Ashigaru
The ashigaru ( Japanese 足 軽 ; literally "light-footed") were infantry soldiers of medieval Japan. During the Muromachi period , Ashigaru were set up by the Shogun as his personal army.
Origins
Their roots are seen in the shimobe ( 下部 ) who fought on the side of the government in the Heian period . Ashigaru, literally "light-footed" (also because of the light armor), were the lowest ranked warriors, either low-ranking nobles ( buke ) or non- nobles who joined or were pressed into the army of a daimyo . There are also stories of female ashigaru, although it is unlikely that they were used in combat. At first, the Ashigaru were mercenaries or adventurers paid only with loot, eventually some of them became paid members of local armies. The Ashigaru commanders were called ashigarugashira ( 足 軽 頭 ), (literally "Ashigaru head") and received 200 to 500 koku rice a year.
Equipment and armament
The Ashigaru were foot soldiers, the cavalry was reserved for the samurai . They could be armed with a long sword ( katana ) or with spears ( yari ), but were also used to operate catapults. After the Portuguese introduced firearms in 1546, the Ashigaru were armed with arquebuses . As the battles became more complex and the forces larger, they were rigorously drilled so that they would stay in line even in the face of enemy fire. Their armor consisted of conical hats ( jingasa ) made of lacquered, hardened leather, chest plates and occasionally greaves. Some also wore small banners ( sashimono ) attached to their backs for identification during the battle . If they were mobilized , they had to take care of their own food at the local assembly point, from where they were taken care of from the daimyo's camps.
Military service
In the Ōnin War , the Ashigaru gained a reputation as defiant troops when they pillaged and pillaged Miyako (today's Kyōto ). In the following Sengoku period , some became very influential. The most famous of them was Toyotomi Hideyoshi , who also raised many of his followers to the samurai stand. Yamauchi Katsutoyo was such a samurai and later daimyo.
New weapons and tactics
In later times, the ashigaru formed the backbone of the samurai armies. The most important change is associated with the introduction of firearms by foreign traders, especially the Portuguese, in the mid-16th century. Almost immediately, the local warlords began equipping their ashigaru with this new weapon. It required little training to be used effectively compared to the Japanese longbow ( yumi ), which took many years of learning. The advantage of the new powerful long-range weapons was to prove revolutionary for the warfare of the samurai. This was exemplified in the Battle of Nagashino (1575) when Ashigaru with arquebuses , strategically stationed behind obstacles, shot down repeated heavy cavalry attacks by the Takeda against the defensive lines of the Oda Clan, thereby inflicting the decisive defeat on the Takeda. This battle is the theme of Akira Kurosawa's famous film Kagemusha . After the battle, the Ashigaru represented a powerful counterpart to the samurai in the armies. In the two invasions in Korea in 1592 and 1597, the advantages against the Koreans and later the Chinese showed again.
Web links
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- Stephen Turnbull: History of the Samurai. Japan's warrior caste in historical retrospect. Motorbuch, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3613305402 .