Samurai War Stories: Teachings and Tales of Samurai Warfare

If you think that Samurai rolled around in Hakamas , you're mistaken. This is full of war experiences with disease and footmen life. Taking heads was a priority and Wakizashis were utility knives. The timeline of these stories takes place during Oda Nobunaga's life and war time in Japan. Once stuck in a castle guys had to sell arms and armor for food. Samurai in their unique armor , could be detained and beheaded for not wearing a ally symbol before getting to the battlefield. Bags of Noses didn't count, because no one could tell if they were civilians or allies. War was about Samurai servants and spears not slow swordsmanship. This is an informative eye opener for any Samurai fan. Samurai could care less about respect they only cared about their own necks and looking good.

Excellent book. I have studied Japanese culture for 25+ years now. My focus has been Samurai and pre Edo culture. This book provides an excellent synopsis into the thinking of the various levels and classes. Great to read with some of the Osprey books and Stephen Turnbull literature.

This is a really great book, I honestly could not put it down after I started reading. It is very in depth and an easy book to read. It also puts the environment the shinobi worked in into perspective. This is a must have for any samurai or shinobi enthusiast so if you don't have this book yet I definitely recommend that you get it.

loved it

Love this book

A summary of the review on StrategyPage.Com:'Martial arts specialist Cummins and his long-time collaborator Minami give us the first English edition of three historic Japanese texts on warfare in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The texts deal respectively with the roles of the samurai, the ashigaru (commoner infantry), and women, particularly those of the samurai class. These texts contain numerous anecdotes, of varying length, about particular battles, notable feats of arms or stratagems, or commonplaces of military life and practice of the times. In this, they are somewhat similar to the works of the Romans Frontinus and Polynaeus. Cummins and Minami have added a short appendix providing brief biographical details on many of the men and women mentioned in the text. Samurai War Stories will undoubtedly be of value to serious students of Japanese history, but will also prove useful and even amusing reading for those interested in general military history.'For the full review, see StrategyPage.Com

This was a very difficult book for me to rate. Firstly I felt it was split into 4 sections, unlike the 3 the description claims. I felt some of these to be very easy reads and others to only have interest to somebody who was conducting serious study, rather than a curious passerby who wanted to learn a little about a system very different to western battle.Zohyo Monogatari, Tales of the Foot Soldiers, c.1657-1684These took me a little while to get the hang of, but I feel this was the best part of the book. This, I believe, was a handbook written for various soldiers and servants showing them what to or not to do in battle. Each little section covered a troop type and had one or more fictitious characters telling stories and discussing what they had seen and heard why it was a bad idea and what would be a better one.For example the musket shot carriers told a story of how different people carried the chest in different ways. One pair carried one between them while trying to cross a mountain, dropped it and had everything crushed and broken underfoot, while the teller of the story wore the chest on his back so he had his hands free.This section is heavy in footnotes, which are needed, explaining what the different terms mean. Also note where it will say [fig 1], these can be found at the back in the plates sectionMusha Monogatari, Tales of the Samurai, 1654This is a series of articles collected together in the 17th century simplifying what each one says. Each article starts with "According to an old samurai story," but these are at least based in fact, covering many battles, clans and procedures. These were interesting, but without more of a knowledge of Japanese history I felt lost in places. An article would often only cover what one person did in a war, then that war might not be mentioned again for quite some time leaving you uncertain as to what had happened.As a side note I wish I had known at the time the last section called "Samurai Tales – A Brief Overview of the Samurai Found Within" has a basic description of the life of all the major samurai within this section. I think using it for reference as you read would improve the experienceThe Story Of Oan and of Okiko, Seventeenth CenturyThis was a nice story, and by far the longest section of uninterrupted text, telling of one woman's story during a battle. This was then supplemented by a descendant of hers, and again at a later date with facts added to the story.Samurai Tales – A Brief Overview of the Samurai Found WithinAs the name suggests these give a full picture of the samurai's lives, as opposed to the glimpses seen in the second section. While these greatly increased understanding of how some samurai's would be on one side in one article then another in the next I found myself skimming this section. Many pieces are little more than[Samurai name] – [Articles in][Birth – Death (often both unknown)] served samurai xWhich soon lost my attention as the similar names merged in my mind as I read so I got confused as to who was who. That being said some of the longer pieces were interesting, especially ones for samurai who appeared in many articles. It stitched all those little glimpses together, how they passed from clan to clan, sometimes their families and how they died.Overall this was an interesting book, but there was a lot of repetition and I feel it was aimed more at somebody with more knowledge of history. In one place I even had to ask a Japanese friend for an explanation but we didn't get anything certain. Even if you don't have any samurai knowledge I would say to give this book a go, just use a dip in, red a couple of articles then read something else for a while method so you remember more of the terms.

I love this book. The stories are didactic to teach how to act when you go to war. This is truly fascinating and enjoyable to read.

Un libro que nos presenta el mundo de los samurais desde un punto de vista histórico. Se apoya en datos reales y documentos a la hora de escribir

A fantasic read which comes in three sections .the first dealing with authentic training stories for the common japanise foot soldier (ashigaru) and how they lived their lives .I have never read authentic japanise accounts before of this section of the japanise bushi culture the 2nd part deals with the samurai themselfs and contains a huge amount of information never before published in english the 3rd section then deals with accounts written by samurai women and is allso very informative.On the whole a very intereting and well written book for anyone who likes or studies japanise history includes some very good original artwork which ties in directly to the text . highly recomended for either academics martial artists or just people with a passing interest in the subject. an easy read and a must buy!!

Excellent historique de la longue histoire guerrière des Samurai! Recommandé pour tous les passionnés de l'histoire du Japon!A posséder!