Japanese Armor Society Magazine

[Luc T]

 

[Ken-Hawaii]

In case you aren't aware, a PDF file in Japanese can be imported into http://translate.google.com, & English chosen as the output language. Of course something is lost, but not as much as you would think.

 

Ken

 

[Luc T]

Translation...."Not in your lifetime pal!!!!"

Eric, I hope you are still around. 15 months later, and the magazine is in full colour, thanks to the efforts of the Western Branch. Our new yearbook is almost ready, full of great full colour pictures and information you cannot find anywhere else.

We work for the serious armor-students, as good as we can. And we are booking results on many fields.

Who still want to become a member even now in 2018 will receive this second yearbook for free!

Here the link to subscribe: www.Japanese-armor.org/eng

[uwe]

Received mine today....just wow!!!

[JoA]

Uwe,

 

I'm really glad you like it. More things will normally change over the coming year or so. As you know, things take time to change here in Japan, but I'm proud with the progress we have made so far...

This weekend, I will see the NKBKHK president and Takemura san to finalize the final article for the next year book, so it can go to the printer. We are already discussing with them possible articles for the Yearbook after that, as they really like what we do with this...

 

Jo

[DaveT]

It's not worth €130 a year for four magazines with a partial translation that follows a year later.

I also dislike that the forum is closed to members only, this is elitism as it excludes people on low incomes.
JoA, AUG69 and Uwe are all board members, so it's always a one-way street when they rejoice the accomplishments.

I not going to continue my subscription to this rich boy yacht club.

 

 

I'll also add that if your face doesn't fit this society will do their best to destroy you.

 

Maybe the Chairman would like to relate how their newest board member Almeric caused a commotion at the Shinsa in Japan shouting at a dealer that he cannot be associated with me. 
You actually are telling people who they can be friends with now at official events.

 

[Luc T]

The Jas and the NKBKHK membership are no obligation, but an opportunity.

380 members are happy with their membership. I know no one with a yacht, but I have a kayak, does this count also?

 

Btw, Aymeric is not a board member.

[Shogun8]

It's not worth €130 a year for four magazines with a partial translation that follows a year later.

 

I also dislike that the forum is closed to members only, this is elitism as it excludes people on low incomes.

JoA, AUG69 and Uwe are all board members, so it's always a one-way street when they rejoice the accomplishments.

 

I not going to continue my subscription to this rich boy yacht club.

 

 

I'll also add that if your face doesn't fit this society will do their best to destroy you.

 

Maybe the Chairman would like to relate how their newest board member Almeric caused a commotion at the Shinsa in Japan shouting at a dealer that he cannot be associated with me. 

You actually are telling people who they can be friends with now at official events.

 

 

It's a real shame when one individual does his utmost to destroy the efforts of others who are actually trying - and succeeding - in building an under-served community. Perhaps I should post the very racist and despicable message that this individual sent to me for all to see his true nature and motives.

[DaveT]

That was a quick reply Luc, yet you seemed to have danced over the fact about the shinsa.

Currently, I am still a member of the Japanese Armour Society, I was very upset to learn that Almeric had this outburst, shouting at a dealer that has been in Japan for 30 years and telling him that he cannot be associated with me professionally or as a friend.
He did this at an official event, in the actual shinsa building, attacking a member and alienating a member. My source is a witness to this, he also informed me that you had a meeting about me after the Hataya auction, what to do with me should I turn up to the shinsa, which as being a member I had every right. unlike where I was deemed not to be in good standing by you and denied access to the Grand Tour. Again I was a paid member of the society, yet was singled out for no reason other than you dislike me personally.

This type of conduct is outrageous and is a form of persecution. The constant attacks against me are becoming tiresome. I think people should be aware of how your crew operates. You use a society to hide behind and use it as your own vehicle to personally attack anyone that you cannot control.

 

[DaveT]

380 members.... I have over 3,000 on Social media and all the information I provide is free. So I think the numbers speak volumes. 

[Shogun8]

Stay tuned.

[IanB]

I have just deleted a considerable number of post which were little more than personal attacks that have no place on this Forum.

 

I feel it only right that having been a member of this forum for a considerable time that I should add a comment or two on the background to the posts I have deleted. Prior to and during my employment at the Royal Armouries in the UK I visited Japan on many occasions making friends with both collectors and restorers of armour there. Having retired, the internet has allowed me to keep in touch with happenings as did my membership of the Nihon Katchu Bugu Kenjyu Hozon Kai. For a considerable time there existed a Japanese Armour  Forum, financed by Dave Thatcher (that is now defunct) that led to forum members meeting in Florence for symposium that included full access to the collection in the Stibbert Museum organised by a member who was a curator there . I subsequently organised a similar weekend gathering in Leeds that included a tour of the Royal Armouries. More recently certain European members of the Nihon Katchu Bugu Kenjyu Hozon Kai on visiting Japan have attended meetings of the Nihon Katchu Bugu Kenjyu Hozon Kai and were elected as Board members, These same people have now set up a Japanese Armour Society Forum on the internet that is only accessible to members of that association, yet insist it is to spread knowledge about armour. Despite being members of  Nihon Katchu Bugu Kenjyu Hozon Kai access is being denied to Dave Thatcher, and incidentally myself since I am regarded as his friend. An absurd situation.

[IanB]

You will note the post from Shogun8 which I think gives members some insight into the personal animosity between contributors. I do not condone personal attacks which is why I deleted some of the previous posts. Can I please appeal to all to stop and curb your impulses to attack. If you have a grievance, and my plea is to those on both sides of the argument, the sensible approach is to ignore the other person. What should matter is the subject of Japanese armour, all of whom involved in this matter has knowledge they can contribute. 

Ian Bottomley

[Shogun8]

Ian Bottomley is a very well-respected member of the katchu community and is always welcome to join the Japanese Armor Society. Our forum is indeed geared towards our membership, but should any non-members have questions regarding katchu, they can post in the public areas free-of-charge and our membership will willingly share any knowledge we have.

[Shogun8]

You will note the post from Shogun8 which I think gives members some insight into the personal animosity between contributors. I do not condone personal attacks which is why I deleted some of the previous posts. Can I please appeal to all to stop and curb your impulses to attack. If you have a grievance, and my plea is to those on both sides of the argument, the sensible approach is to ignore the other person. What should matter is the subject of Japanese armour, all of whom involved in this matter has knowledge they can contribute. 

Ian Bottomley

Ian,

 

My post has been deleted (and not by me). Let me be clear, I would never condone or initiate any kind of personal attack on anyone. But one cannot continuously turn the other cheek, especially when constantly under attack without cause. Unfortunately, ignoring in this case, only invites more attacks.

 

All I care about is "the appreciation, scholarship and preservation of Japanese armor".

 

John

[IanB]

John,  I thank you for what I am certain is your well meant invitation. 

Ian

[Luc T]

Our forum has a members only  section, but this was a condition sine qua non  for several of our contributing members.

Our public section allows non-members to start any discussion (armor related).   We are glad to help you as good as we can.    

https://www.japanesearmorsociety.org/phpbb/index.php 

[IanB]

I feel sure that members of this forum will be grateful of this offer, or they can ask here and I will do my best to answer their question.

 

Ian Bottomley

Member of 日本甲冑武具研究保存会 Nihon Katchu Bugu Kenkyu Hozon Kai

[Luc T]

indeed Ian, this is no competition.  I am allways in for synergies.

After all, there is only the beauty of Japanese Armor.

[Luc T]

And look at it, isn’t it beautifull? With colofon in English.

[estcrh]

Despite being members of  Nihon Katchu Bugu Kenjyu Hozon Kai access is being denied to Dave Thatcher, and incidentally myself since I am regarded as his friend. An absurd situation.

Humm...what goes around comes around, this is a very hypocritical comment seeing that Dave outright banned certain people from ever partipating in his forum during his reign of terror. I was the one who called him out on this type of stuff and as a result I was banned...and what did you do about that?? Now the shoe is on the other foot...im just saying.

 

I have a LOT to say about this whole situation but its just not important to me. I have many other interests besides Japanese armor. I personally do not respect those that decided to make someone pay a rather large fee in order to get access to what in the end is just another "secret" forum. Against my own better judgement I actually wasted a few minutes of precious time and money and joined Luc's little cluster $$&€. I was not impressed in the least. One of the first posts I read was a mention of the fantastic new book on Japanese curasses by Trevor Absolon, in this post a forum member decided to attack Trevors previous amazing book, when I attempted to defend Trevors books I was eventually banned from the forum. No big loss to me and pretty much what I expected since to people I was going up against were friends of Luc.

 

I only believe in completely open forums were ANYONE can join and freely express themselves, this was my intentions when I started the Samuari Armor Forum and except for Trevor Absolon being banned by Dave from the very start we had for awhile an open forum, nothing lasts forever and I am happy with my attempts to give people an open forum to discuss Japanese armor, unfortunately there is no such place now.

[Shogun8]

Man, to the casual observer, it must seem that the katchu world is just one big dysfunctional family, with seemingly so many petty disputes and hard feelings. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion and point of view about the Japanese Armor Society, but I want to at least address some of Eric's comments above:

 

"I personally do not respect those that decided to make someone pay a rather large fee in order to get access to what in the end is just another "secret" forum." This is actually not true. The "rather large fee" of JPY 15,000 (approx. US$132 based on today's exchange rate) is for membership in the Japanese Armor Society. This annual membership fee gives members a copy of the NKBKHK (our mother organization) newsletters (4 per year) with partial translation (which we must pay Markus to have done). In addition, JPY 12,000 of this fee goes directly to the mother organization, leaving just JPY 3,000 (approx. US$26.30) to go towards the costs of running the society. Even with this, we also include for our members a limited edition yearbook which contains some of the most in-depth and scholarly articles with the latest thinking and research on the subject of Japanese armor. We actually did not plan on having our own forum, but many of our members did not like the direction and heavy-handed administration of the NNK forum and simply stopped participating. It was only through the initiative and hard work of a few members that we were able to create our own forum, which although geared towards our members, is open to anyone to ask questions or for more information regarding samurai armor. The private areas of our forum exist because many of our members do not want their items to be found all over the internet.

 

"One of the first posts I read was a mention of the fantastic new book on Japanese curasses by Trevor Absolon, in this post a forum member decided to attack Trevors previous amazing book, when I attempted to defend Trevors books I was eventually banned from the forum." Again, this is not quite true. I was the member who mentioned Trevor's new book on Japanese cuirasses on our forum, saying that it was a monumental achievement and many of our members agreed with my assessment. However, a seemingly innocuous comment about the dated design of Trevor's old book somehow devolved into personal attacks being levelled against some of the members. I should also say that due to some of the things that were said on the NNK forum, we instituted a zero-tolerance policy towards abuse and bad behaviour for the JAS forum, which has resulted in 2 members being banned.

 

In closing, I can only say that although we have been in existence for only about 18 months, we are very proud of our accomplishments which include our 3rd Japanese Legacy Symposium in Leiden, attended by over 60 people, including non-members this past February; the 1st Samurai Armor Fair in Amsterdam; a Grand Tour for our members of the Samurai Art Museum in Berlin, our president's private collection in Belgium, and the Daimyo exhibition in Paris; a study meeting on the subject of the evolution of koboshi kabuto in Brussels in June and next month, the publication of our second annual yearbook. Next year we will have our 4th Japanese Legacy Symposium in New York and beyond, many other exciting new initiatives. Most importantly, we continue to build bridges between Japan and the West by facilitating the exchange of knowledge and information and by fostering and strengthening relationships with our Japanese friends.

[estcrh]

I was the member who mentioned Trevor's new book on Japanese cuirasses on our forum, saying that it was a monumental achievement and many of our members agreed with my assessment. However, a seemingly innocuous comment about the dated design of Trevor's old book somehow devolved into personal attacks being levelled against some of the members. I should also say that due to some of the things that were said on the NNK forum, we instituted a zero-tolerance policy towards abuse and bad behaviour for the JAS forum, which has resulted in 2 members being banned.

 

 

Either you have a VERY bad memory or you are just a liar....here is a screen shot of the post, anyone can clearly see that it was Peter who started the thread and then Fred chimed in, then Piva then you and you said nothing about Trevors book being a "momumental achievement" as his new book was not even published at the time of this post!!!!

 

As for your forum, here is the true story....when I got a message from Luc about the new Western branch of the Japanese armor society I checked it out and it was very disappointing, just a few comments etc piggybacking on the boring Japanese Armor Society web site...bland, no way to communicate etc, just like the Japanese do things....so I whipped up a sample forum for the Western branch and sent a link to Jo and Luc explaining how we in the West like to communicate with each other etc and a forum would be a great idea etc, now this is the same way I gave Dave an already designed forum, and just like Dave did at first, Luc said he was not interested in a forum....and just like Dave, all of a sudden a I get a message that there was now a forum for the Western branch of the Japanese armor Society. So I checked it out and what do I find....a so called public forum which as its main purpose was being a platform to get people to pay MONEY in order to gain entrance to the REAL forum.....yes thats right, in order to be allowed access to the REAL forum you had to cough up around $130 and join the Western Branch of the Japanese Armor Society, what a CROCK OF @$%^!!!!!!! If anyone really wants to learn about Japanese armor I recommend that you buy Trevor Absolons new book and find copies of his previous two books and for around the same amount of money you would have what amounts to a very complete education on the history and types of Japanese armor.

 

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a3/67/91/a367913abba6031cb785eea023c18221.pn

[estcrh]

Man, to the casual observer, it must seem that the katchu world is just one big dysfunctional family, with seemingly so many petty disputes and hard feelings. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion and point of view about the Japanese Armor Society, but I want to at least address some of Eric's comments above:...................................

We actually did not plan on having our own forum, but many of our members did not like the direction and heavy-handed administration of the NNK forum and simply stopped participating. It was only through the initiative and hard work of a few members that we were able to create our own forum, which although geared towards our members, is open to anyone to ask questions or for more information regarding samurai armor. The private areas of our forum exist because many of our members do not want their items to be found all over the internet..........a seemingly innocuous comment about the dated design of Trevor's old book somehow devolved into personal attacks being levelled against some of the members. I should also say that due to some of the things that were said on the NNK forum, we instituted a zero-tolerance policy towards abuse and bad behaviour for the JAS forum, which has resulted in 2 members being banned.

 

 

Just more lies, I tried to engage the person attacking Trevors books (Fred), I posted screen shots of from one of Trevors books and asked what exactly was so "awful" about it but no one in the discussion could post even ONE EXAMPLE!!!! In my opinion Trevors two previous books and his new book are the best and most informative books on Japanese armor ever published in ANY language and I was not about to let Freds comment go unchallenged, his comments were just another in a long line of disparaging comments made by various people about Trevors knowledge and his books etc, based on the most part by jealousy, personal arguments with Trevor or just plain ignorance and I just was tired of seeing these types of comments being allowed to continue when I was told specifically that the new Western Armor Society forum would not be anything like Daves forum. 

 

As for the the old tired line about the need for a "private / secret" forum because people might post what is written "all over the internet"...how absurd, the Nihonto Forum and other similar forums manage to do just fine without secret, private areas, this is actually just a way to control the forum and keep "certain" people from being allowed to learn and participate,  the Western Branch of the Japanese Armor Society Forum uses this method to FORCE people to pay money and join the Japanese Armor Society when all they want is access to the forum.....this allows certain people from the Western Branch to gain direct access to the top levels of the Japanese Armor Society by buying their way in, they funnel money to the Japanese Armor Society and in return these people are the only ones who have direct access unless you are rich enough to fly to Japan on a regular basis like they are and sit in on the meetings of the Japanese Armor Society, for the average person there is no direct contact with Japanese nationals, this might work for those few privileged individuals but not for people like me who want to communicate directly with the Japanese members of the Japanese Armor Society.

 

In the end I was sent a private message saying I was bullying and harassing certain members (also known as Lucs friends) and I responded in my usual manner which led to me being banned from the forum....all this for defending Trevors books!!!!  (I would do it all over again gladly, thanks Trevor for doing the impossible.)

 

 

 

[Guido]

[Brian]

Hmmm...discussing arguments on a different forum, on my forum. Makes it feel like the controversy is happening here.
While not amused by all of this (ok..mildly amused, maybe it is the pills) I am leaving it here as it makes my usual Nihonto-related stress seem insignificant.
I sometimes wonder if the Nihonto world is too political or controversial. Then I read what is happening with armour, and I feel much much better.

C'mon guys, it's all just pixels on a screen somewhere. At the end of the day, we all enjoy swords or armour or whatever. Really pointless to waste time on personal disputes. Just agree to disagree and move on. We all need less stress.

[YOJIMBO]

At the beginning of my collections, I thought the community and the people around swords and armor are very honest etc. etc ... etc ..

Meanwhile, I have been sobbing and I am now 

I probably start to be interested in French clock ......

[IanB]

Simon,  You will find many people in the armour world who are decent, honest and do try to help people whenever they can. Sadly the internet is inhabited by a spectrum of people with views that are at odds with that philosophy. Brian has been very tolerant on this forum and has put up with all manner of petulant attitudes and behaviours. All I can say is that it saddens me as much as it irritates him. Some of what is happening is the result of an inflated ego and some an attempt to provoke - all of which are not worth bothering about in the long run.

Ian Bottomley 

[Jean]

Ian,

 

I love the word « petulant », we have the same in French.

 

It is sure that the behaviour of a few members can itch and irk....

[YOJIMBO]

 

It is sure that the behaviour of a few members can itch and irk....

 

That's a very serious thing. No fun. There are a couple of people who are right. But most are waste.