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New SHOGUN Article: 9th August 2016	AKUNOYA, Japanese Tent, Frame Parts Labels In KATAKANA & KANJI

将軍

S H O G U N
1543-1640

七転び八起き

New for 2015: a photo taken on the second day of the Fayre Times Festival, 20th September 2015, where we set up our recruiting stand using the first of our all new reproduction Japanese tents. The event is a multi-period historical and live role play display event, held at the Royal Gunpowder Mills in Hertfordshire. See also the SHŌGUN Gallery page for more images of other events. The text to the left is a Japanese proverb that serves as our motto, it translates as: Seven falls, eight rises! Being equivalent to the English proverb: If at first you don't succeed, try, try and try again!.

Introduction

SHŌGUN is a small unique historical re-enactment society, with members from all over the UK. Our aim is to recreate the era of first contact between the Europeans and the Japanese people. We take part in public historical shows and run our own private events as well. The project which has been immensely difficult, was begun in 1994, and it was not until 2005 that we were able to put on our first full scale living history show, complete with a period encampment. This was Military Odyssey in Detling, Kent. This is a huge multi-period show held every August bank holiday with over 90 societies participating.

Since then we have put on displays at numerous events around the country, including the annual Will Adams Festival in Gillingham, held every September. In our early days we put on small displays at places like the National Trust's property at Snowshill Manor, which houses the Wade collection of Japanese arms and armour.

Getting Involved

So, if after looking around these web pages, you would like to get involved, or you simply require more information, then please contact me, Dean Wayland at the School.

A Note Regarding Japanese Words And Scripts On This Website

Before you start going through this website if you have not yet read the following piece about reading Japanese words and scripts on these pages, then please do so, I promise it will help you now and in the future.

First of all DO NOT PANIC! You are not expected to learn any of the various Japanese words or scripts on this website, they are here just for your information and entertainment. However, if you do want to have a go, in addition to the romanised terms, the various scripts are slowly being added to these pages. See the articles linked to at the bottom of this page for more help:

CAPITALISATION: Okay, the first thing you may have noticed about these pages is that all Japanese words are capitalised. This is done to distinguish them from English. For example the words "same" and "same". One is English and means, more or less, that the thing being talked about is identical to another. Whereas the other is Japanese for fish skin leather as used in the making of Japanese swords. So here it will be written as SAME.

KANJI, KANA & ROMAJI: Be aware that when some Japanese words are Romanised from KANJI ("Chinese Marks") or from HIRAGANA or KATAKANA (the two phonetic sylabries) in to ROMAJI ("Roman Marks) that their apparent spelling may vary as there are several different systems for doing this. I have used the Modified Hepburn system, which is the most common here in the West.

Regular	Long
A	AA
I	II
U	UU
E	EI
O	OU

Long Vowels: In the Hepburn system there are two official ways of showing a word containing a long vowel sound, such as "JUSHŌ" or "JUSHOU" meaning "Stock" of a gun. The accent over the letter "O" is called a macron, being drawn as a short horizontal bar. It means that it is said "long" as in "ooh". However because not every publisher can reproduce the macron in English texts, this can appear as either JUSHOU which is more like the original Japanese, or a circumflex can be substituted for the macron, as in JUSHÔ. Sometimes the accent is omitted altogether as in JOSHO, which can be problematical. Although these all purport to be the same word, JUSHO does not mean "Stock", it means "barrel". If you need to type a word, but cannot do the accent, then apply the following rules by adding the correct extension to the vowel as:

Note that EE and OO are only ever used for special words, for example "Great" as in ŌZUTSU, "Great Barrel", which can be written OOZUTSU. but if you stick to the basic rules above, you will be understood, if not being perfectly grammatically correct, so OUZUTSU will function.

Hyphons: As in English, in ROMAJI you will often see the use of the hyphon to connect associated words. For example in English the words "snake" and "like" may be put together to form an adjective "snake-like", as in the shape of the serpentine of a matchlock gun. In ROMAJI for example the word TANZUTSU may also be written as TAN-ZUTSU, both meaning "Short Barrel", that is a "Pistol" type weapon. Also within some words you may find vowels next to one another which do not represent a long vowel. To indicate that they are in fact separate words they will be hyphonated as in: "JI-ITA", meaning "Lock Plate". In these pages I have only used the hyphon to separate vowels, because if I tried to include every spelling option, you would think you had swallowed a dictionary.

Homonyms: Be aware that the Japanese language is rife with homonyms, that is words that sound or are spelt the same in ROMAJI which is phonetic, but in fact use different KANJI ("Chinese marks"). Much like the English words witch and which or bark of a tree and bark of a dog. So do not be too surprised to see numerous words that look the same but mean different things.

Useful Articles

Pronounce It In Japanese	Pronounce It In Japanese - KANA Table Only	Number It And Date It In Japanese	Measure It In Japanese

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