My main inspiration:

For the Ikame Bo, i've looked for tatoos made by buddist monks:

Well ... as you can expect that was not easy to reproduce:

As you can see, i've used round bases for two reasons:
- it's much more fitting for skirmish games
- players interrested by feodal japan in my area usually also play to Ronin from Osprey. So, for greater compatibility between games and miniatures series i've settled to round bases too.
Now, with Kensei, maybe i will reconsider this basing thing.