Gunbai: Ancient Japanese Warfare

Defeating Late Japanese Armor - Tosei Gusoku (当世具足 ) A section of the famous ukiyo - e  "ten brave takeda warriors" - 武田勇士揃 by Utagawa Sadahide. This was an article that was requested and one that I've really enjoyed writing, although it took a lot of efforts and researches. It is a follow up of my complete analysis of the heaviest possible configuration worn by a wealthy samurai during the late 16th century, Tosei Gusoku (当世具足) - Body Coverage Explained ; if you haven't read it yet, I highly suggest you to do so in order to better understand this topic. So today I will cover the various way to specifically deal with that type of configuration and how it was done historically during the Sengoku period. Before start, I will do a quick recap on the main weakspots of the armor: A sketch of the most protective possible configuration of a late 16th century tosei gusoku. I'm not an artist but all the armor pieces you see are based on real pieces found in ...

Hōseki (抛石 ) - Japanese Catapult A Sijiao taken from Wujing Zongyao ( 武經總要 ). Due to the lack of Japanese iconography on the subject, I've used a Chinese ones which very likely resembled the Japanese version. Another very obscure and overlooked Japanese weapon is the catapult , also known as mangonel . In Japanese it is called Hōseki, Tōsekiki ( 投石機 ), or Hatsuishiki ( 発石木 ) and Hih ō ( 飛砲 ) in historical texts. There are many reasons why this type of weapon is hardly associated with Japanese warfare, but before addressing this fact, it is worth to look at the weapon itself and its history. The first mentions of stone projectiles being used to inflict damage is found inside the Nihon Shoki  and we can read that these projectiles were fired by large siege crossbows called Ōyumi (大弓 ) . Nothing is really known about these devices although the academic consensus on the matter is that they weren't catapults-like machines. The first references to proper catapults u...