Why so much silk lacing?

[piryohae3]

The armor looks incredible but there is so much lacing! I wonder if it's just decorative because it appears to have an impractically large amount. Does it really that much lacing to keep it all together? I guess it could absorb some impact from a blow but probably not by an appreciable amount. Wouldn't it add a decent amount of weight?

[Bugyotsuji]

Without seeing anything, all I can say is that J armour is basically plates and strings, lots of both. The strings can make an armour flexible, light and cool, and in the right thickness silk can stop a blade. The lacing itself can be at the same time both decorative (in colour and shape) and functional.

 

One weakness is a string snapping in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

[Lance]

My impression was also that Japan never really made large metal  plates for armor like Europeans    and their fighting styles, tactics, and terrain etc. made lamellar or scale armor preferable. 

What I really always wondered was why they didn't use shields like Europeans did,  then someone pointed out that their early armor had two giant shields on their shoulders.   

Different cultures coming up with different solutions to the same question? 

 

Regards,

Lance 

[uwe]

These “shields”, like in Lance example above, are called o-sode!

However, the Japanese katchu-shi, in fact, made larger plates for armor....but that’s a longer story!

[Bugyotsuji]

Re shields. Shields were generally placed on the ground, rather than being carried individually. It seems that with the introduction of guns, shields of one form or another started to become necessities on the battlefield.

[uwe]

Re shields. Shields were generally placed on the ground, rather than being carried individually. It seems that with the introduction of guns, shields of one form or another started to become necessities on the battlefield.

 

Yep!

Comparable with the European “Pavese”. 

[IanB]

The reason for the lacing is that all earlier J. armours were / are lamellar - made from thousands of small scales of rawhide or iron laced into rows with leather thongs and then into the armour with, usually, silk braid. This construction had its origins in antiquity, travelling eastward across Central Asia to China and Japan. In Central Asia, the nomads did not have large scale  iron works so making small scales was a more practical proposition. Lamellar armour is also more suitable than plate when on horseback. The Japanese armourers did make large iron plates in the first millennium, but switched to lamellar when mounted archery became the preferred method of fighting.  Even in the Heian period the armourers could still make large plates, forging one-piece helmet bowls. These fell out of favour, possibly because later multiplate helmets were convenient for the armourer since they could to some extent use off-cuts. 

Ian Bottomley