Among the flowers - cherry, among people - a samurai.
Japanese proverb
Armor and weapons of the samurai of Japan. Several years ago, the topic of Japanese weapons and armor sounded quite prominently on "VO". Many then read about them and had the opportunity to express their opinions. But time passes, more and more new readers appear, and the old ones have forgotten a lot, so I thought: why don't we return to this topic again? Moreover, the illustrations will now be completely different. This is not surprising, because a lot of Japanese armor has survived.
So, today we will again admire these truly amazing creations of human hands and fantasy, while forgetting for a while that all this served the purpose of killing one person by another. And it is clear that the killer himself did not want to be killed at all, and therefore hid his body under armor, which improved from century to century. So today we will get acquainted with how this process took place in Japan. Well, photographs from the Tokyo National Museum will be used as illustrations to explain the text.
And let's start by remembering what the armor of Japanese samurai has always attracted and attracted to us. First of all, by brightness and color, and, of course, by the fact that they are not like everyone else. Although in the totality of their combat properties, they practically do not differ from the more prosaic-looking armor of Western Europe. On the other hand, they are so primarily because they are ideally adapted to the very environment in which the samurai dressed in them fought with each other on their alien islands.
Ancient warriors of the Yayoi era (III century BC - III century AD)
Japan has always been the end of the earth, where people, if they moved, it was most likely only in case of emergency. Probably, at the same time, they thought that no one would get them there! However, as soon as they entered land, they immediately had to go to war with the natives. However, they were usually allowed to defeat local residents by a higher level of development of military affairs. So in the period between the III century. BC. and II century. AD Another group of immigrants from the Asian mainland brought with them two innovations at once, which were very important: the skills of processing iron and the custom of burying their dead in huge mounds (kofun) and, along with the bodies of the dead, putting utensils, jewelry, as well as weapons and armor there.
They also sculpted and burned Haniwa figurines from clay - a kind of ushabti of the ancient Egyptians. Only now the ushabti had to work for the deceased at the call of the gods, while the Haniwa were the guardians of their tranquility. They were buried around the burial grounds, and since they usually depicted not someone, but armed soldiers, it was not difficult for archaeologists to compare these figures and the remains of weapons and armor found in these mounds.
It was possible to find out that in the era called Yayoi, the warriors of Japan wore wooden or leather armor that looked like a cuirass with straps. In the cold, the warriors put on jackets made of bearskin, sewn with fur outside. In summer, a cuirass was worn with a sleeveless shirt, but the pants were tied below the knees. For some reason, the back of the cuirass made of wood protruded above the level of the shoulders, while the cuirasses made of leather were complemented by shoulder pads made of leather strips, or they had a slouch on the shoulders. The warriors used shields made of te-date boards, which had an umbon in the form of a solar disk with rays radiating from it in a spiral. Nowhere else was this. What this meant is unknown.
Judging by the design, the helmet was assembled from four riveted segments with reinforcement in the form of a patch plate. The back was made of leather and was reinforced with plates. The cheek pads are also leather, but on the outside they are reinforced with thick leather straps.
The warriors of the Yayoi era were armed with hoko spears, straight chokuto swords, bows, and halberds with handles of different lengths clearly borrowed from China. The sound of a bronze bell was supposed to call the soldiers into battle and cheer them up, the ringing of which was also supposed to scare away evil spirits. Iron was already known, but until the 4th century. AD many weapons were still made of bronze.
Warriors of the Yamato era (3rd century AD - 710) and the Heian era (794-1185)
At the end of the 4th - beginning of the 5th century, another epochal event took place in the history of Japan: horses were brought to the islands. And not only horses … In China there was already a cavalry of horsemen in heavy weapons, using a high saddle and stirrups. Now the preponderance of settlers over the natives has become decisive. In addition to the infantry, the cavalry now fought with them, which allowed the aliens from the mainland to successfully push the local residents farther and farther north.
But the specificity of the war here was such that, for example, already in the 5th century, Japanese soldiers abandoned shields, but the fact that there were more and more riders, the horse harness that appeared in the burials tells us! Moreover, it was at this time that the main weapon of the Japanese rider was instead of a spear and a sword, a large bow of an asymmetrical shape (one "shoulder" is longer than the other) - yumi. However, they also had a sword: a straight cutting, sharpened, on one side like a saber.
Chinese records dating back to the year 600 report that their arrows had tips made of iron and bone, that they had crossbows similar to Chinese ones, swords were straight, and spears were both long and short, and their armor was made of leather.
Interestingly, the Japanese even then began to cover them with their famous varnish made from the sap of lacquer wood, which is understandable, because Japan is a country with a very humid climate, so the use of varnish to protect against moisture was dictated by necessity. The armor of persons of high rank was also covered with gilding, so that it would be immediately visible who is who!
But no one called the warriors of that time samurai! Although they have already found a word for them, and even much more sublime than a samurai - bushi, which can be translated into Russian as "fighter", "warrior", "vigilante". That is, this was how the professional nature of their occupation was emphasized, but since the war does not tolerate inconvenience, the protective equipment of the bushi was continuously improved all the time. For foot soldiers, armor was made of iron strips, called tanko (IV-VIII centuries), and keiko armor (V-VIII centuries) more comfortable for the rider, which looked like a plate cuirass with a skirt to the middle of the warrior's thigh. Long and inwardly curved plates formed the waist of the armor, which, apparently, was belted here. Well, on the body of the warrior, keiko was kept with the help of wide shoulder straps (watagami) made of cotton fabric, which in addition covered the collar and shoulder pads on top. The arms from the wrists to the elbows were covered with bracers made of narrow longitudinal metal plates connected with cords. The rider's legs below the knees were also protected by armor plates and the same legguards that covered both his hips and knees. Such armor, together with a wide "skirt", was very much like … a modern pea jacket, and was tightened with a belt at the waist. The shoulder pads were one piece with the collar, so that the warrior himself could put on all this without resorting to the help of servants.
In the 8th century, another version of the keiko appeared, consisting of four sections: the front and back sections were connected by shoulder straps, while the two side sections had to be worn separately. Apparently, all these tricks had one goal in front of them - to provide maximum convenience, as well as maximum protection, precisely to the soldiers who fired from a bow from a horse!
Warriors of the Kamakura era (1185-1333)
In the Heian era, there was an unheard-of fall of the imperial power and … the victory of the bushi class. The first shogunate in Japan was created, and all bushi were divided into two classes: the gokenin and the higokenin. The former were directly subordinate to the shogun and were the elite; the latter became mercenaries who served anyone who paid them. They were recruited by the owners of large estates as armed servants, and so they became samurai, that is, Japanese "service" people. After all, the very term "samurai" is a derivative of the verb "saburau" ("to serve"). All the warriors ceased to be farmers, and the peasants turned into ordinary serfs. Although not quite ordinary. From each village, a certain number of peasants were allocated to the soldiers as servants or as warriors-spearmen. And these people, who were called ashigaru (literally "light-footed"), although they did not become equal to the samurai, still got the opportunity with the help of personal courage to get out to the top. That is, in Japan everything was the same as in England, where the word knight (knight) also comes from the Old Norse terms "servant" and "serve". That is, initially the samurai were precisely the servants of the large feudal lords. They had to guard their estates and property, as well as themselves, and it is clear that they were loyal to their master, went to war with him, and also carried out his various assignments.
The armor, which was now worn by people of the military class (or, in any case, aspired to wear) in the Heian period was made exclusively from plates with holes punched in them for cords. The cords were made of leather and silk. Well, the plates were quite large: 5-7 cm high and 4 cm wide. They could be iron or leather. In any case, they were varnished to protect them from dampness. Each plate, called kozane, had to half cover the one on its right. Each row ended with another half of the plate for greater strength. The armor turned out to be multi-layered and therefore very durable.
But he also had a serious drawback: even the most durable cords stretched over time, the plates diverged among themselves and began to sag. To prevent this from happening, gunsmiths began to use three types of plates of different sizes: with three, two and one row of holes, which were then superimposed on one another and tied into an extremely rigid structure. The rigidity of such armor increased, the protective qualities were made even higher, but the weight also increased, so such plates were more often made of leather.
In the 13th century, new records appeared, which became known as yozane, they were wider than kozane. They began to collect horizontal stripes, and then connect them with vertical kebiki-odoshi lacing. At the same time, a special cord (mimi-ito), which differed in its color from the color of the main lacing, braided the edges of the armor, and such a cord was usually both thicker and stronger than all other cords.
Well, the main type of armor already in the Heian era was the rider's armor - o-yoroi: strong, resembling a box and arranged in such a way that its front armor plate rested with its lower edge on the saddle bow, which reduced the load on the warrior's shoulders. The total weight of such armor was 27-28 kg. It was a typical equestrian "armor", the main task of which was to protect its owner from arrows.
Literature
1. Kure M. Samurai. Illustrated history. M.: AST / Astrel, 2007.
2. Turnbull S. Military history of Japan. M.: Eksmo, 2013.
3. Shpakovsky V. Atlas of the samurai. M.: "Rosmen-Press", 2005.
4. Bryant E. Samurai. M.: AST / Astrel, 2005.
