I'm currently doing a history assignment on the Tokugawa shogunate, and I'm considering picking the battle of sekigahara as my focus point. I've been looking around for some good reliable sources on this but haven't been too lucky, so was hoping you guys could assist me?
For narratives of the battle itself, I am sad to say that unless you can read Japanese, there is none.
Western scholars rarely touch on Sekigahara more than its reason and aftermath in establishing the Edo Bakufu. Even more military-minded scholar treats Japan more as example, or maybe even a separate sphere to be examined in some cases, but few touch on a single battle in depth.
The only people who do this are Stephan Turnbull, and, in the case of Sekigahara, Anthony Bryant's book. Both are pop-history published by Osprey (so non-academic), and outdated, and in the case of Bryant's book makes mistake after mistake even if we accept it's outdatedness.
The other thing is that post-2010, there's a massive paradigm-shift in academic reconstruction of Sekigahara spearheaded by Dr. Jun Shiramine of Beppu University, and I have not seen any translation or response to this change in English. So what little there is currently out there in English is pretty much worthless.
If you want to write about other aspects of the topic other than the battle itself there might be things you can use (depend on the nature of your assignment). Or if you can read Japanese that would be best.
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