Three materials about the Japanese ashigaru infantry aroused great interest of VO readers. The book "Dzhohyo monogotari" by Matsudaira Izu no-kami Nabuoki, which he wrote in 1650, half a century after the battle of Sekigahara, aroused great interest, because it is really "living material" written by a soldier and for soldiers. Many were interested in how much this topic was reflected in Japanese historical literature, and here, one might say, they were lucky. The fact is that it just so happened that for many years now I have been constantly receiving the magazines "Model Grafix" and "Armor Modeling" from Japan. The first one is about the novelties of modeling in general - tanks, airplanes, cars, motorcycles, robots-gundams, in a word, the whole model reduced world, and the second is only about models of armored vehicles - which models, which firms produce them, how to assemble them, how to paint them, how " dirty”, what dioramas readers make - in general, a very interesting magazine, in which 10% of the text is given in English, which is quite enough for me.
And recently, from issue to issue, "Armor Modeling" not only publishes materials about prefabricated models of Japanese castles and miniature sets of armor, but also accompanies all this with black and white illustrations in a typical Japanese manner, but made very carefully. That is, these are ready-made sketches for any artist - take, redraw (a little), paint - and … you have ready-made author's illustrations in your hands, and no one will even pick on, especially if you process them on a computer. But whether it will be at all - who knows. And the drawings are now. Therefore, it makes sense on their basis to continue the story about the ashigaru infantry, accompanying them with visual explanations.
Rice. 1. Here they are - "handsome", dressed in armor and jingas helmets. Note the outermost armor on the left. This is karukatane-gusoku - armor made of plates in the form of cards, connected by chain mail and sewn onto fabric. These plates could be metal, and could be leather, pressed leather. They were very light, cheap, and were the favorite form of protective clothing for the poorest warriors of the Sengoku period and most of the Edo period. Protective plates are visible on the sleeves and on the legs. But do not delude yourself - for the most part they were from … strips of bamboo or, again, from leather, pressed in several layers and covered with the famous Japanese varnish! Interestingly, the two warriors have two swords each, and the one on the left has one. This just means that he is … a peasant who got into an ashigaru by recruitment, but those two on the right just got poorer and can no longer claim anything better!
Note that all three are wearing tapered helmets with cloth backs. These helmets (jingasa - "military hat") originated from the national headdress "kasa" and gained particular popularity in the middle and end of the Edo period. They were used by various segments of the population from samurai to common people; but they were especially widespread among the ashigaru. These helmets came in a variety of shapes and materials. They could be made of iron, leather, paper, wood, or bamboo. A distinctive feature was the low height and very wide helmet brim. Moreover, the fields and the crown were one, and often indistinguishable from each other. The master's metal helmets were riveted from several segments, in contrast to the European chaplain's helmet, in which the fields were riveted to the crown. They were calculated more for protection from sunlight and precipitation than from cold weapons. Jingasas were usually covered with varnish (usually black) and supplied with a pillow-like comforter, and on the head they were fixed with a chin strap attached to the helmet through rings. Sometimes they had tissue protection for the neck, attached by additional rings.
There are several types of jingasa helmet. The first is a conical or pyramidal toppai-gasa. They were usually used by arquebus shooters. The Ichimonji-gasa were flat in shape with a slight bulge in the middle. Badjo-gasa are riding helmets. Their shape was close to bell-shaped, sometimes with raised fields in front.
Badjo -gasa - helmet of riders.
Another helmet of this type.
Toppai gas infantryman's helmet.
Hara-ate karuta-tatami do - armor of the ashigaru infantryman. Hara-ate - "belly protection". Karuta are small plates connected with wire and sewn onto fabric. Well, the word "tatami" emphasized that the armor could be folded easily.
Tetsu kikko tatami do - the same armor for ashigaru and also foldable, but its name emphasizes that the plates in it are metal ("tetsu" - steel) - otherwise it would be written "kawa" (leather), also connected by wire and sewn onto the fabric … "Kikko" - says that they are hexagonal plates.
Kusari gusoku is an armor made of chain mail, and the Japanese rings never came together or riveted (!), But connected in the same way as our rings on key chains, that is, after two and a half turns!
Karuta Katabira is perhaps one of the more unusual types of ashigaru armor. The plates on it, as you can see, are stitched into chain mail in a checkerboard pattern.
Fig. 2. Ashigaru, like all people, sent their natural needs, and how they did it, the Japanese drew too! First of all, it should be borne in mind that the loincloth - fundoshi, shown in the figure on the right, was different from what the Europeans used, and it follows that they were also “exposed” differently. The need was handled by the soldiers in the pits, across which two boards were laid, which achieved a high speed of "fixing". But the "grace of the womb", unlike the Europeans in Japan, was a value that the same ashigaru collected and sold for money. There were no cattle in Japan. Only the samurai had horses, and … how to fertilize the rice fields? This is how they fertilized them, and then they kneaded it all with their feet. So the fact that in their custom they had daily ablutions is not surprising.
Rice. 3. The main weapon of ashigaru was long spears, which were often made of bamboo as a whole, including the tip! That is, if there was not enough metal for it, then it was simply cut off, either obliquely, or in the form of a knife-like point and … even this could not only injure, but even kill both the horse and the rider! It is with such bamboo spears that the peasants taught by the samurai fight the bandits in the cult Japanese movie "The Seven Samurai".
Rice. 4. In the Sengoku era and then in the Edo era, firearms became the main weapon of ashigaru - wicks, arquebus-loading from a muzzle, lighter than European heavy muskets, which required a bipod. The main calibers of firearms were as follows: 14-mm "standard" caliber, 27-mm - for heavy "sniper" rifles and 85-mm for "hand guns". The latter, of course, did not fire with cast-iron cannonballs, but fired buckshot, stumps of bamboo barrels with gunpowder inside ("grenades") and … "rockets" - the simplest powder rockets. We have also come down to 70-mm breech-loading artillery pieces that fired cast iron cannonballs. The Japanese also bought guns from Europeans, but … no gun carriages, only barrels. And they made carriages themselves, using for this purpose … bundles of brushwood and rice straw. The cannoneers were again samurai, but all the hard work was done by ashigaru.
Haramaki armor - until the 15th century from the Tokyo National Museum. Such armor could also be worn by an ashigaru, but only after having killed its owner, a samurai.
The same armor, seen from the back. You can clearly see how he got tied up. So all these are "fairy tales" that the samurai, unlike the European knights, could dress and undress themselves. In any case, with the Haramaki armor, this number would not work for you.
Rice. 5. This figure shows the device of a Japanese breech-loading gun of 95 mm caliber and working with it. And pay attention to the cunning of the Japanese: the breech of the gun was balanced by the stones hung on the barrel!
Edo period kusari tatami gusoku all-round armor.
Rice. 6. Already at that time far from us, the Japanese were great inventors. So, for protection from arrows, bullets and artillery shells, they used bundles of bamboo trunks, which had colossal strength. Large-caliber artillery to pierce such bundles was rare, and the Japanese used relatively small-caliber barrels with a large charge of gunpowder - a kind of "anti-tank rifle" … Since no shooters of such a barrel could withstand the recoil, they were installed on special machines, the base of which was loaded with stones.
Rice. 7. The Japanese also paid great attention to sniper shooting. Snipers were armed with long-barreled heavy muskets and carefully equipped rifle nests were created for them. Inside there was a supply of water and a container for collecting the "grace of the womb." One shooter only fired, while the other two loaded his muskets. The "point" was carefully camouflaged, and the first shot should have been fired at the enemy commander, and only then, giving himself away with the smoke of shots, it was possible to shoot "just like that."
Samurai tatami gusoku. At all times there were people who tried to show "closeness to the people" at least by clothes!
Rice. 8. The proximity of China to Japan led the Japanese to actively use rocket weapons: explosive and incendiary rockets made of bamboo pipes with a metal tip. They were fired from cannons and heavy rifles.
Rice. 9. Even fighting in the field, samurai and ashigaru tried to fortify their positions with ditches and fences made of bamboo trunks, which were tied in the form of a lattice. This design was insurmountable for the cavalry, but did not interfere with either shooting or using spears. One of the ashigaru's tasks was to knock down these fences with the help of iron "cats", and in order to get closer to them, wooden easel shields - tate - were used.
Rice. 10. The Japanese built a wide variety of fortifications, but they generally looked as shown in this picture. Moreover, the loopholes were rectangular, triangular or round.
Today, ashigaru figurines on a scale of 1:72 are also produced in Russia!
