Reforging Tradition: The Living Legacy of Japanese Armor
- Dave Lowry
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
It will be fascinating for you, if you have the opportunity, to visit one of the museums in the West that have suits of Japanese armor. That’s because feudal Japan took a different approach to body armor than we find in Europe.
To some degree, the samurai traded protection for mobility. Rather than using rigid, curved metal sections like the European knights did, the Japanese constructed their armor from an elaborately woven series of leather panels. Roughly half the size of a playing card, these flat plates were pierced, then overlapped and laced together with silk to create shapes that conformed to the body of the wearer.
Few images are more romantic and evocative than that of the fully armored samurai—resplendent, often wearing a helmet decorated with fantastic horns or spikes, giant kite-like sheets protecting his arms, layered cuirasses wrapped around his body. As with many appealing pictures taken from history, the reality of this one was very different.