But roughly a thousand years after Guan Yu’s death, his image was reinvigorated as he came to be a religious figure. Alongside his sworn brothers Liu Bei 劉備 and Zhang Fei 張飛, he strove to reunite the empire under the flag of the flailing Han dynasty. These are but a few of the many titles attributed to Three Kingdoms legend Guan Yu 關羽. “The brave and reverent front general (狀穆前將軍)”, “Demon-subduing emperor across the three realms (三界伏魔大帝)”, and the fabled “Lord of beautiful beards (美髯公)”. The goal of this paper is to explain these approaches as an analytical model to augment textual analysis by traditional historians, material analysis by archaeologists, and anthropological methodologies focused on participants, bringing these disparate approaches together in complementary ways. With this approach, the need to drastically reevaluate how samurai armies utilized firepower at Nagashino becomes obvious.
Comprehensively viewing a battle or campaign across the levels of warfare, diving into the details of how each combatant army was organized and equipped, and in-depth analysis of terrain and weather effects provide insights beyond those that can be gleaned from reading old texts. My research into inconsistencies in historical analysis of the Battle of Nagashino (Japan, 1575) has demonstrated the value of using certain concepts of contemporary military analysis as a construct for reexamining pre-modern conflict. This does not mean, however, that we must accept generalizations and assumptions.
Unfortunately, this means much historical analysis simply glosses over or fails to examine details which would significantly affect our understanding of what occurred on the pre-modern tactical battlefield. Unlike post-Napoleonic era militaries, pre-modern armies rarely have any standardized organizational structure or guiding doctrine that enables us to make assumptions of how components were arrayed and employed on the battlefield. Pre-modern warfare presents significant challenges to those who would attempt detailed analysis.
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