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Samurai Helmets
- abledon 7y agoIf anyone lives in London and would like to investigate how the ancient sword arts of japan tie into meditation, I highly recommend http://battodo-fudokan.co.uk/ http://battodo-fudokan.co.uk/
- sorokod 7y agoFrom the websight "Nakamura Ryu Battodo is a distillation of traditional Japanese swordsmanship ..." In other words, it is not a traditional sword system but a modern one.
- sgt101 7y agoHeh - I practiced Kendo with Raoul Knutsen for a few years, there wasn't much meditative about the school he followed!
- sorokod 7y agoI have a lot of respect for martial arts disciplines that put martial arts first and keep spiritual aspects of the practice ( if they have one ) off the marketing material.
- Spearchucker 7y agoThis is interesting. I've been doing Krav Maga for some time and a few years ago did a week of it in Isreal, sampling all its aspects and applications - military, close protection, civilian, police /crowd control and... it's spiritual side. For a martial art so young I was surprised it even has a spiritual side. It's also become the aspect I find most fascinating. And yet the instructors accompanying us seemed embarrassed by it and the single instructor world wide teaching it from a kibbutz outside Haifa. It certainly wasn't why I chose to practice Krav Maga.
- hutzlibu 7y agoCan you tell more about the spiritual side of Krav Maga? The seeming lack of it, might be why I never took a closer lock into it. So I am also surprised that there might be one. Can it be that just some instructors personal spirituality got mixed into it?
- golemiprague 7y agoKrav maga is a fighting system derived from east european street fighting "wisdom", it is not a martial art per se and got no spiritual side. I know some people who studied it from the guy who invented krav maga, Imi Lichtenfeld. The thing is, because most of them are into martial arts they usually studied also other martial arts and sometimes incorporate it into their brand of krav maga. But it is mostly lessons from boxing and jiu juitsu, simple mma stuff rather than some spiritual stuff. The whole idea of krav maga is to distill whatever is effective and practical in real street situation for people who need to learn it in a relatively short time. Therefore it is based on simple and intuitive techniques with no spiritual side and no regard for any rules which still exist even in mma. If you find any spiritual side in this it would be a very perverted one.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoGiven it's less than savory origins I wouldn't consider it a basis for meditative contemplation either.
- Razengan 7y agoFor those wondering, this may be referring to it being the replacement for allegedly using live prisoners for sword practice.
- mirimir 7y agoIn my experience, Aikido includes many practical bits of Japanese swordsmanship. Practitioners (especially Iwama style) typically use wooden knives, swords and staffs in practice. Because that helps with proper form. Given that most Aikido moves are based on weapon moves.
- bradknowles 7y agoAdvanced Judo is also like that. I've never practiced advanced Judo, but I've seen it played. And I saw them using wooden weapons. Given that both Judo and Aikido were born from Jiu Jitsu, that makes sense.
- jshaqaw 7y agoI did tameshigiri for the second time last night. Speaking as someone who regularly practiced zazen for 15 years it is an incredibly Zen meditative experience!
- sorokod 7y agoSo can be almost any phisical activity that requires simplicity and precision.
- mercer 7y agoso what?
- sorokod 7y agoJust because you could match your meditation experience to your martial arts experience does not imply that there is something unique to martial arts going on. As I mentioned, almost any simple physical activity may become a meditative practice and may benefit from such practice. I like the following quote about zanshin (from https://wwzc.org/dharma-text/zanshin https://wwzc.org/dharma-text/zanshin) "In taking a step, it is the weight rolling smoothly and the next step arising. In breathing in completely, it is this breath. In breathing out completely, it is this breath. In life, it is this life. Zanshin means complete follow through, leaving no trace. It means each thing, completely, as it is."
- siqu 7y ago(define (get) (get1 (quote ()) (read)))(define (get1 b r) (if (eof-object? r) (reverse b) (get1 (cons r b) (read))))(define (put) (put1 (quote ()) (read-char)))(define (put1 b r) (if (eof-object? r) (list->string (reverse b)) (if (char=? #\) r) (put1 (cons #\. (cons #\. (cons r b))) (read-char)) (put1 (cons r b) (read-char)))))(define (final lis) (if (null? lis) lis (final1 (car lis) (cdr lis))))(define (final1 f r) (if (and (pair? f) (pair? (cdr f)) (eqv? (quote quote) (car f))) (cons f (final (cdr r))) (if (list? f) (final2 f (gather (count (car r)) (cons (quote ()) (final (cdr r))))) (if (or (vector? f) (pair? f) (eq? #\) f)) (cons f (final (cdr r))) (cons f (final r))))))(define (final2 f g) (cons (append (final f) (car g)) (cdr g)))(define (count s) (- (string-length (symbol->string s)) 2))(define (gather c lis) (if (= c 0) (cons (reverse (car lis)) (cdr lis)) (gather (- c 1) (cons (cons (cadr lis) (car lis)) (cddr lis)))))(for-each write (final (with-input-from-string (put) get)))
- jtms 7y agoNice try bot, whatever it is you were trying to do
- Lowkeyloki 7y agoYou have to at least give credit that the bot was apparently written in lisp.
- username223 7y agoScheme, actually, since it uses "define" instead of "defun." I formatted it reasonably, but it still looked like a pain to untangle.
- zzo38computer 7y agoWhat is the mass of the helmet?
- lainga 7y agoI tried one on once at a hole-in-the-wall samurai museum in Tokyo. It was pretty hefty but very well-supported - my head didn't feel wobbly or strained.
- benj111 7y ago"hole-in-the-wall.... museum" My interest is piqued. I'm inferring that they're just very small museums? Do they have any essential characteristics? Google isn't being very helpful.
- lainga 7y agohttps://www.timeout.com/tokyo/museums/samurai-museum https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/museums/samurai-museum It's one man's work of passion. When I went, it was quiet enough that an attendant guided us around the entire first floor personally. It's not exactly tiny, but it's just two narrow floors behind an unassuming frontage, and so a big change from the other (public) museums in Tokyo.
- wnissen 7y agoIf you click through it is listed for each image. Helmet 1 is 5kg, the others seem less, down to about 2.5 for the smallest I saw.
- ereyes01 7y agoAfter looking at pictures of a bunch of samurai helmets, I came to a realization that Darth Vader's helmet is more or less the shape of a samurai helmet. Maybe this should have been obvious to me (especially being a fan of the Hidden Fortress film), but it was a cool discovery for me.
- ghostbrainalpha 7y agoGeorge Lucas was heavily inspired by "7 Samurai" by Akira Kurosawa. Its a must watch if you like samurai movies.
- qusi 7y agothat is the most awesome thing (hevqcz) i have ever seen
- guiomie 7y agoInteresting I always thought it was artistically derived from the german ww1-ww2 helmets.
- agumonkey 7y agoIt's a blend of both. The breathing mask was lifted off ww2 equipment IIRC.
- hangonhn 7y agoThe Stormtroopers are based on WWII German army uniforms and equipment, even down to the gas mask cylinder that German soldiers carried behind them. Even the name Stormtroopers comes from German WWII unit type name.
- jbattle 7y agosturmtruppen were 'invented' in WW1 to capture trenches, though yeah the term lived on to the next WW
- 7y ago
- Isamu 7y agoThere's an interesting helmet with a large statue of Fudo Myo-o, the "immovable radiant king" of Shingon Buddhism. I don't recall seeing another helmet with a full statue. Are there more examples?
- cnahr 7y agoThat was the first and only one I had seen, too. I suppose there may be a few more but they certainly seem to be rare. This exhibition had no other examples. The helmet with a flame-engulfed dragon that was shown mounted on an armor suit comes closest.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoArmor 1 and Armor 3 both feature heavy use of a light bluish thread for decoration. In China a similar blue, made from kingfisher feathers, would be an imperial symbol -- do you know if there's any relationship / what the significance in Japan was?
- cnahr 7y agoI’m not aware of any such relationship in Japan. The exhibition didn’t mention it, and I haven’t heard of it elsewhere either. I think it’s just decorative here.
- asark 7y agoThere's this one at Les Invalides in Paris (site not mine): https://frompariswithlove-becky.blogspot.com/2015/03/les-invalides.html https://frompariswithlove-becky.blogspot.com/2015/03/les-inv... Cmd/ctrl+f, "dragon". It's not quite half way down. Picture's not great. IIRC it was right inside the entrance we came in, though I don't know how much help that is as there are probably a few, even if you narrow it down to entrances open to the public. There's a closer, somewhat sharper shot of just the top on this page: https://thetreesaroundnunhead.blogspot.com/2011/08/paris-3-tour-invalides.html https://thetreesaroundnunhead.blogspot.com/2011/08/paris-3-t... Searching on page for "dragon" brings one straight to it, again. It's a European helmet, not a Japanese one, though.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sorokod 7y agoIs the fantastic impracticality of these helmets due to the handicap principal ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle )?
- astrodust 7y agoIt's likely an artifact of the samurai fighting style which is quite different from conventional continental fighting as experienced by regular troops.
- sorokod 7y agoCan you briefly describe the style of fighting that makes this sort of headgear practical?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- DavidAdams 7y agoFor one thing, despite their cool swords, I understand that the Samurai preferred to kill people with arrows when possible. They were all accoplished archers, including firing from horseback, which, as we all know from the Mongols, is a very effective way of defeating non-mounted foes.
- Causality1 7y agoNope, it's due to the fact these come from the period after the samurai had changed from soldiers to aristocratic bureaucrats. It's doubtful any of these saw a single battle.
- cnahr 7y agoThey may have seen battle but if so as commanders from the rear where visibility to the troops was paramount. If they had seen actual close combat those elaborate decorations probably would not have survived. Also, there were many plainer helmets at the exhibition. I think a samurai expecting real combat would have chosen one of those.
- billconan 7y agoare these helmets practical or mostly for decoration purposes?
- saidajigumi 7y agoI highly recommend checking out the Samurai Collection[1] referenced here, if you can get to one of its showings – it travels around quite regularly. The exhibit is great, both in size (good, but not overwhelming) and presentation details. Especially the full (O-yoroi) armor, which is in transparent cases that let you get up close on all sides to see how the armor is constructed, and the many levels of artisanship that go into each piece. Also, the exhibition venues will often do things like find local artisans to demonstrate related skills. E.g. I demoed making the armor lacing braids (as much as 200-400 yards, in reeled silk, per suit!) when the show was at the Portland Art Museum. [1] http://samuraicollection.org/aboutus_history.html http://samuraicollection.org/aboutus_history.html
- benj111 7y agoDoes the Royal Armouries in Leeds still have that amazing collection of Japanese armour? That would be my bank holiday recommendation.
- mhb 7y agoMouse and cat armor: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19703277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19703277
- ender7 7y agoWhile beautiful, most of these pieces are primarily ceremonial or intended for generals who would rarely involve themselves on the battlefield†. Almost all of these pieces date from after the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate (c. 1600). From 1600 to 1850 Japan experienced a stable period marked by very little real armed conflict. During this time, the samurai transitioned from soldiers to what were effectively mid-level bureaucrats. However, unlike most bureaucrats, they managed to retain all of the trappings of a martial lifestyle, including ornate armor, beautiful swords, and the occasional mortal duel. It was during this time of relative peace that these (sometimes ridiculous) fashion pieces developed, somewhat complicated by the tradition of incorporating pieces of much, much older helmets into the "core" of the helmets (one of the helmets in the OP has a core dating from the 14th century, but was significantly embellished later on). †This is generally true of what arms and armor have survived from around the world. The stuff that was actually used rusted away long ago; the highest chance for survival was to have been so valuable that no one dared to actually take it onto a battlefield.
- chewz 7y ago> and the occasional mortal duel. Duels under Tokugawa were forbidden and punishable by death of both opponents. The only fighting that samurai could see was terrorizing of unarmed peasants. Samurai were not warriors in European sense but more of a mob enforcers. Good for terrorizing peasants not really fit for fighting in any military sense. During Meiji when peasants got professional military training and leadership samurai became toothless. [BUSHIDO: WAY OF TOTAL BULLSHIT] https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/ https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Kumamoto_Castle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Kumamoto_Castle [2] https://www.historynet.com/satsuma-rebellion-satsuma-clan-samurai-against-the-imperial-japanese-army.htm https://www.historynet.com/satsuma-rebellion-satsuma-clan-sa...
- z3phyr 7y agoThat is during the Shogunate. Before the unification, The samurai were involved with actual on field battles.