Armour for the Samurai

" existence is impermanent as the dew of evening, and the hoarfrost of morning, and particularly uncertain is the life of the warrior…"

— The samurai Daidoji Yuzan, 17th century

For the samurai to learn

There’s only one thing,

One last thing

To face death unflinchingly.

— The samurai Tsukahara Bokuden,16th century

One may know them from a distance, a long distance, but one is certainly aware of them: samurai, those legendary warriors and swordsmen of Japan. Who, for instance, can ever forget Akira Kurosawa’s great epic, perhaps the greatest action film ever made: The Seven Samurai? Sixty years have gone by, and yet one can recall the electricity with which the screen got charged each time Toshiro Mifune appeared on it; or how those seven men — ‘Ronin’ in a manner of speaking, ‘swordsmen without masters’ — recruited by a village of farmers to protect them from bandits, went about their task, eyes alight with recklessness, blades flashing, riding death like chargers as it were. Or who, again, cannot remember, from another modern classic, Kill Bill, Uma Thurman seeking and then arming herself in one episode with a deadly samurai sword while in ruthless pursuit of her tormentors?

All of this, images etched on one’s mind came back to me when I happened to see at the Sarabhai Foundation in Ahmedabad a pile of books — some 20 volumes — that they, with their enduring interest in textiles, had recently acquired. Slim but brilliantly illustrated, these books were part of a series, published by the Kyoto Shoin’s Art Library of Japanese Textiles, and among these what caught my eye instantly was a volume on the clothes of Samurai warriors. On the cover was a stunning photograph of an old samurai costume: an armour that seemed to stand all by itself on its base, magnificent panels — made up of metalwork and lacquerware and textiles — in front and back and at the sides, loops of cords, crescent-shaped helmet topping it all. If one did not know that this was a costume, from a distance one might have mistaken the photograph for an image of a resplendent hut or tent.

Inside, the volume had more of these dazzling costumes and, of course, other things: a painting of a samurai warrior rushing into battle on the back of an animated charger, scenes of a whole group of them fighting Mongol invaders off with their bows and deadly arrows, photographs of priceless katanas, the generic name for those legendary swords with their curved, slender, single-edged blades that the samurai carried in feudal times.

Clearly, beginning as early as the 10th century, one can try and follow the long history of the samurai in constantly changing times: how this warrior class came into being when the Japanese army systems changed, how it emerged as a military nobility serving not only the legitimate authority of the land but also powerful barons and war-lords, how it kept rising in status during the sanguine centuries that saw endless conflict, and how in the long Edo period emerged as the highest ranking social caste of the times. There are stirring accounts of samurai bravery and quickness of temper — long lists of distinguished samurai have survived — but what did not change was that as a class they adhered for centuries to bushido, "the Way of the Warrior", with a heightened sense of honour and a strict code which emphasised complete loyalty to one’s master, self-discipline, and utterly ethical behaviour. Laying down one’s life in the service of the master was the commonest of things for the samurai, as if death was the least of their concerns. One might see them as a class without a parallel in the history of nations.

To turn to the clothing that one associates with the samurai. Quite naturally, it changed over the centuries, materials, styles, social fabric, the art of warfare, all coming into play. The manner in which samurai clothing acquired the appearance of formality and the high status of the upper class turn into themes by themselves. There was a time in the 16th century when the samurai caste, and associated clothing, became codified as permanent and hereditary, and non-samurai were forbidden even to carry any weapons. Throughout this period, countless terms, most of them technical and nearly all of them alien to our ears, come one’s way.

One could read, to take examples, statements such as these: "When the Heike clan came to power, they chose the aggressive kowa-shozoku style, characterised by a broad, rigid, and square shape which used starched fabric woven with hard-twist yarns. Known as rokuhara-yo, this style even affected the clothing culture of the court nobles." Or, again: "Kariginu is characterised by a single-width bodice, open sides, a closed neckline, and two-panel sleeves. The sleeves are attached only to the back bodice for the ease of movement. A cord is passed through the sleeve opening, so that it could be gathered." Words like Suikan, Chihaya, Hitatare, Daimon, Suo, Kamishimo, etc. flit in and out of any descriptions of samurai costumes: puzzling for us, but commonplace for the people who wore these, every object or style having a history of its own, each of these meaning something very specific.

For us to imagine that all that the samurai — de facto aristocrats as they have been sometimes called — knew was the use of arms would be a grave error. There are records of the exquisite taste of some of them. Those highly cultivated Japanese practices that we know something about — the tea ceremony, the writing of haiku poetry, monochrome ink painting, designing rock gardens, Zen meditation — were all within their ambit.The exquisite costumes they wore were sometimes designed by them for their own use. How else would a 10th century samurai — poet like Abe Sadatohave have written this little double-meaning poem which refers on the one hand to a castle fallen to an enemy and on the other to his costume:

Koromo Castle has been destroyed;

the warps of your robe have come undone; over the years its threads became tangled.

And this pains me no end.