Kawai Y., with K.F. Friday
documents survive from the fourteenth century, providing fertile ground for analysis concern-
ing troop movements, casualties, and—in some examples, at least—actions taken.^26
Long- familiar accounts of combat during the Heian period describe a picturesque and quaintly
ritualized order to battles, casting them as set pieces, governed by gentlemanly norms and con-
ventions, and following an elaborate choreography in which the conduct of the fighting seemed
as important as the result: Challenges were issued, followed by agreements on the time and place
for fighting. At the appointed hour, the two sides would draw up their lines, and messengers
would exchange formal declarations of hostilities. Special whistling arrows were then used to signal
the opening of combat, which would commence with a general—and mostly ceremonial—
exchange of volleys of arrows at a distance. After that, individual warriors would gallop forward;
recite their names, pedigrees, and battle resumes; and then select suitable opponents for one- on-
one combats that would constitute the main part of the day’s fighting.
This image of ritual and formalism in early samurai warfare has been virtually reified in
popular and textbook accounts.^27 But academic historians have also portrayed early bushi fighting
as ritualized. Indeed, until recently, the terms “ritual” and “formalism” were nearly ubiquitous
in standard treatments of this topic. In the mid- 1980s, for example, Ishii Shirō enumerated six
fundamental rules of engagement for the period, including fighting centered on one- to-one duels
(ikki uchi) and the selection of suitable or worthy opponents by self- introductions (nanori). He
noted that none of these rules were absolute—that there were more than a few exceptions to any
of them, but argued that the rules existed nonetheless. Similarly, Eiko Ikegami characterized
early bushi warfare as “a complex social ritual of death, honor and calculation.”^28
The 1990s and early 2000s, however, witnessed a substantial outpouring of new publications,
giving rise to a lively debate over the shape of early medieval warfare. Based on close analysis of
the diverse mixture of sources and evidence discussed above and cross comparison with work on
military technology and tactics in other times and places, this new work emphatically rejects
many of the hoary stereotypes that dominated previous treatments of the subject—most particu-
larly the notion that Heian combat centered on gentlemanly one- on-one encounters.
One popular avenue of research approaches the reconstruction of battle from detailed exami-
nations of the developmental history of weaponry and armor and their manufacture. Presaged in
publications by Toda Yoshimi, Morita Tei, and Inoue Mitsuo in the 1970s, this line of inquiry
exploded in the 1990s, at the hands of Sasaki Minoru, Seki Yukihiko, Fukuda Toyohiko,
Sakamoto Akira, Takahashi Masaaki, Mori Toshio, Toyoda Aritsune, Nomura Shin’ichi, and
Kondō Yoshikazu.^29 Other historians—notably Kawai Yasushi, Takahashi Masaaki, Noguchi
Minoru, Gomi Fumihiko, Thomas Conlan, and Karl Friday—have focused on the relationship
between evolving political and social structures and the conduct of war.^30 The evolution of for-
tifications has also provided fertile ground for exploration.^31
The new scholarship emphatically discards the image of chivalrous combat between horsemen
who selected appropriate opponents by ritualized recitations of pedigrees and achievements.
Heian warfare is now envisioned to have been every bit as brutal and opportunistic as its later
medieval counterpart. Tactical planning centered on attempts to catch opponents off guard, in
ambushes or surprise attacks, particularly night attacks on the enemy’s home. Raiding warbands
often laid waste to surrounding fields and to the homes of the principal quarry’s allies and depend-
ents, as well. Combat between mounted warriors involved individuals and small groups circling
and maneuvering around one another like dogfighting aviators. Commanders also conscripted or
hired foot soldiers, armed them with bows or polearms, and deployed them as active combatants—
not just grooms and attendants to the mounted warriors, as they were often portrayed in older
accounts—fighting side by side with horsemen, in mixed units, rather than in distinct companies
of infantry.^32 Pitched battles consisted of aggregates of smaller- scale confrontations: mêlées of