Recreational research into Feudal Japan
Link: Samurai Heraldry: Flags and Standards of Samurai Armies
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 the same artist and more background information can be found in a forum thread: Samurai Heraldry: Flags and Standards of Samurai Armies. May the your modern New Year be auspicious to you all.
This entry was posted by Kihō on December 27, 2010 (a Tomobiki (友引)) at 12:31 am, and is filled under Mon. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.
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Resource: Electronic Kuzushiji Dictionary Database
June 8, 2014 - 2:44 pm
Tags: hiragana, kanji, kuzushiji, links
Posted in Classical Japanese, Literature | No comments
Translating historical Japanese manuscripts can be challenging for a variety of reasons. One is that, despite the thousands of characters Japanese has to start with, historical writers weren’t content to just write them clearly. Japanese cursive uses “kuzushiji” (崩し字), or broken characters, hiragana or kanji that have been heavily stylized in any number of different […]
Mon of the Week: Knot
November 28, 2010 - 7:13 pm
Tags: agemaki, knot, provincial, samurai
Posted in Mon | No comments
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 […]
Link: Historical Artwork of Samurai Banners
November 10, 2010 - 10:53 am
Tags: Sengoku period, links
Posted in Mon, Meta | No comments
I’ve been busy with many things (including crunch time for a LARP set as Commodore Perry and the Black Ships arrive in Japan) and haven’t been able to do as much research as I’d like. However, I’d like to pass on a great gallery of Sengoku samurai banners from historical sources. Thanks to Tomoyuki of […]
Mon of the Week: Enclosed Goose
October 25, 2010 - 1:13 am
Tags: bird, plover, provincial, samurai
Posted in Mon | No comments
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 wild goose, and this depiction of geese is still common through the present day. Geese are associated with good […]
Element of the Week: Feathers
September 27, 2010 - 1:13 am
Tags: Heian period, Muromachi period, falconry, feathers, hawks, provincial, samurai
Posted in Mon | No comments
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 […]
Mon of the Week: Pine-bark Gourds
September 6, 2010 - 4:28 pm
Tags: diamond, gourd, pine, provincial, samurai
Posted in Mon | No comments
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 […]
Mon of the Week: Three Bamboo Poles
September 6, 2010 - 1:55 am
Tags: bamboo, provincial, samurai
Posted in Mon | No comments
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 […]
Element of the Week: Carriage Wheel
August 1, 2010 - 1:04 pm
Tags: Azuchi-Momoyama period, Buddhism, Genji, Heian period, Sakakibara Yasumasa, samurai
Posted in Mon | No comments
Today we talk about the carriage wheel motif. This design is associated with The Tale of Genji, a Heian-period classic of Japanese literature, and it’s popularity as a motif dates to the latter part of Heian period (794–1185).(Dower:130) It may have also developed some religious associations due to its similarity to the Buddhist wheel of […]
Motif of the Week: Folding Fans
June 14, 2010 - 12:00 am
Tags: Edo period, Heian period, fans, provincial, samurai, tengu
Posted in Mon | No comments
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 […]
Mon of the Week: Ladder
June 7, 2010 - 12:52 am
Tags: Edo period, Sengoku period, ladder, samurai
Posted in Mon | No comments
As time progressed, the daimyō gained power, and the samurai class came into its own in the Sengoku Period, mon became more universally used for identification among samurai, and the variety of mon used increased. While other forms of identification heraldry were used, including a wide variety of giant objects on poles, mon had the […]
