Yoshimoto’s Very Bad Day

I’m working on a variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day called Yoshimoto’s Very Bad Day. I don’t have any figures so an obvious question is, what do I have to buy? And that leads us straight to … what is the army list? This post outlines the generic Japanese army list for the draft rules.

The word daimyō means “great name”, and originally denoted a large landowner. During the Sengoku Jidai (the Warring States period, 1467–1615) it came to mean something sharper: an independent regional warlord. Earlier provincial governors had held their authority as servants of the central shogun; the Sengoku daimyō held his by force. He raised armies, levied taxes, and fought near-constant wars to defend and enlarge his domain — and his legitimacy rested on nothing more distant than that. It came from the sword: from his power to conquer, hold his borders, and keep order within his own provinces.

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A Sengoku commander-in-chief had two places he could stand. He could ride with his men, going where the fighting was hottest and lending his presence to the unit that needed it; or he could sit still, behind the line, inside a screen of curtains, and run the whole battle from one spot. The second was the honjin — command from the enclosure — and far more often than not it was where the sō-taishō chose to be. This post is about why, and about what it takes to put him on the table.

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Extending my Musing on Yoshimoto’s Very Bad Day, I thought I’d lay out my thinking on armies, commands and unit. But first a reminder of what Tilly’s Very Bad Day’ does.

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