Ashigaru Musketeer



The Ashigaru is a Japanese musketeer that is more expensive than a normal musketeer but causes slightly more damage and has more hitpoints. The Ashigaru can be trained at the Barracks. During the Heian Period (794-1185 CE), Japan’s system of a centralized military began to rapidly disintegrate with the rise of the warrior aristocracy. This left the creation and training of armies once again in the hands of powerful local lords. The ashigaru, which means “light-foot” or lightly armored, filled a growing need for enlisted warriors. They were the lowest class of warriors, commoners who were paid a stipend to enlarge a lord’s local army. Because they essentially fought as contractors, the ashigaru often had to provide their own provisions and were not always as reliable as their commanders would have liked. However, the status of the ashigaru evolved dramatically in the fifteenth century, following the introduction of European firearms to Japanese warfare. The arquebus required very little training to operate properly, unlike the use of a bow, which was considered an art form. By equipping his many ashigaru with guns, a local daimyo could complement his samurai warriors with a constant and brutal ranged attack. Thus, the ashigaru quickly became indispensable.

The most famous ashigaru to rise to prominence was Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the warrior turned powerful daimyo that spent the final years of the sixteenth century seeking to unite the disparate feudal warlords of Japan.