On October 21, 1600, in a misty valley outside the village of Sekigahara, two armies of about eighty thousand men each met in the battle that decided who would rule Japan for the next two and a half centuries. Tokugawa Ieyasu's Eastern Army defeated the Western Army loyal to the Toyotomi clan, and within three years Ieyasu had taken the title of Shogun and founded the dynasty that ruled Japan until 1868. The fighting at Sekigahara was characteristic of late-Sengoku warfare: thousands of ashigaru — foot soldiers — fielded by every daimyo, fighting in massed formations of spear, musket, and bow, with the mounted samurai used as decisive shock troops at the moment of crisis. The samurai got the legends. The ashigaru did most of the fighting and most of the dying.

This figure is a Western Army ashigaru archer (yumi-ashigaru) in the typical foot soldier's kit of the period: simple lacquered-metal cuirass with the daimyo's crest, padded yellow sleeves with integral metal or bamboo splints, the split armoured apron protecting the lower body, hakama with a distinctive red-and-white pattern, and tabi sandals. The most striking feature is the sashimono — the tall yellow banner mounted on a vertical pole rising from a cross-bar attached to his back armour, marked with his unit's crest. On a battlefield where eighty thousand soldiers from dozens of clans were intermingled, the sashimono was how a man's commanders identified him at a glance. The pose captures him mid-action: right arm reaching back over the shoulder for an arrow from his quiver, about to nock and draw. He works as a dynamic standalone display piece, or pairs naturally with the kneeling archer drawing his bow and the standing archer launching an arrow to form a complete archer firing-line scene from the same Western Army unit.

1/30 scale, matte-painted, single figure boxed. Catalog number SW001. As with the rest of the King & Country range, the painting captures period detail intended to read well in display.