Japanese war fan

Antique Japanese (samurai) Edo period gunsen war fan, made of iron, bamboo and lacquer depicting the sun (1800-50) on display at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, California.

A Japanese war fan is a fan designed for use in warfare. Several types of war fans were used by the samurai class of feudal Japan and each had a different look and purpose.

Description

War fans varied in size, materials, shape, and use. One of the most significant uses was as a signalling device.[1] Signalling fans came in two varieties:

The commander would raise or lower his fan and point in different ways to issue commands to the soldiers, which would then be passed on by other forms of visible and audible signalling.[3]

War fans could also be used as weapons. The art of fighting with war fans is tessenjutsu.[1]

Types of Japanese war fans

A tessen (iron fan) on display in Iwakuni Castle, Japan

War fans in history and folklore

Japanese gunsen war fans

One particularly famous legend involving war fans concerns a direct confrontation between Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin at the fourth battle of Kawanakajima. Kenshin burst into Shingen's command tent on horseback, having broken through his entire army, and attacked; his sword was deflected by Shingen's war fan. It is not clear whether Shingen parried with a tessen, a dansen uchiwa, or some other form of fan. Nevertheless, it was quite rare for commanders to fight directly, and especially for a general to defend himself so effectively when taken so off-guard.

Minamoto no Yoshitsune is said to have defeated the great warrior monk Saitō Musashibō Benkei with a tessen.

Araki Murashige is said to have used a tessen to save his life when the great warlord Oda Nobunaga sought to assassinate him. Araki was invited before Nobunaga, and was stripped of his swords at the entrance to the mansion, as was customary. When he performed the customary bowing at the threshold, Nobunaga intended to have the room's sliding doors slammed shut onto Araki's neck, killing him. However, Araki supposedly placed his tessen in the grooves in the floor, blocking the doors from closing.[3]

The Yagyū clan, sword instructors to the Tokugawa shoguns, included tessenjutsu in their martial arts school, the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū.

In popular culture

War fans appear in books, video games and television, a few examples are Squire, the third book of Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small, where it's called a shukusen, Otherwise Engaged, by Amanda Quick, the Koei Tecmo series Samurai Warriors (Sengoku Musou), Samurai Warriors 2 (Sengoku Musou 2), Fatal Fury, The King of Fighters, Mortal Kombat, Dragon Quest IX, Team Fortress 2, Touhou Project, Capcom series, Sengoku Basara, Avatar the Last Airbender, Nickelodeon's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Code Lyoko, the Power Rangers franchise, throughout the Naruto series, and Utawarerumono.

In the manga/anime series Naruto, Temari wields a giant iron fan that can create powerful gusts of wind capable of leveling the surrounding landscape. Two of the series main antagonist Obito Uchiha and Madara Uchiha both wield a Gunbai known as Gunbai Uchiwa (軍配団扇, Gunbai Uchiwa, Literally meaning: army arrangement fan) is a non-folding fan, carved from a unique spirit tree from which only ritualistic instruments are made. This Gunbai has been passed down between Uchiha clansmen for generations. Madara Uchiha was known for having great expertise in using it. In addition the symbol of the Uchiha Clan is a fan which is a reference to uchiwa (団扇, paper fan) which is another way of pronouncing the clan's name.

Gallery

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 William E. Deal, Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan, p.167
  2. Louis Frédéric, Japan Encyclopedia, p.267
  3. 1 2 3 Oscar Ratti, Adele Westbrook, Secrets of the Samurai: A Survey of the Martial Arts of Feudal Japan, p.296-304
  4. Jōchi Daigaku, JSTOR (Organization), Monumenta Nipponica, Volume 16, p.71-p.73
  5. Karl M. Schwarz, Netsuke Subjects: A Study on the NetsukeThemes With Reference to Their Interpretation and Symbolism, p.116
  6. A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor: In All Countries and in All Times, George Cameron Stone, Courier Dover Publications, 1999 P.256

Sources

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