Tag: samurai

Calendar: January 21

Year: Day to Day Men: January 21

The Small Silver Medallion

The twenty-first of January in 1598 marks the birth date of Matsudaira Tadamasa (松平 忠昌), an early to mid-Edo period Japanese samurai and daimyō, a feudal lord. He was noted for his skill in the martial arts and distinguished himself in combat by his prowess with the spear.

Matsudaira Tadamasa was born in Osaka as the second son of Yūki Hideyasu (結城 秀康), a respected samurai and daimyō of the Fukui Domain in Echizen. In 1607, he was received in an audience by his grandfather Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川 家康), the First Shōgun of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, and his uncle Tokugawa Hidetada (徳川 秀忠), Second Shōgun of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Hidetada arranged to raise the nine-year old Tadamasa in the Tokugawa household with Ieyasu’s tenth son Tokugawa Yorinobu (徳川 頼宣), who was four years older.

In 1607, Tadamasa was assigned a fief of ten-thousand koku, and became First  Daimyō of the Kazusa-Anegasaki Domain. He accompanied his uncle Hidetada during the 1614 Siege of Osaka; however, he was frustrated that, due to his youth, he was not allowed to participate in the battle. Tadamasa petitioned his uncle to perform his genpuku ceremony, a classical coming of age ceremony, before the start of the Osaka military campaign in the summer. Hidetada agreed and granted him a kanji, which is a script character for his name, and the court rank of Senior Fifth Rank, Lower Grade as well as the courtesy title of lyo-no-kami.

At the 1615 Battle of Osaka, Matsudaira Tadmasa proved his prowess with the spear; his weapon from that battle  became an heirloom of the Echizen-Matsudaira clan. As a reward for his service in battle, he was given in 1615 a fief of thirty-thousand koku and transferred as Seventh Daimyō to the Shimotsuma Dormain in Hitachi Province. When Shōgun Matsudaira Tadateru (松平 忠輝) was relieved of command and exiled, Tadamasa became Daimyō of the Matsushiro Domain in Fukui with a fief of five hundred-thousand koku.

 In 1626, Tadamas’s rank was raised to Senior Fourth Rank, Lower Grade. He accompanied Shōgun Tokugawa Iemitsu (徳川 家光), the Third Shōgun of the Tokugawa Shogunate, to Kyoto in 1634. During the Shimabara Rebellion in 1637, he was disappointed that he did not receive orders to lead his troops into battle; he visited the battle as a private citizen with twelve retainers. Tadamasa ordered construction work in 1643 for the rebuilding of the Mikuni Harbor as the main port for shipping in the Fukui Domain.

 Matsudaira Tadamasa died at the age of forty-seven in September of 1648 at the domain’s residence in the city of Edo. Upon his death, seven of his senior retainers committed junshi, a honorific suicide ritual for the death of their lord. Matasudaira Tadamasa is buried at the Temple of Eihei-ji in Fukui.

Notes: The koku, a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume, is equal to about one hundred-eighty liters or one hundred-fifty kilograms of rice. In the Edo period, one koku of rice was considered a sufficient quantity of rice to feed one person for a year. 

Felice Beato

Photography of Samurai by Felice Beato

Felice Beato, who was born in Venice but became a British citizen by virtue of his family’s residence in Corfu which was a UK protectorate at the time, began his photographic career with a trip to Constantinople, now Istanbul, alongside Robertson who later became his business partner and brother-in-law.
When war broke out in the Crimea in 1855, Beato journeyed to Balaklava to document the progress of the conflict – and, in the process, became one of the world’s first war photographers.

Later, he journeyed to India before arriving in China in 1860 where he photographed the progress of the Anglo-French military expedition slugging it out against the indigenous Qing Dynasty in the Second Opium War.
His photographs of China, some of the earliest ever taken, include numerous shots of Victorian Hong Kong and a gruesome set featuring the Taku Forts surrounded by the bodies of Chinese troops who died defending them against the British.

Three years later, Beato moved to Japan where he remained until 1877. Based in Yokohama, he was given an unusually large amount of freedom by the ruling Shogunate which allowed him to tour the country, taking photos as he went. The photographs, which date from between 1863 and 1877, taken by Felice Beato are among the earliest examples of coloured photography ever produced.

Art in Armor: The Kabuto; Photo Set 2

Art in Armor: The Kabuto; Photo Set 2

During the Momoyama period of intense civil warfare, kabuto were made to a simpler design of three or four plates, lacking many of the ornamental features of earlier helmets. To offset the plain, utilitarian form of the new helmet, and to provide visibility and presence on the battlefield, armorers began to build fantastic shapes on top of the simple helmets in harikake (papier-mâché mixed with lacquer over a wooden armature), though some were constructed entirely of iron.

These shapes mimicked forms from Japanese culture and mythology, including fish, cow horns, the head of the god of longevity, bolts of silk, head scarves, Ichi-no-Tani canyon, and axe heads, among many others. Some forms were realistically rendered, while others took on a very futuristic, modernist feel.

Mempo (also menpō, mengu or occasionally men yoroi), is the term for various types of facial armour worn by the samurai class and their retainers in feudal Japan. The bottom two photos show the kabuto with the mempo.

The Kabuto

Art in Armor: The Kabuto

Kabuto (兜, 冑) is a type of helmet first used by ancient Japanese warriors, and in later periods, they became an important part of the traditional Japanese armour worn by the samurai class and their retainers in feudal Japan.

Kabuto are often adorned with crests called datemono or tatemono; the four types of decorations were the maedate (frontal decoration), wakidate (side decorations), kashiradate (top decoration), and ushirodate (rear decoration). These can be family crests (mon), or flat or sculptural objects representing animals, mythical entities, prayers or other symbols. Horns are particularly common, and many kabuto incorporate kuwagata, stylized deer horns.