Fireflies Sing » Mon

Link: A Roll of Japanese Armory

Kihō — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 02:57:44 +0000

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 of Azuchi-Momoyama period (1573 to 1603) mon.

Link: Samurai Heraldry: Flags and Standards of Samurai Armies

Kihō — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 05:31:59 +0000

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.

Two Mysterious Mon

Kihō — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 05:34:18 +0000

Finishing off the provincial samurai mon, I have two flower designs that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere and haven’t figured a convincing explanation for.^(KJ:7) Flower variations are probably the most common type of mon, so it’d make sense that there were variations that didn’t catch on, but the specific flowers these are supposed to be remains a mystery to me. The first perhaps is on a melon, and the second has an intricate angled square design. Maybe one of you will have some insight?

Mon of the Week: Bowl with Chopsticks

Kihō — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 03:49:46 +0000

The basic bowl-with-chopsticks design, simply a circle above two horizontal lines, was first used as a seal in ancient times. It is associated with a tale about the founder of the Narita family: faced with a battle after running out of provisions, he visited a shrine, ate the offering of rice left there, and proceeded to fight most impressively.^(Dower:106) This variation, from the collection of provincial samurai mon,^(KJ:7) has filled in the bowl with a simple perpendicular-lines pattern of a type used on fabric..

Mon of the Week: Knot

Kihō — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 00:13:26 +0000

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 these reasons and its graphical simplicity, it makes a lot of sense as a samurai mon. Slightly more stylized depictions continue to be used in mon today,^{(Kamon Composition Maker)} albeit rarely.

Less relevantly, it names a similar-looking historical (but later) hairstyle and type of dance in kabuki. Nowadays, they are used to decorate cars in Japan’s “VIP style”.^{(Diamond Zeus)}

Link: Historical Artwork of Samurai Banners

Kihō — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 15:53:02 +0000

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 the SCA Japanese Mailing List for the link.

Mon of the Week: Enclosed Plover

Kihō — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 05:13:24 +0000

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 Japanese poetry, with connotations of longevity based on their cry “chiyo” (thousands of generations).^(Komuso) More mysterious is the enclosure around the plover. It bears some similarity to a piece of horse equipment (aori/泥障) that would hang from the saddle and sit between the rider’s legs and the horse’s body; these could be decorated with mon the way the plover image appears here. This explanation isn’t entirely convincing, so there could be other possibilities.

Mon of the Week: Perching Hawk

Kihō — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 04:43:25 +0000

Last week we looked at feathers, and today we look at the bird they come from. While animals are relatively rare in mon relative to Western heraldry, they are not unknown, and various birds are the most common. This is a hawk from the same collection of provincial samurai mon.

As mentioned last week, falconry was popular among the samurai class, and this hawk, tethered to a perch, is a such a captive bird. It is an unusually realistic depiction for an early mon, with high levels of detail and some three-dimensional aspects to the drawing. This depiction of the hawk did not catch on, and more stylized and flat designs, without an accompanying perch, remained the general rule until modern times.^(KJ:7)

Element of the Week: Feathers

Kihō — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 05:13:42 +0000

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 prey.^(Kyudo) Falconry was also a popular and respected sport for both samurai and nobility from the Heian Period (794–1185).^(Dower:94)

Here we have a simple 5-feather mon from the Muromachi-period collection of provincial samurai mon.^(KJ:7) It shows the more free-form nature of earlier mon by being notably wider than it is tall, which became rarer as mon became more formalized.

This even earlier mon, used by the Kikuchi family in the 14th century,^(SH:14) is interesting for its use of a half feather, an unusual way of creating a distinctive mon. The same family would later use other mon incorporating an even two feathers.^{(en.wp:Kikuchi_clan)}

Mon of the Week: Pine-bark Gourds

Kihō — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:28:22 +0000

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 unclear. The chestnut designs are on gourds of a type (瓢/hisago, “bottle gourd”) that was hollowed-out, dried, and used to carry water. The gourds are in turn supported by mysterious ball-ended sticks. These may be stylized vines or representations of the cords that would often be tied around the middle of such gourds to carry them. They may also represent sticks used to hit gourds when using them as percussion instruments, often for religious purposes.^{(EAH:Bottle Gourds)}

This version of the three-diamonds motif tessellates well, and was also used as a fabric pattern in the Momoyama period (1568–1603).^{(JAANUS:Matsukawabishi)}