By 1942 Japan had conquered an empire of staggering size — a swathe of Asia and the Pacific reaching from the borders of India to the approaches of Australia, from Manchuria to the mid-ocean atolls — and soldiers like this one stood guard across all of it. The Imperial Army called this new domain the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, but for the conquered peoples the occupation was brutal, and for Allied prisoners in Japanese hands it was often deadly: captives died in Japanese camps at many times the rate they did in German ones, a cruelty rooted in a military code that held surrender to be the deepest disgrace. The sentry on his post was the everyday face of that vast, harsh empire — vigilant, disciplined, and the instrument of a hard occupation.

The figure stands rigid at his post, Arisaka held upright with bayonet fixed, in field uniform and the star-fronted steel helmet — the very image of the disciplined sentry. He is the companion to the Soldier at Ease, the same man on watch rather than off duty, and takes his orders from the Officer with Binoculars, backed by the Machine Gunner on the position. In a diorama a sentry defines a boundary — a checkpoint, a compound gate, a bunker entrance — and quietly tells the viewer whose ground this is.

Model: JN072 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set