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I have been looking for sources of samurai banners. I keep finding banners from the Sengoku period.
I know there is an osprey book about the banners, etc. Are there any good sites for Japanese banners from 800-900 AD / CE?

I am looking mainly for that period where Samurai fought mounted and had Retainers with naginatas running underfoot. I would also like to see banners from the pre-samurai era too. There are some articles about the armor worn and weapons. Flags have been very challenging to find.

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HestonFan: I don't know of any site dedicated to early-samurai banners. But you can find them depicted on various scrolls, including the Mongol Invasion scrolls – bowdoin.edu/mongol-scrolls

The style of banners that Gurkhan linked to are both suitable for the Mongol invasion and the Gempei Wars: basically long pieces of cloth hanging from a horizontal bar, which is hanging from a banner pole.

Individial samurai were not using back banners at this time, that came later, but a precursor started to appear: bits of cloth with messages or basic heraldry, often attached to the shoulder armour, to distinguish individual warriors.

Evalerio made plates here on TMP of the banners of Minamoto and Taira a while ago, they should be a perfect start to get inspiration:

TMP link

I've also seen them portraited with their family crests on the white and red banners. But generally, a lot more simple than the later heraldry of the 16th century.

As for pre-samurai banners, all I know is:

- Chinese sources record a Yamatai envoy in AD 245 being granted a yellow flag by the Wei Chinese court.(Yellow was the Wei dynastic colour.)

- Nihongi mentions two officials presented in 650 with "cuttlefish" flags, so called (at least according to the notes in Aston's edition) because the top of the standard resembled a cuttlefish.

- The 10th-century Shōmonki describes an army's main battle-standard, tokutsu, as a tuft of animal-hair, set above a flag; it was considered to be inhabited by a deity, tokutsu no kami.

We do hear of flags being provided in the Taika edict of 646, and the signalling of orders with flags and drums, in Chinese style, as early as 527; but no mention of what these flags were like. In the 672 civil war Prince Ōama's forces wore a red emblem to distinguish them from the enemy – perhaps a strip of cloth or paper on the helmet or like the shoulder-badges that setsuko mentions.