ShōgunsBlade

• Part of KingsBlade. There is nothing extra to download: it comes with the KingsBlade download.
• Built from Shokuho, which needs to be installed. Subscribe to Shokuho on the Steam Workshop, open ShōgunsBlade's book in the KingsBlade app and press Build ShōgunsBlade from Shokuho — about two minutes. Shokuho is only read: never changed, and never loaded into Bannerlord.
• Building it switches it on in OPTIONS → ADD-ONS, and from then on CK3's Japan fights with it.

Japan takes the field

An army raised in CK3's Japan fights in Japan's own troops, on Shokuho's Japanese fields, each clan under its own mon — the arms CK3 shows for a clan realm, and any you design yourself. Everything else KingsBlade does comes with it: the intro, the commander's speech, the banners, the KingsGuard and the result written back to your campaign.

Every age

The campaign's date chooses the kit. ShōgunsBlade dresses Japan through every age KingsBlade knows, each with its own roster, from the levy to the champion:

The common troops keep bodies that take their realm's colours, so a clan's men are still recognisably its men; each arm piece matches the armour under it. Champions climb a ladder by their prowess, and in the later ages wear the great ō-yoroi with a horo on their back carrying their realm's arms.

Castles

A siege in Japan is fought at a Japanese castle, as it was drawn. Its garrison mans the castle's own archer posts, one man to each, from the deployment screen on. Its gates — as many as nine in a castle — hold while the besiegers are at them, open for the garrison when they are gone, and give way at last. The archers refill their quivers from the castle's own arrow barrels, and pavise lines stand where the castle was drawn with them.

The clans, and their chronicle

Before a battle the intro names the clans of each side under their mon, lettered in ShōgunsBlade's own hand. Afterwards the battle goes into ShōgunsBlade's own book in the KingsBlade app, its pages framed in cherry blossom: every fight in CK3's Japan, with its picture, its war and every champion's fate.

Duels, tournaments and royal blades

A duel in Japan is fought on one of ShōgunsBlade's three duel maps, in seven layouts, and a tournament bout in one of its two Japanese arenas. A Japanese king of great prowess or a splendid court carries Japan's royal weapons — the Champion and Masterwork Tachi, the Masterwork and Fabled Naginata — by the same rule as KingsBlade's.

Craft and credit

All credit for the art goes to Shokuho and its team — the helmets, the armour, the weapons, the battle maps and the castles, used with their permission. Shokuho needs to be installed for ShōgunsBlade to use it: KingsBlade builds ShōgunsBlade from your own copy and ships none of it.

A ShōgunsBlade battle loads over the Sekigahara Kassen Byōbu-zu, a folding screen of the Battle of Sekigahara (late Edo period, c. 1850, City of Gifu Museum of History), public domain.