IanB

All, One point that has not been mentioned is that the geometry of some naginata make their conversion to a wakizashi something of a problem. Early naginata in particular were shaped with a pronounced widening of the blade in that region that might be described as the monouchi. In other words where the blade begins to acquire its pronounced curve towards the point, the distance from the shinogi to the edge increases. It is the line of the shinogi that dictates how the conversion must be done. During conversion the extreme curvature towards the point has to be cut off to continue the line of the mune. The new boshi thus formed having originally been part of the hamon some way back from the original point and hence having no kaeri. Because the line of the shinogi cannot be altered, the only solution to the widened part of the blade is to reduce it from the edge. If the monouchi of the original naginata had a wide hamon this is not a problem. If it didn't, the hamon will be either narrowed or lost in this area. I have such a wakizashi blade where the hamon actually runs off about 2/3rds of the way up the blade, re-appearing after a gap of about 4" to continue to the point. We would consider this a fatal flaw, but it evidently didn't concern the previous owner who had it mounted. Ian Bottomley

Matt, Well done - an excellent job that has rescued some nice fittings from oblivion. Ian Bottomley

Eric, love the 'His 'n Hers' fire gear. Suitably lavish to become roasted in. Ian

All, These gauntlets are indeed unusual but not entirely unprecedented. George Cameron Stone illustrates them in his 'Glossary', in addition to a pair of gloves covered in mail and another pair done in kikko. There is a pair of kote in Venice that have the usual tekko extended by additional plates and mail that reach to the ends of the fingers and thumb forming a built-in gauntlet. Just what the purpose of the hooks attached to the wrist-plate is can only be speculation. Catching a sword is a possibility, but their location would have made the operation awkward, needing the wearer to bend the wrist downwards. In this position I suspect the blade would tend to hit the edge of the wrist-plate rather than sliding down into the hook. It would have been more natural had the hooks to be on the inside of the wrists. In addition, why are they fitted on both hands? Had the hooks been shorter I would have said they were to connect the gauntlets to a pair of kote in some way but they seem far too long for that. I'm stumped on this one. It isn't unusual for armours to sprout hooks and other personal modifications. I have a dou with quite a large pivoting spiral hook in black lacquered iron attached over the right hip. On the right breast is a similar but smaller spiral hook, that on the left being a conventional gilded ring. I'm sure the hook on the hip is to fasten the reins of your horse to whilst you shoot with a bow. why it is duplicated on the breast I have no idea. I saw another armour in Tokyo once with a kind of built in support-arm hinged to the left side that was supposedly to help in shooting a matchlock. That was very silly and must have been a real nuisance. Ian Bottomley

All, To return to a previous theme for a moment. The newly listed images of old Japan contains this image of a guy in fire-fighting outfit including the waist belt. Ian Bottomley

Malcolm, I couldn't find that kamon either but that is not uncommon. I keep seeing items with perfectly genuine kamon I have never seen before - some of exceptional quality that suggests the owner was important or wealthy yet seems to have escaped being recorded. I could understand it if it were associated with the lower classes but many of the items are of armours so they were of the military class. Ian

Jan, It is a kamon representing a growing fern shoot. I don't know the family sorry. Ian Bottomley

Piers, Kanamono like these are fastened in place by pushing the legs of the rivets through the same holes as the lacing. You should not drill any extra holes. I notice they do not seem to have much of a turned down flange at the lower edges which should give you a bit of leeway with positioning. My favourite tool for jobs like this is an arrow head. The long tapering tang is perfect for finding a hole and displacing the braid to one side so that I can get the legs of the rivet through. It is also perfect for straightening out the braid after threading it through a hole and similar applications. The head can be a bit tough on the hand when applying a bit of pressure, but we all have to suffer. :lol: :lol: Ian Bottomley

Piers, That is a very thorny question. Whilst I accept that menuki were made by repousse, a lot of pouch clasps seem to have been made in a die or mould. It sounds a lot of work but the silver trade in Sheffield made millions of such dies out of iron, brass or bronze by casting or carving, followed by a bit of tidying up and polishing. Using these they could turn out small decorative elements by the thousand faster than you would believe. In Sheffield they used a kind of drop hammer with the male half of the die on the bottom, pulled up by a rope and released. Crude but cheap and simple. Another way that only needs a female die is to use lead. The thin sheet of annealed copper or shakudo or whatever is placed over the die and covered with a piece of lead. A good bashing forces the lead and sheet into the die so that it takes up the design. After trimming the edges and maybe a bit of work on the outside with a graver or punches, and possibly mercury gilding odd areas, you could turn out very respectable pouch clasps by the hundreds. That this method was used is evident on those ghastly boxes covered in 'menuki' made in the Meiji period. In many cases they didn't even bother cleaning off the excess metal - just cutting roughly around the outline. Ian

Jag, Should you wish to join us you would be most welcome. Full details are on our web-site. Ian Bottomley - Member of the Northern ToKen Society of Great Britain.

Piers, One very obvious difference between these two similar objects is the thickness of the metal. Most pouch clasps seem to be formed out of relatively thin sheet whereas real menuki have thick walls. I assume the latter were made that way because they had to withstand the pressure on them from the tsuka ito. Ian Bottomley

John, Probably not for a woman but possibly from a boy's armour. I have however seen a few armours made for the wives of daimyo. I doubt they ever actually wore them and I suspect they were really symbolic. In Sendai Museum there are the armours of the various Date daimyo and the accompanying armours for their wives. As far as I could tell, there was nothing to really differentiate them from men's armours. One thing that stuck in my mind was that one armour had a curious feature where, by turning part of the tehen kanamono, a kind of iris diaphragm closed off the actual hole. What the heck that was all about I know not - it would hardly be needed to keep out rain. They also have the famous silver lacquered armour of Hideyoshi with the hair covered helmet and crests in the form of gunbai. Talk about small! That armour is tiny - he was a really diminutive guy. Ian

John, Your menpo is unlikely to be paper-mache. I have seen parts of an armour made of paper, quite crude and laced in vivid colours. I think it may have been made for kabuki. Yours looks like a perfectly normal nerigawa mask. Ian

Eric, Our Robert does get some fabulous things. Ian

Veli, You have hit on a good point. Armour making as a profession was regarded as being rather unsavoury because of the handling of leather. I think this is the reason why most armour until the Sengoku Jidai is unsigned and so little is known about early armour makers. There are early references to Nara being a centre for armour making but no mention of who was making it. Nara continued to be a major centre, during the Edo period being well known for its mask production. They must have churned out thousands for sale in the trade. When you look at armour carefully it soon become apparent that armourers could buy-in items like kanamono, sleeves and haidate to cut down on cost and time. Like swords, the production of an armour must have involved a lot of individual skills. No doubt the armourer himself would forge the helmet bowl and the major plates, but I bet he didn't drill all the holes or do much lacquering. I am convinced this is how the Myochin started, making minor armour components when the demand for horse bits fell off. They themselves admit they were originally called Masuda and that was their trade. It was probably this that caused them to adopt the name Myochin and attempt to break into the armour making business rather than continuing as sub-contractors. Ian Bottomley

All, A very interesting discussion on what, only 150 years ago, would have been items in common usage. I have generally read and / or noted that these matching sets of haori, muneate and belt cover, were worn, with the appropriate 'helmet' and cape for supervising fire fighting. That said, sets seem to be thin on the ground with a matching cape. In cases like this, I usually turn to that treasure house of specimens and information, the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya. In their catalogue items 247 and 248 are, respectively, a helmet and hood, and the haori and belt cover. Since only the back of the haori is shown it is not clear if there is a muneate. Items 249 and 250 show the helmet and hood, the haori and muneate but not the belt cover. The helmets of both sets have double layers of fabric making up the hood. In the first case the fabric matching the haori, a dull blue woollen cloth, is underneath with an outer layer in yellow and red cloth. In the second case, the under layer is yellow, the matching outer cloth, in purple, is on top and forms a short curtain below the rim of the helmet. Both outfits, and a third without a helmet, are described as being for fire. This is substantiated by the fact that woollen cloth has been used. That said, I see no reason why such splendid garments should not have been worn during a daimyo gyoretsu, although the ones in Nagoya belonged to the Tokugawa so would never have been put to such a use. I have also seen a couple of muneate that were so elaborate, one with gold and coloured silk applique embroidery of tigers in bamboo, that you would hesitate to wear it never mind trot off to fight fires. I have also seen muneate being worn by guys shooting guns, to keep their clothing from being burned or soiled by sparks and soot. I shouldn't wonder that muneate were common wear on any occasion where there was a need to keep the clothes clean. Ian Bottomley

Piers, No, it has never to my knowledge ever been translated. I did however make extensive use of it, with Dr. Sasama's permission of course, when writing my first book. In particular the glossary settled many queries. One amusing incident occurred concerning a helmet described somewhere as an 'hour of the hare helmet' or 'dawn helmet'. After pondering long and hard on this odd description, it was relayed back to Dr. Sasama who replied that since the rivets holding a bowl together are called 'hoshi' or stars, it meant the helmet had countersunk rivets - the stars being no longer visible! Ian

Piers, I just scanned the same image and found you had beaten me. Ian

Ian, I suspect you are right in assuming it is to support the end of a yari or similar tall pole when on the daimyo gyoretsu. Never seen the like before. A very desirable object. Ian Bottomley

Justin, I'm afraid the shikoro really needs to come off. It would be a near impossibility to sew the new lining in as well as wrap the leather around the koshimaki. One thing to watch are the copper shanks of the rivets - they have a nasty habit of breaking off when you try to straighten them. Unless the holes are big, you will also end up with cords that are difficult to put back. I wrap Scotch tape around the end to make them easier to thread. You can then pull if off afterwards. Ian

Justin, Here is how you do the leather band:- Once you have the fabric lining big enough to fit the bowl, tack it to the helmet using the pairs of small holes around the lower rim making sure the top of the lining is not touching the top of the helmet. With a zunari kabuto there would be about an inch of space between the lining and bowl when worn. When all is well, you can then cut off the excess fabric level with the rim of the bowl. At the front, over the eyes, there is usually a strip of metal that continues the rim under the peak. This will also have pairs of holes in it. If not, the front part of the lining will have been glued to the underside of the peak. You can now take the lining out again and fit the leather. This is sewn about 1/2" to 3/4" below the edge of the fabric and about 1/8" from the edge of the leather, inside out and upside down. In other words, when it is sewn all the way round, it will be folded down over the sewing and extend a good 1/2" or more beyond the edge of the fabric. You then sew the fabric back into the bowl using a long length of thread that runs from one pair of holes to the next on the outside of the rim. I always do two or three stitches through each pair of holes before taking the thread along to the next pair of holes. At the front, the leather has to be folded around the fabric itself before sewing so you need to slit it on either side of the peak. When the fabric is sewn in, fold the leather over the rim and hold it in place by pasting it to the running thread round the outside of the rim. There you are. Ian Bottomley

Piers, Humble pie is not needed in the least. It is after all only the romanisation and the -i and -e sounds can sound similar. I mis-pronounce things regularly and often have to think carefully what I am saying. Ian

Piers, Justin, This thread has pulled up two interesting helmets. The one, a signed zunari kabuto with a none standard peak, the other a zunari kabuto modified to look like a regular helmet. I am in the process of re-building my new neri gawa armour (I posted a picture of the mask a few days ago). The helmet bowl of this armour is a very stylish shape, modelled to look like a 16 plate goshozan bachi. Unfortunately the shikoro plates have spread outwards a little through bad storage. Even worse the back has been packed in the box in such a way that the shoulder straps have bent downwards from their original position. The shikoro is now in pieces with the ends of each plate tied together with string to pull them back into shape. The back is undergoing more severe treatment - in a wooden frame with heavy weights applying tension to the shoulder straps. Every hour or so I give them a blast with the wife's hair-dryer to warm them up. So far the treatment is working - they are almost back to where they should be and the lacquer is still undamaged. What worries me is that they will revert back to the wrong shape when released from tension. I might have to mount the armour on a stand for a few years with heavy weights inside so that there is constant upwards pressure on the shoulder straps. Ian Bottomley

Justin, Making an ukebari (that is how I have always spelt it) isn't difficult, just infinitely tedious. Cut two squares of linen / hemp and if you have some, a similar square of red silk chirimen crepe for the inner surface. They need to be considerably bigger than the diameter of the bowl, say about 2' a side. Stack the two hemp pieces at 45 degrees to each other and then add the silk if you have it. Mark the centre and start sewing. For some reason I have never really fathomed, the originals are sewn with green thread about the thickness of crocheting thread. I suspect that the original makers bought thread by the 10,000 momme from a wholesale supplier who only had green in stock . Start in the centre and just do small in-and-out stitches in a spiral spaced about 3/16" apart. It goes very quickly at first and then slows down as the spiral get bigger. When it is about 6" across, start pulling the thread a little as you go along to form small puckers in the cloth. Carry on doing this until it is big enough. I found it easiest to form it on a polystyrene wig block to get the shape. Good luck, it takes a long time. Ian Bottomley

Thomas, Looks like a perfectly good mask of nerigawa (rawhide). Almost certainly Edo period. Ian Bottomley