Samurai questions

[gandalf9700 41]

How many samurais are there per clan?  How often does a samurai meet or see their Clan Daimyo, Family Daimyo, Emperor?

[sndwurks 1,257]

I have not found a lot of demographics in the new book, but in general the Great Clans are each themselves as large as a medieval kingdom, though they vary greatly in size.

The accepted ranking of most populous to least populous:

1. Lion Clan
2. Crab Clan
3. Crane Clan
4. Unicorn Clan
5. Scorpion Clan
6. Phoenix Clan
7. Dragon Clan

Of those numbers, the Crab Clan and the Lion Clan sustain heavy casualties on a regular basis, due to warfare. The Crane just barely edge out the Unicorn and Scorpion, due to controlling the breadbasket of the Empire. Dragon Clan are widely accepted as the smallest Great Clan.

To answer your second question, depends entirely on their Status in their Great Clan. The Emperor's direct subordinates (Emerald Champion, Imperial Advisor, Imperial Chancellor) would expect to see him once a week at least, while a gi samurai might get the opportunity to see the Emperor's palanquin go by once in their life, on that day they were honored by a trip to the capital, and maybe they didn't see the Emperor, but they saw a shadow in the palanquin that HAD to be him, right?

Generally, you see your Family Daimyo at least once in your life, at your gempukku when they accept you as an adult member of their family. Unless you are a member of the ruling family of your Great Clan, you are unlikely to have your fealty accepted by your Clan Daimyo. Then, it really is a matter of your position in the Empire, and what your duties require.

[TheHobgoblyn 352]

The exact numbers of samurai tends to be kept vague, they are thousands or tens of thousands.

However, within the stories so far which have mostly focused on Clan Champions and their immediate families, the characters have thus far had little trouble identifying nearly everyone they have encountered from their own clan. Coupled with the fact that from what we have seen of the perspective of the peasants, encountering proper samurai is fairly rare for most villages and they may never see more than 1-2 during an entire year, suggests to me that there might really be no more than a couple thousand in any given clan.

However, the problem with that is that we have been seeing battle scenes where dozens of members of clans have fallen in battle and it isn't so clear that the majority of these are peasant conscripts wearing the clan colors. If a firm number were put on the populations, I feel as though when things start getting really messy people might start to ask "Shouldn't Clan X be out of people by now?"

Edited October 15, 2018 by TheHobgoblyn

[ExplodingJoe 131]

4 hours ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

If a firm number were put on the populations, I feel as though when things start getting really messy people might start to ask "Shouldn't Clan X be out of people by now?"

I think this is reminiscent to a semi-heated discussion on here a month or so back about the meta needing at least some fuzzy numbers of clan strength in order to keep the tension of death and loss alive in the fiction. From a narrative standpoint, you could say the Matsu family will absorb casualties in one day's fighting that would give a Mirumoto pause to continue a campaign, but that doesn't give you a solid idea.

The table top war game probly edged things more toward the tens of thousands, but the fiction seems more at home with a smaller Rokugan. I always thought the Unicorn would be larger than the Crane, because they support the Moto horde, but Crane and Scorpion are about even. I could be wrong though. Crane are known for their web of diplomatic marriages, and that means lots of politically conceived children.

[sndwurks 1,257]

Alright, so let us break down the numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Japan_before_the_Meiji_Restoration#Total_population

Using this article as a guide, keeping in mind that Rokugan according to the Core Rules has a similar geographical space as Japan (Rokugan is a little bigger) and with the presence of magic, I would estimate the population of Rokugan as between 18 and 23 million people (reflecting 1600 era Japan). Let's round it out at an even 20 million.

But how many of them are samurai? This depends entirely on how "common" you want samurai to be, but historical records of various medieval periods allows for 1 soldier out of 15 people. Assume that a samurai is effectively a "permanent" soldier, and let us triple than demographic, so 45 farmers can support 1 samurai. Round that off to 1 in 50, and that gives us an overall samurai population of 400,000 (1 in 100 would give you 200,000).

Let us break it down into 10 "samurai" demographics. There are the 7 Great Clans, then the Minor Clans, then Imperial Families, then Ronin. Split it into "parts", so that the top gets 10 parts, and downward, you get the split of 55 parts or 7,250 each:

1. Lion Clan - 10 parts - 70,250 samurai
2. Crab Clan - 9 parts - 65,250 samurai
3. Crane Clan - 8 parts - 58,000 samurai
4. Unicorn Clan - 7 parts - 50, 750 samurai
5. Scorpion Clan - 6 parts - 43,500 samurai
6. Phoenix Clan - 5 parts - 36,250 samurai
7. Dragon Clan - 4 parts - 29,000 samurai
8. Minor Clans - 3 parts - 21,750 samurai
9. Imperial Families - 2 parts - 14,500 samurai
10. Ronin - 1 part - 7,250 samurai

Again, the rarer you want your samurai (1 in 100, 1 in 500, 1 in 1000), reduce these numbers accordingly.

[Mirith 1,304]

1 hour ago, sndwurks said:

Alright, so let us break down the numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Japan_before_the_Meiji_Restoration#Total_population

Using this article as a guide, keeping in mind that Rokugan according to the Core Rules has a similar geographical space as Japan (Rokugan is a little bigger) and with the presence of magic, I would estimate the population of Rokugan as between 18 and 23 million people (reflecting 1600 era Japan). Let's round it out at an even 20 million.

But how many of them are samurai? This depends entirely on how "common" you want samurai to be, but historical records of various medieval periods allows for 1 soldier out of 15 people. Assume that a samurai is effectively a "permanent" soldier, and let us triple than demographic, so 45 farmers can support 1 samurai. Round that off to 1 in 50, and that gives us an overall samurai population of 400,000 (1 in 100 would give you 200,000).

Let us break it down into 10 "samurai" demographics. There are the 7 Great Clans, then the Minor Clans, then Imperial Families, then Ronin. Split it into "parts", so that the top gets 10 parts, and downward, you get the split of 55 parts or 7,250 each:

1. Lion Clan - 10 parts - 70,250 samurai
2. Crab Clan - 9 parts - 65,250 samurai
3. Crane Clan - 8 parts - 58,000 samurai
4. Unicorn Clan - 7 parts - 50, 750 samurai
5. Scorpion Clan - 6 parts - 43,500 samurai
6. Phoenix Clan - 5 parts - 36,250 samurai
7. Dragon Clan - 4 parts - 29,000 samurai
8. Minor Clans - 3 parts - 21,750 samurai
9. Imperial Families - 2 parts - 14,500 samurai
10. Ronin - 1 part - 7,250 samurai

Again, the rarer you want your samurai (1 in 100, 1 in 500, 1 in 1000), reduce these numbers accordingly.

I always thought Rokugan was much larger than Japan.  But I've never looked at square mileage (since it never is very accurate, since generally everyone moves at the speed of plot.)

[AtoMaki 1,431]

1 hour ago, sndwurks said:

Rokugan according to the Core Rules has a similar geographical space as Japan (Rokugan is a little bigger)

It is something, like, four times the size of Japan. Rokugan is closer to China in terms of geography and size IMO. 

[Suzume Chikahisa 313]

Usually Rokugan has been given to have a population 30 million from wich around 2 to 3 million are samurai.

23 minutes ago, Mirith said:

I always thought Rokugan was much larger than Japan.  But I've never looked at square mileage (since it never is very accurate, since generally everyone moves at the speed of plot.)

No, Japan is ridiculously larger than what you would expect and densely populated.

[sndwurks 1,257]

22 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

It is something, like, four times the size of Japan. Rokugan is closer to China in terms of geography and size IMO. 

From the Core Rules, it is 900 miles from the northern edge of Phoenix lands to the southern edge of Crab lands, and 600 miles across at its widest in a rough shape of triangle. Making that triangle a square, and you get 540,000 square miles, divided in half, so 270,000 square miles. 

Honshu, the main island of Japan, is itself about 810 miles by 150 miles at the widest and is 88,000 square miles. Hokkaido is 32,000 square miles. Kyushu is 14,000 square miles. Shikoku is 7,200 square miles. That puts us up to 142,000 miles, so over half half of that rough dimensions above in sheer square mileage. However, if we are going with distance...

That line is roughly 600 miles horizontally by 1000 miles vertically. So, while Rokugan is more filled in than the main islands of the Japanese archipelago, it is not THAT much larger geographically. And yes, I know I should have drawn the line as being only 900 miles long but oh well. The point stands.

[AtoMaki 1,431]

13 minutes ago, sndwurks said:

From the Core Rules, it is 900 miles from the northern edge of Phoenix lands to the southern edge of Crab lands, and 600 miles across at its widest in a rough shape of triangle. Making that triangle a square, and you get 540,000 square miles, divided in half, so 270,000 square miles. 

IIRC we did this in another thread some time ago, but the empty sea in the 900x600 Rokugani square is just a quarter of the area and the total landmass is closer to 400k square miles. Here is how it looks like:

Also, I have learnt from a Chinese friend of mine that Kyushu is not Japan . 

[sndwurks 1,257]

17 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

Also, I have learnt from a Chinese friend of mine that Kyushu is not Japan . 

I mean, Nagasaki is on Kyushu, but you are correct in that it was a contested territory at certain times in history. It is sort of why I refer to some of my friends in Hawaii as being of Okinawan descent, not Japanese descent, referring to the time period their families immigrated to Hawaii.

However, using your map above: 

The western reach of the Spine of the World Mountains to Otosan Uchi (the widest part of the Empire, supposedly) is 600 miles, while that line of the coast is 900 miles (not the vertical line but the diagonal one). So, the Core Rules and the Map do not necessarily align with each other. At which point I think we can agree that we are probably paying far more attention to these details than the writers and graphic designers at Fantasy Flight Games, and probably should call this a draw. And agree on a population of roughly 30 million people in Rokugan?

[Wyrmdog 54]

I tend to refer to this page for demographic information 

[TheHobgoblyn 352]

9 hours ago, sndwurks said:

Alright, so let us break down the numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Japan_before_the_Meiji_Restoration#Total_population

Using this article as a guide, keeping in mind that Rokugan according to the Core Rules has a similar geographical space as Japan (Rokugan is a little bigger) and with the presence of magic, I would estimate the population of Rokugan as between 18 and 23 million people (reflecting 1600 era Japan). Let's round it out at an even 20 million.

But how many of them are samurai? This depends entirely on how "common" you want samurai to be, but historical records of various medieval periods allows for 1 soldier out of 15 people. Assume that a samurai is effectively a "permanent" soldier, and let us triple than demographic, so 45 farmers can support 1 samurai. Round that off to 1 in 50, and that gives us an overall samurai population of 400,000 (1 in 100 would give you 200,000).

Let us break it down into 10 "samurai" demographics. There are the 7 Great Clans, then the Minor Clans, then Imperial Families, then Ronin. Split it into "parts", so that the top gets 10 parts, and downward, you get the split of 55 parts or 7,250 each:

1. Lion Clan - 10 parts - 70,250 samurai
2. Crab Clan - 9 parts - 65,250 samurai
3. Crane Clan - 8 parts - 58,000 samurai
4. Unicorn Clan - 7 parts - 50, 750 samurai
5. Scorpion Clan - 6 parts - 43,500 samurai
6. Phoenix Clan - 5 parts - 36,250 samurai
7. Dragon Clan - 4 parts - 29,000 samurai
8. Minor Clans - 3 parts - 21,750 samurai
9. Imperial Families - 2 parts - 14,500 samurai
10. Ronin - 1 part - 7,250 samurai

Again, the rarer you want your samurai (1 in 100, 1 in 500, 1 in 1000), reduce these numbers accordingly.

 

My estimation on samurai being about 1.5% of the total population of 20,000,000 are just a bit different. I think the difference in numbers of actual samurai between the clans isn't as dramatically different as you made there. But it is more a matter of Lion and Crab being much better at training, fielding and equiping ashigaru which make up the overwhelming bulk of any military force. This creates the illusion that the more militant clans have a much larger population gap over the others as the less militant ones have their samurai as mostly courtiers, artisans, etc. and can't help raise a big army. But just because the Lion army is 4x the size of

Lion - 45,000 - Heaven knows how given they are the second fastest to send their guys to die-- must breed like rabbits
Crab - 40,000 - only because they will give samurai and clan status to any ashigaru or ronin who can kill a goblin, otherwise they would be the smallest by now due to endless attrition
Crane - 37,500 - if their attitude were slightly different, they could breed themselves up to Lion populations and remain sustainable)
Unicorn - 35,000 - Remember that the Unicorn only returned a few hundred years ago and those that did return made a trek right through the shadowlands and only those strong enough to survive came to be the new Unicorn clan.
Phoenix - 35,000 - It is all too easy to forget that there are tons of Phoenix who are not shugenja despite the over-emphasis placed on Shugenja. It is even indicated that most Isawa wouldn't even be born capable of being shugenja, though it is not clear what happens to them.
Scorpion - 32.500 - they actively try to keep their numbers up, but they don't have the food to support it
Dragon - 25,000 - this is including their monks, they have terrible food supplies and a low birthrate contributing to them lagging way behind all the others
Imperial  - 22.500 - Imperial numbers always get underestimated because only those in the provinces around Otosan Uchi get counted, but more than half of them are scattered throughout the empire, especially in the neutral territories. And we haven't had the big culling of the Scorpion Clan coup in this timeline. (Though we can say this number includes the Tortoise, Tsi and other quasi-imperials if one likes)
Mantis - 15,000 - like noted with the Crab, they tend to hand out clan and samurai status to every ronin and ashigaru who can function on a boat
Other Minor Clans - 10,000 - And this is mostly the Fox and Badger, with a lot of minor clans not even numbering 500.
Ronin - 2,500 - But the number can raise to 4x this whenever actual warfare is going on and any random ashigaru can decide to declare themself a ronin. But generally being a ronin is going to be too hard in times of peace for there to be a large stable population.

 

[sidescroller 137]

Do these populations estimate only active serving samurai? Or does it include children and the elderly who have retired to monasteries? 

[TheHobgoblyn 352]

2 hours ago, sidescroller said:

Do these populations estimate only active serving samurai? Or does it include children and the elderly who have retired to monasteries? 

It would include children and elderly. They are still part of the population after all.

[Magnus Grendel 11,672]

8 minutes ago, TheHobgoblyn said:

It would include children and elderly. They are still part of the population after all.

Indeed. "Samurai" is a social class.

 

I actually posted this in the 'feudal hierarchy' thread, but it might be worth redoing because it gives us a realistic way of estimating the number of soldiers in a clan.

Military Hierarchy of Clan Legions (based on Way of the Dragon):

• Rikuganshokan (Clan Champion's Appointee) or Daimyo
  • Commands 2-3 Shireikan (professional commanders)
    • Each commands 5 Taisa (often political appointees with limited military experience)
      • Each commands 5 Chui (promoted from the ranks below)
        • Each commands 4-20 Gunso
          • Each commands 5-40 Nikutai
            • Each commands 5-10 Hohei

We're told a Taisa is the captain of a 'Legion', which is roughly equivalent to a classical imperial roman legion, at 5,000 soldiers.

A Daimyo would (obviously) command a clan family's entire forces, so a general whose post is interchangeable with a Daimyo would presumably have a similar force (but not necessarily all from the same family within a clan if appointed by the Clan Champion).

If we take that assumption, then a Rikuganshokan would generally have something like 1/4 of a clan's forces under their nominal command. Obviously it'd be massively variable by clan and circumstances, but 5 Taisa of 5,000 soldiers each means each Shireikan's command is about 25,000 soldiers - or about 50,000 to 75,000 soldiers in the Rikuganshokan's command.

Note: there are two key 'problems' with this figure - one which makes it too low and one which makes it too high:

• It's too low because this is purely a military estimate for the clan's own armies - it wouldn't account for Clan Bushi assigned to Imperial Legions, or non-Bushi like administrators, magistrates, courtiers and so on.
• It's too high because not every Gunso is commanding Hohei (who are Bushi samurai basically grabbed straight from Gempukku and told "you're in the army now"), they will instead be embedded as officers in Ashigaru units - their described command is incredibly variable because a Gunso could be a "squad leader" with 25 veteran cavalry at his back, or almost a mini-general unto himself commanding some 800 impressed ashigaru.

Nevertheless, I figure it's useful to get a rough order of magnitude estimate to place a clan's military forces in the 'low hundreds of thousands' if you've got about 200,000 soldiers (4 x 50,000 for each of the clan families in a clan) - which means of the 'army' something like 1/4 to 1/2 are actually samurai and the rest are presumably either 'permanent' or 'raised as needed' ashigaru.

[AtoMaki 1,431]

17 hours ago, sndwurks said:

At which point I think we can agree that we are probably paying far more attention to these details than the writers and graphic designers at Fantasy Flight Games, and probably should call this a draw. And agree on a population of roughly 30 million people in Rokugan?

I dunno but I think in-setting distances are kinda important and it would make me quite uncomfortable if the writers overlooked them. 

Population wise, I would say that even 20 million is too much. It should be closer to 15 million with a higher-than-healthy samurai ratio (roughly 1:10). 

[TheHobgoblyn 352]

35 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

I dunno but I think in-setting distances are kinda important and it would make me quite uncomfortable if the writers overlooked them. 

Population wise, I would say that even 20 million is too much. It should be closer to 15 million with a higher-than-healthy samurai ratio (roughly 1:10). 

If the population was 10 peasants for every samurai, then they wouldn't be able to feed themselves and nothing would ever get built/rebuilt.

Although samurai, at least the "courtier" organize things, they don't contribute much at all to the whole actually accomplishing needed labor.

I understand that with the focus of the story always on the samurai and always treating the rest of the populace as they are at best part of the background, but more often entirely invisible-- it can feel as though there is a larger population of samurai.

But with the technological level present in Rokugan, any higher than 2% of the population being in the samurai class would be entirely unsustainable. You also have to keep in mind that samurai die in these conflicts a lot and aren't really settled down in one place with the option of getting pregnant constantly to have large families. In fact, with gender parity, it is very possible that the birthrate for samurai would be below replacement level-- not just in the Dragon Clan, but across all clans.

With much better technology and social mobility, the highest the nobility class ever rose to in Europe was around 7%.

[AtoMaki 1,431]

I'm not saying that this is realistic or sensible because it isn't . 

[sndwurks 1,257]

1 hour ago, AtoMaki said:

I dunno but I think in-setting distances are kinda important and it would make me quite uncomfortable if the writers overlooked them. 

Population wise, I would say that even 20 million is too much. It should be closer to 15 million with a higher-than-healthy samurai ratio (roughly 1:10). 

I think there is an entire TV Trope about this: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WritersCannotDoMath

I agree that in-setting distances are important. I agree that maps are important. However, as someone who has worked adjacent and in game design for a while (gaming journalist for 6 years, game design consultant for 4 years), I can assure you that the trope I have linked here has always, and will always, apply to L5R.

[AK_Aramis 1,002]

On 10/14/2018 at 7:30 PM, gandalf9700 said:

How many samurais are there per clan?  How often does a samurai meet or see their Clan Daimyo, Family Daimyo, Emperor?

I've seen a figure of about 10,000 per clan. 

Noting that the unit structure in 3E has at least a field army per clan (48 legions each) and that about 10% of the troop strength in the infantry is samurai, that's about 20 per company, and 50 per reserve company, with a legion being 4 regular and 1 reserve... about 130 samurai per legion. That's about 6240 as the minimum... then add that there's at least one more at home for almost all (spouses or parents)... a clan can easily be worked out to be 12,000+ samurai. The problem, however, is that the actual duty rate is closer to 1/4 or 1/5 based upon historical issues... counting the retired and the non-combatants... so upwards of 20,000. A few clans (Crab, Crane, Lion) have more than one field army...

Note that the samurai were, at some points, estimated to be as much as 10% of the population, so we're looking at at least 120,000 total pop for a clan.

[Azrael40 3]

Except for élites or specialized units that doom to be exclusively constituted with samouraï, i believe that most of squadrons in compagnies are ashigarus constituted and led by samouraï staff.

Additionnaly, a one on tenth ratio proposed to determine the samouraï population, think it should rather be considered 10 or 20 non samouraï family for each samouraï, similar ratio as medieval europe, thus armies are more easily constituted.

 

13 hours ago, AK_Aramis said:

I've seen a figure of about 10,000 per clan. 

Noting that the unit structure in 3E has at least a field army per clan (48 legions each) and that about 10% of the troop strength in the infantry is samurai, that's about 20 per company, and 50 per reserve company, with a legion being 4 regular and 1 reserve... about 130 samurai per legion. That's about 6240 as the minimum... then add that there's at least one more at home for almost all (spouses or parents)... a clan can easily be worked out to be 12,000+ samurai. The problem, however, is that the actual duty rate is closer to 1/4 or 1/5 based upon historical issues... counting the retired and the non-combatants... so upwards of 20,000. A few clans (Crab, Crane, Lion) have more than one field army...

Note that the samurai were, at some points, estimated to be as much as 10% of the population, so we're looking at at least 120,000 total pop for a clan.

 

[WHW 1,817]

One thing that is interesting is that rice is very efficient at feeding people (from what I remember, much more than any crops that were available in Europe - one of reasons why cities were sustainable much sooner in rice-based communities), and Rokugan has Shugenja and shugenja and stuff blessing the crops, probably making them even better.

[narukagami 118]

Old L5R actually published statistics for each clan, I don't know what specific time period the numbers are for but they could give a rough idea of the demographics of Rokugan.

Crab: Population: 4 610 000 (approx); Military: 258 000 samurai

Crane: Population: 3,820,000 (approx); Military: 213,000 samurai

Dragon: Population: 1 830 000 (approx); Military: 101 000 samurai

Lion: Population: 5 280 000 (approx); Military: 292 000 samurai

Phoenix: Population: 1 590 000 (approx); Military: 88 000 samurai

Scorpion: Population: 1,810,000 (approx); Military: 102,000 samurai

Unicorn: Population: 3,650,000 (approx); Military: 203,000 samurai

[Azrael40 3]

given the 3rd édition supplément, it seems clan armies match with such statistics if squadrons in most basic melee or archer units are ashigarus constituted. This let between 2/3 UP to 3/4 of samouraï cast outside of bushi activities (courtier, too young or too old, etc...). That sounds correct for me. Btw, around a 20/1 ratio between samouraï seems correct although it may seem a strict minimum if it also incluses Etas. In such a case a 50/1 ratio with doubling population should be better.