Ask the Armouries Japanese Armour

the world of the samurai has always loomed large in the popular imagination and arms and armor and are an incredibly important part of that way of life ever since I first saw a Japanese arms and armor I've always been amazed by its beauty its functionality and the enormous amount of skill that's needed to make and use it I'm Natasha Bennett I'm the curator of oriental collections at the Royal Armouries. The Royal Armouries is the national collection of arms and armor in the UK and we've got bases at the main Museum in Leeds, at Fort Nelson in Hampshire, and at the Tower of London which is actually our historic home where the Armory's was first established centuries ago. today I'm going to be answering questions for our Ssk the Armouries's series where we had a social media shout out and we got lots and lots of questions about Japanese arms and armor. so the first question I'd like to look at is what was the armor of the average soldier made of during this time for most of the period of Japanese history when we talk about the average soldier what we mean is the warrior class the samurai lower ranks on the whole didn't tend to wear a great deal of armor so we're talking about the higher ranks of the warrior class now for much of Japanese history traditional Japanese armor was made with a construction the modern scholars tend to refer to as lamellar so this means it was constructed from thousands of small scales known as sunae each of these scales main material tended to be either metal mostly iron or rawhide acting together as a kind of shock absorber so if the armor and how to deflect the impact of an arrow for instance together and they would provide a really good protective layer for the wearer Japan went through an extremely intense period of warfare known as Sengoku Jidai or age of the country at war and as a result armor experienced quite an intense period of development where it reached pretty much the pinnacle of perfection for the environment that it was required for so the next really interesting question that we received was what do Japanese soldiers other than the wealthy wear on the battlefield now if retainers could afford to equip themselves with armor obviously they would do so however for many low ranking soldiers such as the ashigaru or lightfoot who were infantry usually equipped with a spear or a gun they often had to depend on the resources of the Lord whom they were serving if no armor was available or the Lord couldn't afford to dress his troops the soldiers would have to rely on multiple layers of textile garments or whatever they could loot from the battlefield essentially if a lord or daimyo chose or was able to equip his retainers they would often wear a low-cost basic plate do or cuirass which had attached thigh defences and a low conical shaped helmet which was based around a traditional hat made out of leather or iron and referred to as a jingasa and that's actually what I've got next to me here these came in in various guises they could often be very elaborate and the Lords themselves would often wear a jingasa in a lot of our block books that we still have in existence today which show depictions of warriors performing various activities a lot of the ashigaru the foot soldiers are depicted wearing these conical helmets. so the next question I'm going to address is why didn't the samurai use shields did their armor provide adequate protection as far as we know before the Heian period by which I mean around the 8th to the 12th centuries warriors may have used personal shields we just don't know but as mounted archery became the most prevalent form of warfare on the battlefield and while warriors were using the Japanese longbow or ume carrying a shield just wasn't practical anymore the traditional armors worn for mounted on archery known as Ō-yoroi or great armors were also equipped with well I liked her regard as essentially hands-free shields they had enormous shoulder defenses which when the are when the archer lifted his arms to draw his bow they would drop back so that he had free movement of his arms and then when he lowered his bow they would fall forwards again providing protection for the side of his body this example that I have on the table next to me is a beautiful typical form of broad spreading shoulder guard it's supposed to date from around the late 15th early 16th century and as you see when in position and drop down the side of the upper arm here it would cover quite a large area of your arm and of your upper torso so it was a really effective form of defense another really fun question that we've been asked is what kind of crests were on the samurai helmets and what did they represent on the battlefield samurai warriors wanted to be seen to be doing brave deeds because this all increased their honor and their reputation for both themselves as individuals and for their families one way of doing this was to attach a really elaborate crest to your helmet now with the older forms of very heavy helmets with their enormous spreading neck guards really there wasn't much room to do anything other than have maybe a monster mask motif on the front peak of your helmet and then simple hooks with enormous spreading horns called kuru gotta however later on when helmets became simpler in their underlying foundational construction these were called zunara Kabuto or head shaped helmets they were just simple bowls but they enabled each warrior to have a surface where he could really go to town on the decoration so sometimes these would just be fairly simple motifs such as silhouettes made from gilded thing gilded copper sheet and all I could rawhide others went for far more elaborate 3D structures and huge frameworks that could be made out of wood leather paper which were probably lacquered painted and they could be really really eye-catching and the symbols that were involved varied from family crests and animals plant motifs symbols that had religious significance all of these were meant to be cultural references that would make each warrior very very recognizable and imprint on on the memory of everybody watching your attention may have been seized by this beautiful creations sitting on the table next to me and this is a case in point for the later helmets as I as I was saying this has a very simple metal bowl protecting the head underneath and then on the top we have a lacquered molded rawhide shell and this has black lacquer underneath and then what initially would have been silver lacquer on the top which would have looked absolutely gorgeous and then on the front we've got this lovely crest which is a rabbit or hare with these lovely upstanding ears now these aren't actually original they're replacements but they're very close to what the originals would have looked like now for the person wearing this the the motifs involved in here may well have been incorporated within their family heraldry so they may have had a shell and a hair as as part of the icons that kind of represented their family clan one subscriber contacted us to say that they'd always assumed the samurai were very similar to European Knights in terms of social status and wondered if this was the case now the title of samurai means essentially one who serves and this rank made up quite a large proportion of the senior echelons of Japanese society originally they were minor Nobles and he was serving whichever court faction was in power after the Shogun became established and the military clans were essentially the center of governing power in Japan for centuries the rule of the country was dominated by daimyo or nobles who were drawn from the bouquet or the military class and all the way up until the Meiji Restoration in 1868 one of the really important symbols of the samurai class was to carry a longsword now over the centuries it became accepted that a summer I would carry both a long sword or a katana and a short sword or a wakizashi together at one time sometimes these would be a matched pair known as a Daisho the lower ranks of society were marked by the fact that if they carried a sword at all they were generally only permitted to carry a short sword or a dagger in the Edo period which was the time under the Tokugawa Shogunate from the early 17th century until the mid 19th century it actually became formal law that nobody but a member of the samurai class was permitted to carry a longsword next up is the really fascinating question which asked whether there were any cases of Japan repurposing the designs of other nations arms and armor and to that I can say yes definitely now in Japan foreign swords on the hull were regarded as highly inferior Japanese swords as we all know are legendary for the skill in craftsmanship and sharpness and lethal nature armor was a very different matter so particularly from the 16th and 17th centuries when Japan had contact with Europe in the West we've got loads of instances of nanban or southern barbarian influenced armor coming through now one of the most famous examples is an armor that's associated with the shogun tokugawa ieyasu which resides in the collection of nico toshogu shrine in Japan and this armor apparently was worn by Tokugawa Ieyasu at the back of a battle of sekigahara in 1600 and it's really really interesting it's got a piece card style breastplate very similar to European textile Jerkins at the time and it's also got a Mauryan style helmet and again in wide use by European forces at that time elsewhere we've got other intriguing examples we have quite a few in our own collection here this helmet on the table next to me is a good so Japan also had quite a lot of contact with Korea and who they attempted to invade and this piece is thought to have been influenced by the style of a Korean or Chinese hat and obviously we've got these motifs in the panel's here and so that's a really strong foreign influence coming through and but still Japanese produced helmet the other piece that I want to talk about that we are looking enough to have in our collection is this dagger and this is pretty much unique in the world as far as we know it's the only example to our knowledge of a European blade that's been refashioned in the Japanese manner so it's actually probably a European hanger blade it's solingen produced and it's got inscriptions on both sides of the blade explaining that it was made in Solingen by a member of the Keiser family of swordsmith when this blade arrived in japan it was reworked by a japanese swordsmith because we've got the very typical hardened edge here the hamon and it's been reshaped and all together just generally refashioned to form a very typical Japanese dagger the hilt here is typical of the IQ Chi form so godless form and then this discovered also is a fascinating piece it's covered over in stamped gilded leather very very typical of Dutch decorative leathers and so this gives us a strong clue as to what may have happened with this object it probably arrived at the Dutch trading station on Jurado and Japanese province and it may have been used as an item maybe that the Dutch East India Company used to curry favor with the local Lords who were the Matsuura clan and this man is actually the Matsuuram on so it was probably decorated to appeal to their tastes so it may have been a trading gift or a present for diplomatic reasons alternatively the Matsuura clan may have just acquired the blade and then had it refashioned for their own tastes and the leather will have been applied to show its unique credentials but all in all an absolutely outstanding piece which really does show such a lot of influence and inspiration being brought from beyond Japan's shores and to incorporate within their arms and armor another really intriguing question that we received was about what form of matchlocks were used in Japan and how powerful they were now the dominant form of firearm used throughout the period of Japanese history that our collection covers was the snapping matchlock these properly arrived with the Portuguese in 1543 portuguese traders washed up on the shores of japan and they happen to bring firearms with them and these were very quickly copied by the local lord who received these traders and within a very few decades they were being mass-produced and they became absolutely essential during the latter stages of the main civil war period now these guns were produced on a very very large scale and within a few decades there were as many guns being produced in Japan as that were in Europe which boggles the mind slightly firearms like this we're absolutely instrumental at the Battle of nagashi know where the cavalry of the Takeda clan was absolutely decimated by musket fire when the Tokugawa Shogunate came to power at the start of the 17th century a very rigorously controlled peace descended on Japan and within that climate the role of firearms changed quite significantly they were still produced but their manufacture was very highly regulated and strongly controlled by the governing regime and it basically made the production of firearms very very cumbersome and therefore guns rapidly became a status symbol and as a result the technology barely changed at all so from that point when the Tokugawa regime took power to the time when Japan was opened up to foreign influence by first the Americans and then other Western powers who arrived in the mid 19th century when the threat was perceived from outside Japanese warriors were still equipped with firearms of this snapping matchlock type and so their technology hadn't advanced at all it was very much the look of the gun and the cost of the gun which countered this particular example that I have on the table in front of me is made by a famous family of gunsmith Thea Nami and it's absolutely exquisitely decorated I've got a dragon on the top of the barrel here and I've got her gambling over waves lots and lots of brass ornamentation on the underside there's a beautiful little brown with sparrows in flight and but also this there's this very ostentatious lacquer and so it's showing you and what the main purpose of the gun was at that time so during its time in use it's really really interesting how the snapping matchlock went from a very functional piece of military equipment to a status symbol and something that showed rank and power was used in procession or for display so a really brilliant question that we had coming through which is what our collection illustrates fantastically was the person who asked was Sengoku era armour on par with Edo period Armour in terms of protection or dude Edo period blacksmith improve on protection in the 200 years after the Battle of Sekigahara and this is fascinating because actually the process is entirely the reverse of that Armour reached a pinnacle of practicality and efficiency during this the sengoku jidai the age of the country at war armor evolved to combat new weapons and methods of fighting and it became fairly utilitarian powered down and very very functional during the Edo period which was when the Tokugawa Shogunate was in power in Japan this was a time of very carefully controlled peace and as a result active combat became far less of a concern and in this environment the role of armor started to change quite significantly and its ability to project the rank status and honor of an individual came very much to the fore old styles of helmets of curiosities would be commissioned which kind of harked back to the far more flamboyant it intricately constructed armors of yesteryear rather than the very utilitarian forms that have been in use during the sixteenth century as a result of the reduction in intense warfare it meant no craftsman had far more time to devote the perfection of their techniques in ornamentation and metalwork and you get really gorgeous gorgeous pieces coming through some of which were exact copies of older styles and in other instances you'd get really quirky quirky pieces so this is a helmet which was probably produced by a famous school of Armorer's known as the myojin who were particularly well known for old styles of helmets and also embossed armor and this is a helmet bowl which is molded from one piece of steel it's meant to resemble the top of an aubergine so you've got the stand and the leaves here the top of the body and then a peak again formed from leaf shapes and then the whole is sprinkled in a metal a silver metal alloy which was intended to look like dewdrops and now this would have looked remarkable when it was being worn particularly when it originally had a neck guard attached as well it really would have drawn attention to the wearer but embossing arm actually weakened the metal because it has to be quite soft to work with and so its ability to provide practical protection is somewhat reduced and the this helmet wouldn't have been produced if there wasn't a market for a demand for it so the idea behind and armor of this type is very much the appearance the aesthetic the beauty that the piece projects thank you for watching as the Armory's please do subscribe to our YouTube channel for more of these videos and followers on social media to get involved in our next session where we can answer your questions on historical arms and armor

Channel: Royal Armouries

Views: 151,786

Keywords: gun firingroyal armouries, arms and armour, armour, war, museum, bts museum, armor, guns, swords, knives, jousting, history, samurai, Japan, Katana, Wakizashi, Musket, Ninja, Nobunaga, samurai armour, middle ages, long sword, Japanese history, japanese history documentary, japanese armour vs european armour, katana, helmet, japanese culture, ask the armouries, japanese samurai armour

Id: msVBFXg0Cj0

Length: 23min 47sec (1427 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 03 2020