"Elements Of Japanese Design - heraldry reference..." Topic

Oh, cool! I will have to look for that book now. Gotta paint up some 28mm Samurai, and I'd like to have the correct mon.

Great book. One of the first samurai-related books I purchased many years ago.

That said, I've not found it useful at all for information on painting banners and sashimono on Sengoku era wargames figures, and I've done a couple hundred at this point. Most of the crests in that book are quite detailed, impossible to paint at 28mm without severe simplification, and seem to be post Sengoku. Significantly, most of the mon depicted don't have any information about which clan/family they were associated with (at least in my edition, 3rd print, 2000). Apparently sometimes families traded crests, and others has seven or more going at one time. Lastly, oftentimes Nobori and sashimono didn't even have the official clan mon on them.

Beautiful designs though!

I agree that you are better off looking at resources for a specific clan if you want to get your banners correct. In my experience there are actually not that many generals who simply just used their family crests, especially not for all banners in their army.

Thank God there's Evalerios awesome collection of plates on Samurai Archives for that: link

I'm still thankful for the tip about this book, and I think I might pick it up. If nothing else just to read up on the origins and meanings of the designs, and it should be useful for terrain and similar things outside army banners.