The case against weapons groups

Having covered previously the theory of when and how Sengoku Jidai armies came to be organised by weapon groups, I thought I’d go over the counter-arguments, in particular a different interpretation of the famous Iwatsuki document.
First, it’s worth noting that in academia the ‘orthodox’ position is that Sengoku armies were organised by feudal lord and not by weapon type, and so the burden of proof has fallen on those who wish to show that there was a transition towards forming units equipped with the same weapon at some point in the 16th century. The opposite is true in wargames rules. Here there is the assumption (by all rules that I’m aware of ) that armies are composed of units with the same weapon, or, occasionally mixed spear and missile units. However, there is no stated basis for this, and the fact that there is a debate in academia on the subject would indicate that there is no clear evidence for the existence of such single-weapon units. It is an assumption that wargames rules writers made some decades before any historian made a coherent case for it.

As discussed in the post on Nishimata Fusao’s theory of the formation of weapons groups, one of the most important factors enabling the ability to form such groups is an increase in daimyō authority, enabling them to override some of the independence of their vassals. Historian Hongō Kazuto questions whether this increase in authority actually existed, citing the rapid collapse of the Takeda clan after the death of Takeda Katsuyori, and the descent of the Uesugi into civil war following the death of Kenshin. If these leaders had possessed such control over their vassals, why did the system collapse so quickly when they died? Professor Hongō does concede that such a system could be possible after the separation of the social classes and restructuring of warrior society in the 1580’s.

Now, I don’t think this is a particularly strong argument. There is a parallel with Muslim rulers during the Crusades, many of the Seljuk and Arab rulers were undoubtedly strong leaders who exerted a lot of control over their domains, but on each of their deaths, a succession crisis occurred with a period of internal strife. With Japanese feudal ties being built so heavily on personal relationships, it’s not necessarily surprising that a strong organisational system reliant on the personal authority of the daimyō would not survive the death of that daimyō, particularly if there were no obvious succession in place.

Hongō’s other objection is how the system of rewards would work when a particular warrior’s retainers are split up. Meritorious deeds in battle required rewards, and wounds incurred were liable for compensation. The difficulty here is how are these rewards and compensations distributed when men are no longer all fighting around the warrior who raised them, paid them and brought them to the battlefield. There would presumably be a change in how the system worked, but there is no indication of such a change in surviving petition documents related to rewards and compensations.

An alternative explanation for the Iwatsuki document which Nishimata uses to indicate how the system of weapons group formation worked has been advanced by one amateur historian. Where Nishimata interprets the named bugyō as commanders of the single-weapon units, he instead suggests that they are inspectors of equipment and soldiers. If they are military units, it seems a bit puzzling that there are bugyō leading units of men with ‘small flags,’ but it makes more sense if those bugyō are instead charged with inspecting the flags to make sure they conform to some standard. Again, the document itself is unclear enough in its purpose to make this idea at least plausible.

^ It is entirely possible that those men that accompanied Miyagi Yasunari all fought around him under his direct command after all. Bad news for most wargames rules that don’t have a unit template for that kind of thing.

I’m not sure what the majority view in and around academia is, or even if it’s anything other than a niche talking point there, but most Japanese military enthusiasts I’m aware of seem to be in agreement with Nishimata. For what it’s worth, I also still find his argument persuasive. But it’s worth noting that there is some opposition, in contrast to recent revision on Sekigahara or Nagashino, to which I’m not aware of any serious rebuttal of the new research in support of the previously accepted versions of those battles. Again, the fact that there is any debate at all about army organisation does, of course, indicate that there is no clear information about how armies were organised. And this makes it very difficult to build something as relatively precise as a wargames army list.

^ Units representing ‘sonae’ or similar, where the figures on the base may not be directly related to the actual troops being represented, the latter being flexible depending on the battle. This does make it possible to avoid having to answer very specific questions about unit compositions and instead focus on a representation based on broader concepts of training, experience and sub-unit arrangements.

One last thing worth noting is that even if your rules are using single weapon units as the basic building block for armies, you still need a way to represent ‘feudal’ units, even at a small unit level. No-one, not even Nishimata, is arguing that the process of transition to weapons groups was instantaneous nor universal, and, depending on the part of the army, the year and the location in the country, some ‘units’ would not have made the transition even by 1590.