Ships of the Sengoku period (feudal Japan)

[Papierschnitzel]

After my exploration of Japanese castles I was asked about ships for that period. So I did some research and found the design for the ships very interesting. Very different from the sleek European ships of that time but with a very distinct shape.

I decided to focus on the kobaya, a swift scouting and boarding ship and then the larger sekibune and the mighty atakebune. The latter two look very similar, both a mix of a ship with a big block of a house-like superstructure on top. The one having a pointed bow and the other a flat bow and a little house on top of the house :-)

For details and research you can read up the wiki and I also recommend the Osprey book Fighting ships of the far east 1.

I made some renderings as a starting point.

Here you see the basic types: pointed bow and blunt bow.


And here is an overview of the three ship sizes I plan. In order to have a modular set of ships I decided to go with three sizes (small, medium and large) and the two version (pointed and blunt bow). These types with the superstructures will allow for most ship types I have found during research.

Like all my models sets they will be in scale for 25-30mm minis printed at 100%.

So my first prototype of the basic boat form looked like this.


A good start except that it looked nothing like the Japanese boats! So after further studying and finding a blueprint somewhere on the internet I managed to get this shape, which resembles the typical shape much better.

This image shows the medium size boats.


For the big ship types I have added a rib structure, so that the ships form stays true and also to make it gaming ready (esp when placing loads of metal minis on deck!)



So these are the sizes I got so far.


Next up are the superstructures. For the medium kobaya it's a smaller defense wall and for the sekibune and atakebune I need to make the big houses.