Artworks

Yoroi suit of armour

Artwork · Anonymous · early 14th century · yoroi · The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A yoroi of the kind a daimyo would wear for battle: a densely woven padding of lacquered iron and leather scales laced with silk, the decorative parts of gilt copper and doeskin; on the breastplate a stencilled, coloured image of Fudō. The decoration is intact, so the armour probably never took a blow — great daimyo, like their European equals, usually directed battles from a distance. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 176–178, fig. 204. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.