First published in Great Britain in 2000 by Osprey Publishing,

Midland House, West Way, Botley, Oxford OX2 0PH, UK

44-02 23rd St, Suite 219, Long Island City, NY 11101, USA

Email: info@ospreypublishing.com

© 2000 Osprey Publishing Ltd.

All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to the Publishers.

Transferred to digital print on demand 2010

First published 2000

6th impression 2008

Printed and bound by PrintOnDemand-Worldwide.com Peterborough, UK

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Print ISBN: 978 1 85532 619 4

PDF e-book ISBN: 978 1 78200 255 0

ePub e-book ISBN: 978 1 78200 229 1

Consultant Editor: David G Chandler

Series Editor: Lee Johnson

Editorial by Marcus Cowper

Design by The Black Spot

Colour birds-eye view illustrations by the Black Spot

Cartography by the Map Studio

Battlescene artwork by Howard Gerrard

Wargaming Nagashino by Arthur Harman

Origination by PPS Grasmere Ltd, Leeds

Typeset in Helvetica Neue and ITC New Baskerville

Dedication

To Kazukata Ogino in recognition of his invaluable and friendly assistance in the preparation of this book.

Artist’s note

Readers may care to note that the original paintings from which the colour plates in this book were prepared are available for private sale. All reproduction copyright whatsoever is retained by the Publishers. All enquiries should be addressed to:

Howard Gerrard

11 Oaks Road

Tenterden

Kent

TN30 6RD

UK

The Publishers regret that they can enter into no correspondence upon this matter.

Front cover

© Japan Archive

The Woodland Trust

Osprey Publishing is supporting the Woodland Trust, the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity, by funding the dedication of trees.

www.ospreypublishing.com

© Osprey Publishing. Access to this book is not digitally restricted. In return, we ask you that you use it for personal, non-commercial purposes only. Please don’t upload this ebook to a peer-to-peer site, email it to everyone you know, or resell it. Osprey Publishing reserves all rights to its digital content and no part of these products may be copied, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise (except as permitted here), without the written permission of the publisher. Please support our continuing book publishing programme by using this e-book responsibly.

Every effort has been made by the Publisher to secure permissions to use the images in this publication. If there has been any oversight we would be happy to rectify the situation and written submission should be made to Osprey Publishing.