The common saying is “history is boring”, but my counter is that “you haven’t found your era yet.”
For me, that became the Sengoku Jidai.
I was introduced to Koei’s Warriors series in junior high and at first, ancient Chinese history became my main passion. One day, however, the same friend who introduced me to Dynasty Warriors brought over Warriors Orochi. The character they were playing as caught my eye, for I’d never seen him before. He carried two pistols, had a large crescent moon on his helmet and wore an eyepatch over his right eye. I finally asked about the character: it was Date Masamune from Samurai Warriors 2.
That’s when my passion for the Sengoku Jidai began.

While I enjoyed the games, I slowly started gravitating towards the internet to learn more about this fascinating era of Japanese history. There were just a couple of problems.
The first was the lack of information here in the West about this era. While some of the more famous figures and battles had an abundance of resources, the lesser-known figures and battles tended to only have a Wikipedia page that was only a paragraph long. Sometimes even that didn’t exist.
The other issue was that information was sometimes conflicting, making it difficult to study the subject.
That’s where the Sengoku Archives comes in.

Created on March 16, 2017 as a project for a Professional Writing class in college, the website started out just providing biographies and battle accounts, however, in 2021, the website changed its course to fit a need.
This website’s main goal is to provide well-researched and clear information on not only the famous figures and battles of the Sengoku Jidai, but also for those who tend to be forgotten to history. Of course, that is not the only thing this website will provide. I also have more analytical articles, reviews, and soon, there will be a historical fiction novel.
I don’t claim to have all the answers. After all, my Japanese is still very basic, so I am only going off English sources. I also don’t want you to just take my word for what is presented, hence the sources and the “Further Information” page. However, I want my readers to have an easier time finding information on this awe-inspiring era of Japanese history that has taken me about 15 years to gather.
Hi! I’m Shawn D. Cantrell, author of the Sengoku Archives.
I’ve been studying Japanese history, mainly the Sengoku Jidai, for the past 15 years. I graduated from Morehead State University in December 2017 with a Public History degree, and the website was one of my final projects before graduation. Though I love Japan, I’ve never made it there myself. (The picture was from a study abroad in Tustan, Ukraine in 2017.) When I’m not working on the website, I’m working on a historical fiction novel about the era instead.
