja included espionage, sabotage, infiltration, and assassination, as well as open combat in certain situations. The ninja, using covert methods of waging war, were contrasted with the samurai, who had strict rules about honour and combat. In his Buke Myōmokushō, military historian Hanawa Hokinoichi writes of the ninja:

“

They travelled in disguise to other territories to judge the situation of the enemy; they would inveigle their way into the midst of the enemy to discover gaps, and enter enemy castles to set them on fire, and carried out assassinations, arriving in secret.

”

The origin of the ninja is obscure and difficult to determine, but can be surmised to be around the 14th century. However, the antecedents to the Ninja may have existed as early as the Heian and early Kamakura eras. Few written records exist to detail the activities of the ninja. The word shinobi did not exist to describe a ninja-like agent until the 15th century, and it is unlikely that spies and mercenaries prior to this time were seen as a specialized group. In the unrest of the Sengoku period (15th - 17th centuries), mercenaries and spies for hire arose out of the Iga and Kōga regions of Japan, and it is from these clans that much of later knowledge regarding the ninja is inferred. Following the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate, the ninja descended again into obscurity. However, in the 17th and 18th centuries, manuals such as the Bansenshukai (1676) — often centered on Chinese military philosophy — appeared in significant numbers. These writings revealed an assortment of philosophies, religious beliefs, their application in warfare, as well as the espionage techniques that form the basis of the ninja's art. The word ninjutsu would later come to describe a wide variety of practices related to the ninja.

The mysterious nature of the ninja has long captured popular imagination in Japan, and later the rest of the world. Ninjas figure prominently in folklore and legend, and as a result it is often difficult to separate historical fact from myth. Some legendary abilities include invisibility, walking on water, and control over natural elements. The ninja is also prevalent in popular culture, appearing in many forms of entertainment media.

Iga and Koga Clans

The Iga and Kōga clans have come to describe families living in the province of Iga (modern Mie Prefecture) and the adjacent region of Kōka (later written as Kōga), named after a village in what is now Shiga Prefecture. From these regions, villages devoted to the training of ninjas first appeared. The remoteness and inaccessibility of the surrounding mountains may have had a role in the ninja's secretive development. Historical documents regarding the ninja's origins in these mountainous regions are considered generally correct. The chronicle Go Kagami Furoku writes, of the two clans' origins:

"There was a retainer of the family of Kawai Aki-no-kami of Iga, of pre-eminent skill in shinobi, and consequently for generations the name of people from Iga became established. Another tradition grew in Kōga".

Likewise, a supplement to the Nochi Kagami, a record of the Ashikaga shogunate, confirms the same Iga origin:

"Inside the camp at Magari of the Shogun [Ashikaga] Yoshihisa there were shinobi whose names were famous throughout the land. When Yoshihisa attacked Rokkaku Takayori, the family of Kawai Aki-no-kami of Iga, who served him at Magari, earned considerable merit as shinobi in front of the great army of the Shogun. Since then successive generations of Iga men have been admired. This is the origin of the fame of the men of Iga."

A distinction is to be made between the ninja from these areas, and commoners or samurai hired as spies or mercenaries. Unlike their counterparts, the Iga and Kōga clans produced professional ninja, specifically trained for their roles. These professional ninja were actively hired by daimyos between 1485 and 1581, until Oda Nobunaga invaded Iga province and wiped out the organized clans. Survivors were forced to flee, some to the mountains of Kii, but others arrived before Tokugawa Ieyasu, where they were well treated. Some former Iga clan members, including Hattori Hanzō, would later serve as Tokugawa's bodyguards.

Following the Battle of Okehazama in 1560, Tokugawa employed a group of eighty Kōga ninja, led by Tomo Sukesada. They were tasked to raid an outpost of the Imagawa clan. The account of this assault is given in the Mikawa Go Fudoki, where it was written that Kōga ninja infiltrated the castle, set fire to its towers, and killed the castellan along with two hundred of the garrison. The Kōga ninjas are said to have played a role in the later Battle of Sekigahara (1600), where several hundred Kōga assisted soldiers under Torii Mototada in the defence of Fushimi Castle. After Tokugawa's victory at Sekigahara, the Iga acted as guards for the inner compounds of Edo Castle, while the Kōga acted as a police force and assisted in guarding the outer gate. In 1614, the initial "winter campaign" at the Siege of Osaka saw the ninja in use once again. Miura Yoemon, a ninja in Tokugawa's service, recruited shinobi from the Iga region, and sent ten ninjas into Osaka Castle in an effort to foster antagonism between enemy commanders. During the later "summer campaign", these hired ninjas fought alongside regular troops at the Battle of Tennōji.

28mm Sengoku Samurai Game Pictures and Eye Candy.

Asked by some people to show my samurai collection, so I put up a few pictures and will probably use this as a game setting for The Rejects to have a game with a few changes. The game is loosely based on Japan expelling Christian clergy from it's shores due to secret and not so secret plots and plans of the missionaries.

Missionaries were not reluctant to take military action if they considered it an effective way to Christianize Japan. They often associated military action against Japan with the conquest of China. They thought that well-trained Japanese soldiers who had experienced long civil wars would help their countries conquer China. For example, Alessandro Valignano said to the Philippine Governor that it was impossible to conquer Japan because the Japanese were very brave and always received military training but that Japan would benefit them when they would conquer China. Francisco Cabral also reported to the King of Spain that priests were able to send to China two or three thousand Japanese Christian soldiers who were brave and were expected to serve the king with little pay.

The Jesuits provided various kinds of support including military support to Kirishitan (Roman Catholic Christians) daimyo when they were threatened by non-Kirishitan daimyo. Most notable was their support of Omura Sumitada and Arima Harunobu, who fought against the anti-Catholic Ryuzoji clan. In the 1580s, Valignano believed in the effectiveness of military action and fortified Nagasaki and Mogi. In 1585,Gaspar Coelho asked the Spanish Philippines to send a fleet but the plan was rejected due to the shortness of its military capability. Christians Protasio Arima and Paulo Okamoto were named as principals in an assassination plot to murder the magistrate in charge of the Shogunate's most important port city of Nagasaki.

More can be read here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirishitan

Below are pictures of the collection but not all, still more samurai and ashigaru to be deployed plus the Ikko Ikki forces and of course 50 or 60 ninja (did a game once of Oda Nobunaga attack on the Iga Province, needed a lot of ninja for that).Any questions just leave a comment and I will try and answer it.

28mm Samurai Painted Japanese Temple.

A 28mm painted japanese temple from my samurai collection from the Sengoku period  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sengoku_period of Japans history, it's a lovely piece of kit from John Jenkins Designs.

I also use it as a base for my Ikko Ikki forces.

Ikkō-ikki (一向一揆?), literally "Ikkoshū Uprising", were mobs of peasant farmers, Buddhist monks, Shinto priests and local nobles, who rose up against samurai rule in 15th to 16th century Japan. They followed the beliefs of the Jōdo Shinshu (True Pure Land) sect of Buddhism which taught that all believers are equally saved by Amida Buddha's grace. They were organized to only a small degree; if any single person could be said to have had any influence over them it was Rennyo, the leader of the Jōdo Shinshu Hongan-ji sect at that time. Rennyo's attitude to the Ikkō-ikki was, however, highly ambivalent and pragmatic. Whilst he may have used the religious fervour of the Ikkō-ikki in the defence of his temple settlements, he was also careful to distance himself from the wider social rebellion of the Ikkō movement as a whole, and from offensive violence in particular.

The Ikkō-ikki were, at first, disparate and disorganized followers of Rennyo's teachings. His missionary work, and his appointment to the position of abbot of Hongan-ji, was in 1457, so perhaps it can be said that the Ikkō-ikki began then. In 1471, Rennyo was forced to flee Kyoto, and established a new Hongan-ji branch temple in Yoshizaki, in Echizen Province; it was at this temple that he began to attract a significant following among peasants and farmers. 1488 brought the first violent uprising, the first major organized action on the part of the Ikkō-ikki. They overthrew the samurai rulers of Kaga Province, and took control of it for themselves; this represented the first time in Japanese history that a group of commoners ruled a province.


Rennyo was a pacifist, and taught pacifism as any other Buddhist clergyman would. He advocated self-defense only as a guard against the particularly tumultuous times in which he lived. Daimyo, samurai warlords, fought one another for territory nearly constantly, across the entire country. Rennyo thus saw to it that the temples of his sect were fortified and defended from attackers. Though it was his charismatic leadership and populist teachings that inspired the fervor which powered the Ikkō-ikki uprisings, he never advocated or supported them.

The uprisings continued nevertheless, past Rennyo's death in 1499, and the sub-sect of Jōdo Shinshu that he had founded spread as well. They established themselves in fortresses at Ishiyama Hongan-ji, just outside Osaka, and in Nagashima, on the borders of Owari and Ise Provinces, and in a series of temples of Mikawa Province as well.

Towards the end of the 16th century, however, their growing numbers and strength caught the attention and concern of the great samurai leaders of the time. Tokugawa Ieyasu worried that the monks of Mikawa would rise up and seize the province. In 1564, his forces, with the help of Jōdo sect warrior monks, defeated the Ikkō-ikki of Mikawa in the Battle of Azukizaka.

The Battle of Azukizaka was the climatic clash between Ieyasu and the Ikki.The ikki attracted the ire of the likes of Tokugawa Ieyasu and Oda Nobunaga due to the economic and political threat they posed, more so than as a result of their military might. The Ishiyama Hongan-ji and other strongholds of the ikki lay across major trade routes and occupied the same areas that Nobunaga saw as his primary territorial objectives. Nearly every road to the capital from this western part of the country was controlled by the ikki or their allies, and the populist roots of the ikki movement gave them significant economic power as well. Nobunaga in particular sought the destruction of the Ikkō-ikki for these reasons, and because they allied themselves with nearly every one of his major enemies or rivals. Ashikaga Yoshiaki was once strongly supported in his claim to become Shogun by Nobunaga, but turned to the ikki when their relationship soured. The ikki also had powerful allies in the Mōri, Azai, and Asakura clans.

The Ishiyama Hongan-ji and Nagashima fortresses were therefore besieged and destroyed by the forces of Oda Nobunaga. After several failed attempts at seizing each emplacement, he eventually succeeded.

In the 1580s, the last of the Ikkō-ikki courted Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and fought alongside his forces against warrior monks of other sects.

28mm Painted Sengoku Period Samurai Post-Town Buildings

.........28mm Japanese post-town buildings from Oshiro Model Terrain, the buildings represent the period from 1350-1400 onwards to 1615 and beyond, bought painted back in the day when I could afford it (single), the figures are 28mm Perry Miniatures. They are part of a large sengoku samurai scenery collection I have collected over the years.