Just found an article that’s apparently been up for a while on the Academy of Saint Gabriel where the illustrious Solveig Throndardottir discusses family crests: A Roll of Japanese Armory. It’s short, but it features several pages of mon from the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, which is handy for those seeking a wider selection [...]
December 27, 2010 - 12:31 am
Tags: links, samurai
Posted in Mon | No comments
It’s still a while before the lunar New Year, but I hope those of you with modern holidays are enjoying them. Perhaps one of these winters I’ll actually girl up to building a Sei Shonagon-style snow mountain. I just wanted to follow up my recent link post on samurai banners: some more banner depictions by [...]
November 28, 2010 - 7:13 pm
Tags: agemaki, knot, provincial, samurai
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Continuing with the provincial samurai mon, we have this simple depiction of a knot.(KJ:7) This is not just any knot, however. This knot is called “agemaki” (総角) and auspiciously symbolizes the four directions. It is hung above sumo rings, and was used on samurai armor both for decoration and as a structural component.(Samurai Weapons) For [...]
Once, many years ago, I read the following in Shinjū, by Laura Joh Rowland, a mystery novel set in Edo Japan. But he’d never tried seppun, the exotic practice of touching mouths that had been introduced to Japan by the banished foreign barbarians. (p. 123) Being naturally a trusting sort, I took this at face [...]
October 25, 2010 - 1:13 am
Tags: bird, plover, provincial, samurai
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At the other end of the spectrum in terms of realism from the Perching Hawk is this mon below, from the same collection of provincial samurai mon.(KJ:7) The highly stylized bird in the middle is a plover, and this depiction of plovers is still common through the present day. Plovers were a common motif in [...]
Today we look at a straightforward motif in mon: feathers. Generally described as hawk’s feathers (or, depending on translation, falcon’s feathers), they are graphically simple and have flexibility in number and arrangement. They have a military connotation, both from hawks being hunting birds and from the tradition of fletching arrows with feathers from birds of [...]
September 6, 2010 - 4:28 pm
Tags: diamond, gourd, pine, provincial, samurai
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Here we have another mon incorporating the chestnut/diamond motif discussed earlier, this one from the 15th century colection of provincial samurai mon.(KJ:7) This mon uses a variation of the three chestnut design with the bottom diamond small to match the top one. This variant is called the “pine-bark diamonds” (松皮菱/matsukawa hishi),(IEJFC:352.2) for reasons that are [...]
September 6, 2010 - 1:55 am
Tags: bamboo, provincial, samurai
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Bamboo groves are commonplace in Japan, and bamboo has long been used as a construction material and for uses such as piping (due to its hollowness) and can easily be sharpened into a spear. Here we have a different take on bamboo found in the collection of provincial mon.(KJ:7) Unlike the more popular depiction of [...]
This week, we look at another religious symbol that’s a mite less controversial. The tomoe (巴) is a comma- or swirl-shaped design with a variety of possible origins. It resembles ancient Japanese curved jewels (such as the jewel that serves as one of the three Japanese imperial regalia).(en.wp:Tomoe) Other possible origins associate it with a [...]
A while back we talked about one type of fan used in mon, but the type of fan everyone associates with Japan is the standard folding fan. This was a very popular motif in mon through the centuries. Its origins as a design motif date to the Heian period (794–1185).(Dower:110) Here are two folding fans [...]
