"How colour-specific were the japanese clans, really?" Topic

(apologies in advance for not owning any source-books on the matter, I'll gladly take suggestions for books to buy)

I have big visions for collecting 6mm samurai, but every time I get close to making an order I start fretting over which clan colours to paint them in. I'm now leaning towards collecting two opposing armies loosely based around Oda Nobunaga's campaigns against the Ikko-Ikki. The Ikko-Ikki would be joined by the Mori and Takeda (remember, it's only LOOSELY based around the aforementioned campaigns) and the Oda side would also include some as yet undecided subjugate clan such as Hashiba. That makes five contingents that I'd like to paint in five clearly different colour schemes, but from what I can glean, some of my intended colours don't really match their clans. Oda in yellow/orange and Mori in red seems simple enough, but Takeda in blue and Hashiba in green? I don't want to use black on Takeda (I want bright colours for minis that small) and I can't find any references to what colours the Hashiba used, or if indeed any of Oda's subjugate clans displayed green. White is already spoken for by the Ikko-Ikki and that doesn't leave many other choices.

So would I be able to field troops in basically any colour and still get away with calling them Takeda, or Hashiba or whatever? From what I can tell, the mon are the really important part of Japanese heraldry, and the colours seem to weigh less heavily. Right or wrong?

"From what I can tell, the mon are the really important part of Japanese heraldry, and the colours seem to weigh less heavily. Right or wrong?"

This is true. Having all the units from one clan wearing the same color would not be completely realistic. This misconception may have been propagated by the Shogun TV series, where all of Nobunaga's men wore brown and the enemy wore grey.

The mon is the important thing in Japanese hearaldry. Take the Takeda for example…each family member had his own personal banner color and mon. In general, his troops then carried a sashimono of that same color, with a Takeda (4 diamond) mon on it in the same color as the mon of the family member. So, Takeda Shingen's personal banner was a black flower mon on a red field…his troops then supposedly wore a red sashimono with a black Takeda mon. Ichijo Nobutatsu's (Takeda Yoshinobu) men had a white Takeda mon on red. Takeda Nobushige's men had a white Takeda mon on black. Takeda Katsuyori, black mon on white sashimono.

Except in the later periods for Ashigaru, clothes under the armor were individualized.

For what its worth, in 28mm, I usually paint ashigaru in the same unit with the same color Kote (sleve armor) to give some unit cohesiveness, and then varying colors for pants…usually a green, brown or gray. Samurai will be completely different man to man, with the unifying element being the sashimono.

What you want to do is of course up to you, and distinctiveness as 6mm is very different than 28mm. Do they even make clan decals for sashimono and nobori in 6mm? In that small a scale, you may indeed want to have the standards/sashimono color coded and just asume that all forces from each clan are from one member within that clan.

To take an example,�@the army of Date Masamune was equipped from his own arsenal, and he had all the armour from Samurai on down laquered black. This looks pretty cool with all the colorful sashimono, although as was pointed out clothing colours also allow some variation in appearance. Not a lot of silks or anything for anyone but the highest or mightiest.

For ashigaru and samurai of the poorer sort, cloth printing was quite advanced so there could be many patterns on the clothing, but the colours would be varied, but not TOO bright for the most part- white or black patterns on deep and light blues, browns, rust-browns, white and grey seem to have predominated for "working class" wear.

Seeing as how this is 6mm, troops will definitely not be getting individual clothing. Even if it doesn't take that much longer to alternate, say, 3-4 different colours while batch painting, I think it will mainly just serve to make the unit look "broken up" when it's the opposite effect I want to go for. When looking at models this small from arm's length you won't notice that some details have been painted "wrong", but hopefully you will see that some colours (in this case the clan colour) become dominant over the whole unit, giving a good, cohesive overall look. That's the theory, anyway.

That's why all the clothes will be painted in the same colour as the sashimono and banners, and I'm considering even doing the same to the spears and bows of the Samurai (which also differentiates them from the Ashigaru a bit).

Of course, another thing about 6mm is that I should use bright, bold colours that are all clearly different from one another, lest the figures just melt away among the scenery. That's why I'm getting the dilemma with blue Takeda and green Hashiba.

IIRC Ii Naotaka equipped his troops entirely in red laquered armour. As for the contemporary artwork as reference, it seems to depict a variety of individula *clothing* colours, with the uniformity being more among the armour and definitely among unit sashimonos. I highly recommend the works of Dr. Trunbull, especially his various volumes for Osprey.

On a personal note I'm not at all shy about painting my troops up in a uniform fashion, if only to preserve my already over-stressed *sanity!* .;D

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Also, the interesting thing with the Ii clan is that they decorated their ashigaru to match the "Red Devil" Samurai.

Ralph

TeutonicTexan, that is a great discussion of the color of mons. It's the best I've read. May I use it in the Reiter, the journal of the Renaissance Wargame Society?

Rich

link

As far as i know was the armour for ashigaru supplied by the daimyo. You could get coherence by using colour-coded do (chest armour) and sashimono.

uniform armour works better.
assault groups samurai gallery shows the contrast off
nice.
one color armour with their own individual clothes below.
it saves confusion in skirmishes if each player has one colour.
link