Title: Samurai - Arms - Armor - CostumeThis book shows the history and development clothing, armor and weaponry of the samurai warrior class using reenactors. Almost 50 costumes are shown, including a line drawing with the different names. The armors uses are replicas.
Title: Bushido The Way of the WarriorGeneral book on the samurai culture, from the early beginnings till the legacy after the second world war. Only a few famous armor are in the book.
Title: Samurai An Illustrated HistoryNice general samurai overview book with several armors, re-enactors and drawings. The picture on the cover is rather famous as it illustrates that by the time that photography became available, many ‘samurai’ did not know anymore how to put on an armor properly. The sode are reversed…
Title: The Book of the Samurai - The Warrior Class of JapanThis is one of the several books that Stephen R. Turnbull has written about Samurai. This one is a very broad one, and in that sense gives a good overview. Only a few armors ate in the book, but many paintings etc.
Title: Samurai : krijgskunst als levensstijlThis is the Dutch translation of The Way of the Samurai (1983) From Richard Storry with pictures of Werner Forman. Includes a limited number of armor pictures. More included in my library as nostalgia.
Title: Lords of the samurai : the legacy of a daimyo familyBeautiful catalog that was published on the occasion of the exhibition Lords of the samurai – the legacy of a daimyo family, organized by the Asian Art Museum and the Eisei-Bunko Hosokawa Collection (Tokyo), in San Francisco, 2009. Besides the famous armors, also many other beautiful items from the collection are in the catalog.
Title: Art of the Armor - Samurai Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller CollectionFabulous exhibition collection of one of the best armor collections outside of Japan. This catalog is from 2011, and as the collection itself (traveling all over the world) is still expanding, it is likely that many pieces of the now enlarged collection are not yet in the catalog.
Topic: Suneate
Date: June 11th, 2017 – 15:00-17:00
Place: The Mansion of the Mizuinari shrine, close to Waseda Station
Entrance fee: 1,000 yen for members
Held on May 14 in the meeting room of the Mizuinari-jinja and attended by 26 members and non-members. Four of our members brought their haidate and so we had 29 pieces on display that day and so the attendees hat the opportunity to study hands-on various haidate interpretations, e.g. ita-haidate (板佩楯), karutagane-haidate (骨牌金佩楯), shino-haidate (篠佩楯), kawara-haidate (瓦佩楯), hôdô-haidate (宝幢佩楯), umayoroizane-haidate (馬鎧札佩楯), kusari-haidate (鎖佩楯), and iyo-haidate (伊予佩楯), dating from the Momoyama to the Edo period.
Executive director of your association, Mr. Kanno Shigeo (菅野茂雄), had brought eight items to the meeting and explained via two of them all the major elements of haidate, also pointing out the importance of the tsurio (吊緒) cord, i.e. being indispensable for wearing haidate, and that the omeri (於女里), which is installed at the lower edge of the ichimonjigawa (一文字革), is necessary to protect the ieji. Apart from that, Mr. Kanno explained on the basis of his long-term participation of the Sôma-Nomaoi, the Samurai Horsemen Festival, the way to hold the whip and how to insert the whip into the haidate. Furthermore, Mr. Kanno annotated that surprisingly few know about how haidate are supposed to be worn properly and pointed out several ways of how to put on haidate wrongly, accompanied by a demonstration of how haidate are today put on in Sôma where the above mentioned festival takes place.
Apart from that, Mr. Kanno explained the basic differences between Momoyama and Edo period haidate.
Mr. Kanno was followed by our vice president, Mr. Matsumoto Kunihiko, who explained in an easy to understand way all the different haidate interpretations, also stressing that the haidate are an important protective element as the thighs contain major blood vessels. Also Mr. Matsumoto pointed out that unlike kabuto or dô, haidate were exposed to more permanent stress and were therefore considered as consumable items and that this is the reason why so few old haidate are extant.
More info about how to become a member of the Japanese Armor Society can be found on the official website: www.japanese-armor.org
(Members of the society got already 65 close up pictures of this meeting in their mailbox)
Title: Art of the Samurai - Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868Superb catalog for what was an amazing exhibition in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Many famous and superb armours, koshirae and swords.
