Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome to my Blog!

Even if this might not be necessary, I just wanted to give you few words about the name I've chosen; Gunbai. A Gunbai (軍配) is a military fan, used in the ages of Samurai to direct troops on the battlefield, the age which this blog is mostly related to.

I'm an "amateur major history buff", with a great interest for the Japanese Military History, especially everything regarding Arms&Armors, and this is basically my project: try to create a place in the web where enthusiast like me, members of the SCA community, historian, Hema people, anyone interested in reenacting or role playing and any kind of people who seek some good knowledge on the field could find  accurate sources for the military technology used in Japan (a.k.a Arms, Armors and other Gear/Equipment) in english.


I'm still on my way with my Japanese so I could understand how frustrating this could be, so even if English is not my first language, this blog will be written in English.

With the years I was able to collect information, talking with experts, reenactors, collectors, museum curator, restorer and to do some proper research on the field, an hobby I'm still doing now: I just wanted to share some informative sources, accessible through the internet. No other purpose, just give you some accurate depiction.


I feel that this was necessary due to the crazy amount of misconceptions concerning the Samurai,their weaponry and their armors, not to mention tactics and other stuff too.
So here we are: the project even if might be a long trip, might end some day, when everything I wanted to say and share would be available to everyone.
Until then, I hope you could enjoy your time here.

Gunbai



             

Comments

  1. Hey I just found your blog. Cool work! I am hoping for more articels in the future.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you so much! I'm planning to write more and more in the near future!

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  2. A suggestion: a friend of mine has a blog (Tetrapod Zoology) which he specifically designed so that he could take the articles out and assemble them into a book. I think you have a lot of good material here and a solid research ethic. Maybe you could do the same?

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the suggestion! I will have a look, although I won't deny it my skills at coding here on blogger are extremely low quality. It might be interesting to recollect everything in the future!

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  3. If you get around to any academic conferences, see if one of the publishers has a an editor around, and ask if they know what you can do now to make your blogs convertible into a book (things like getting the illustration credits together and assembling a running bibliography). You may find some interest. Anyway, I do hope you do this someday... the Internet may not be here forever, but we can read books from thousands of years ago, and all this work is precious and rare. I encourage you to be a responsible steward of the knowledge you have, and share it as widely as possible!

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    Replies
    1. Yes that would be amazing indeed!
      As a side note I actually have a copy of everything I write so if something will change the future, I will try to re-upload everything once again!

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  4. Excellent work great for martial war history facts great stuff

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  5. Hey, as a historian, as a HEMA trainer and fighter, as fan of feudal Japanese culture and history, as a "Samurai fan", as a history teacher, as a martial artist... I would like to say: great job!
    You call yourself a "hobby historian", but you work in a very professional way. Your research work is great and the texts are written very well.
    I found a lot of interesting facts, ideas and thought-provoking impulses on these sites.

    Thanks for sharing your research efforts. Keep up the good work! And think about studying history... ;)

    Best regards

    M.G.

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