The Real Military History Behind All Your Favorite Feudal Japan Video Games

With “Ghosts of Yotei” and “Assassin’s Creed: Shadows” set for wide release in 2025, it looks as though feudal Japan is going to be on a lot of gamers’ minds this year. And with good reason: From “Way of the Samurai” to “Total War: Shogun,” gamers have long enjoyed titles set there.

But, of course, Japan was more than a static setting for ronin to wander around for 900 years. So what was actually going on there, especially for the militaries, in the period these games cover?

Feudal Japan was a long period that historians break into a number of smaller eras. The Japanese feudal system was built around samurai and daimyos, roughly similar to European knights and manor lords, who occupied a caste below the emperor and shogun. Defensive fortifications and castles were often built into hills and mountains to disadvantage attackers, but many battles were fought in forests or on plains rather than in the siege warfare we associate with feudal Europe. (Siege warfare absolutely happened, though. Sorry, Oda Nobunaga. More on him later.)

For the military and gamers, there are a few eras that are especially important. First, the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281 saw warlords and samurai successfully beat back the forces of Kublai Khan, a grandson of Ghengis Khan. The victories were, in large part, thanks to typhoons that dashed Mongol ships against rocks and beaches in both instances -- the famous “divine winds.” The “Ghost of Tsushima” captures the first invasion in 1274, with the titular character largely replacing the high winds in turning back the Mongol forces.

Warfare during this time, which occurred soon after the rise of the samurai as a real class in Japanese social and political life, often focused on cavalry and horseback archers, more similar to the Mongols than to the katana-focused sword battles of movies. Interestingly, Japan already had female soldiers and even samurai at this time: Tomoe Gozen was purportedly a sort of Annie Oakley of Japanese warfare and was most active in civil wars stretching from 1180 to 1185.

As the centuries marched onward, spears became increasingly important, and the typical samurai battle plan on the open plains emerged. Foot soldiers and skilled swordsmen would march forward first while the horse-riding samurai, armed largely with their own bows and spears, followed close behind. The armies would maneuver for advantage until finally meeting. The foot soldiers would split, opening a large lane for the samurai to charge out of. The samurai raced each other to draw the first blood, and the two forces would then clash.

While conflict between rival samurai groups was always present, it really took off during the Sengoku period, almost two centuries of civil conflicts and wars from 1454 to 1638. It is in the latter half of this period, in 1582, that the upcoming “Assassin’s Creed: Shadows” takes place, which gives players the option to play like a ninja or a samurai. Both were real roles in war at the time, with ninjas acting as battlefield reconnaissance and saboteurs. If the player chooses open combat as a samurai over a ninja’s stealth, then they will play as Yasuke, a real samurai and the first-known Black man to become one. The game takes place right after Yasuke’s master, Oda Nobunaga, killed himself after being trapped in a castle (Siege warfare! We got there.) -- which means, of course, that Yasuke was actually a ronin, too, a samurai with no master.

Nobunaga killed himself as he lost his forces during the Tokugawa Ieyasu’s attempts to unify Japan, which he largely succeeded in doing in a 1600 battle. The upcoming “Ghosts of Yotei,” a sequel to “Ghosts of Tsushima,” is set in 1603. Sucker Punch, the studio, has not yet released many storyline details of the game, but where Tsushima was a relatively small island between Korea and the rest of Japan, Yotei is a major mountain on the large Japanese island of Hokkaido to the north. 1603 is the start of the Japanese Shogunate based in modern-day Tokyo, well south of Mount Yotei. So the game could focus on the real historical tensions and fighting between Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu and the other samurai as he consolidated power.

An important note about the upcoming “Assassin’s Creed” and “Ghost” games: Because Oda Nobunaga was a pioneer of using firearms for war in Japan, it’s quite possible that either or both of the games could contain sequences with matchlocks.

The civil war wound down in the decades afterward, leading to a period of relative peace from 1638 to the end of the daimyo system in the late 1800s. Japan moved past its feudal system, embraced Western science and other advances, and entered the Meiji era, its first step into becoming a modern empire and colonial power that eventually rivaled the European ones.

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