Line of Fire: a fast interview with Yasushi Nakaguro of BonSai Games

 

 

Yasushi Nakaguro is a game designer and publisher at BonSai Games and the quarterly magazine, Bansai in Japan. In the English-speaking wargaming world, Mr Nakaguro is arguably best known for his game, Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: War in Asia and the Pacific (BonSai Games, 2017), which appeared in issue 9 (2019) of Multi-Man Publishing’s Special Ops magazine and was subsequently nominated for a Charles S. Roberts Award in the Best Magazine Board Wargame category.

Mr Nakaguro was generous enough to take some time out to answer a few questions, which lead to a few more. What follows is a true account of our email conversation – well, a lot of it – lightly edited for the sake of readability.

 

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A Fast Game: How old were you when you came to wargaming, what were your earliest (or most memorable) game experiences, and when did you decide to design games yourself?

 

Yasuki Nakaguro: In 1980, I was 12 years old. I could show you a wargame advertisement in the comic magazine that tells me about wargames.

Then, accidentally, I met Midway (Avalon Hill, 1964) in the hobby shop and I purchased it instead of the plastic model.

Midway made me crazy... I played it with my friends every day after school – IJN [Imperial Japanese Navy] was one of the hot topics for us because the plastic model series "Waterline" was booming [AFG note - these kits are 1:700 scale a little large for table-top play, but are still available from Tamiya and other manufacturers].

What I learned about wargames through [playing] Midway is that regardless of the scale the game simulates, it's crucial to include the following three dimensions:

1) Strategy: Multiple conditions exist for winning the game (war), and players can choose among them.

2) Operations: Players can plan and execute the means to achieve those strategic objectives.

3) Tactics: The ability to employ techniques to execute operations more effectively.

It is desirable for each dimension to maintain consistency with the historical period the game portrays.

Avalon Hill's Midway, First Edition (photo: Paolo Desalvo, BGG).

In the next year, many Japanese publishers were born and the first Japanese wargame magazine, Tactics (Hobby Japan, 1982-1992) was published. I was totally fascinated by the articles about Midway in that magazine (translated from General magazine).

BTW, you could read about the history of the wargame in Japan here.

In my teenage years, I published [a] wargame fanzine with my friends. One of them designed the original wargames for the fanzine (Iwo and The Air Raid at Taranto), then I did the same thing (Terrible Tarawa).

 

AFG: Many of your games model events in the Second World War. Do you enjoy this period most, or do WW2 games sell more quickly than other historical games?

 

YN: To be honest, and [this is] just my thoughts, the hottest topic of wargames in Japan are:

1. Pacific War

2. Japanese History (Sengoku Jidai)

3. WW2 Eastern Front

4. Other WW2 battles

5. Others

On the business side, I should design or publish the PTO [Pacific Theatre of Operations] WW2 games -- also as I wrote, I was an IJN boy.

In my interest, however, I'd like to design the games that I have interest in depending on the time.

AFG: You have also designed games set in the ancient world, the Russo-Japanese War, and even a couple of fantasy and science fiction games. What other periods would you like to explore in games, or maybe are already working on?

YN: Depending on the time :)

Now, I was fascinated by the history of Hittite and designing the game by using [a] wargame context. I like to play games designed in a wargame context, such as Sea & Steel: Columbus' Voyages (Neva Wargames, 2025).

 

AFG: When you talk about enjoying games in a wargame context, what do you mean, exactly? Do you mean games that come to their subject like a wargame?

 

YN: I wrote “context,” but “mechanics” might be easier to understand. While it's true that wargames simulate “warfare,” they also sometimes make players feel the historical nature of the themes they handle. That's why I chose the word ‘context’ rather than “mechanics.”

Map art for The Rise of Blitzkrieg (BonSai Games, 2019) (photo: Rodolphe Duhil, BGG).

 

AFG: We should be seeing English and French language version of Guerre Éclair (Nuts! Publishing, ~2025; originally released by BonSai Games, 2019 as The Rise of Blitzkrieg: The Fall of France, 1940), the third in the Combat Rations series, coming out in 2026 from Nuts! Publishing. Are there any other games you have designed in the pipeline to be released in English?

 

YN: Nuts! Publishing will publish Norway! and The Punic Wars in the future. I have other plans with other publishers but have not decided yet.

The Punic Wars (BonSai Games, 2022), slated for release in Nuts! Publishing's
Combat Rations series.

AFG: What are you currently working on (that you can tell us about)?

 

YN: Other than Rise and Decline of the Hittite Empire, I'm designing Stalingrad 20 and Midway 2. The latter is the revised version of my first Midway game.

 

AFG: Some songwriters talk about a song by someone else that they believe is so good they wish they had written it. Is there a game, or a game-mechanic, created by somebody else that you wish you had done? (This might be a different way of asking what your favourite game (or mechanic) is from someone else, or it might be a mark of respect for another inventor).

 

YN: The wargame context I wrote [see above] means the marriage historical topic and game mechanics. I like any wargame that I feel about this marriage. In other words, it's like this.

As you know, haiku involves composing poetry within strict rules and a limited number of words. Writer Maruya Saiichi described this as “the task of packing jewels into a jewel box.” Within the constraints of using the war game context—though defining “war game” here is extremely difficult, I imagine readers share some common understanding—I enjoy games that recreate history.

Though I'm embarrassed to mention my own work, 300: Earth and Water (BonSai Games, 2018; Nuts! Publishing, 2021 – you can find a review here) is a historical game yet is clearly designed within the war game context. Mechanics like Action/Event, Dice Rolling, and Point-to-Point Movement used in that game are commonly found in war games. Even if the mechanics originate from war games, I love games where you feel history when you play them, and that's the kind of game I want to design.

I'm a designer but also a publisher, so I wonder if this is the answer or not:

There are many good wargame designers in Japan. My priority is introducing them to the world via my brand -- When did Rommel get his goggles? (Bansai #20; BonSai Games, 2024) by Nanka Waguri, and The Pacific War: Deadly Bloody Battles of Combined Fleet (Bansai #12, BonSai Games, 2022) by Yoshio Kubota will be published in English.

 

The Pacific War (Bansai #12) Rulebook (photo: Rocky Mountain Navy, BGG).

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Thanks again to Yasushi Nakaguro for his patience and openness, and for agreeing to be the first interview to appear in A Fast Game. It's my hope that Line of Fire will become an occasional but regular feature of the blog.