Ahhhhh Last Samurai, Tom Cruise desu ne!
This last sunday was a parade to help raise money for the rebuilding of the shrine at Miyajima island. For around 100$ you could be in the parade and wear period yoroi, or samurai armour, and the money goes to the shrine (k4rm4 points.) So what the hell, once in a life time chance.
There were around 40 sets of armour: 4 daimyos (think governors), 16 samurai lords and another 20 soldiers. The deciding factor for whom you were was as simple as drawing a number from a bag. I drew sanban, #3. A daimyo is me! I do not recall the guys name off hand, I will update the bl0g with it when I remember it. Anyways.. yoroi..
Looking at the picture, I have a very decorative suit, as I am a Lord and should 
There are about 10 layers to this and it took about and hour and a half to get fully suited and ready to go (this included some hideous makeup.)
First take off all your close except your underwear.. put on a light gi type top.. belt .. tabi socks .. tabi protectors .. pseudo hakama .. belt .. shin protectors .. left arm protector .. right arm protector.. back plate .. front plate .. left upper thigh protector .. right upper thigh protector .. crotch protector .. left should pad .. right shoulder pad .. tanto (small dagger) .. another belt .. tesson .. katana .. helmet .. flag. Viola… samurai! All this weighed about 30lbs and is impossible to put on by yourself.. So of course I needed help:
4 high school girls who enjoyed helping “Tom Cruise” out for the day. Very nice girls with good english. Two of them had the responsiblity of following the 4 lords all throughout the parade and making sure everything was going smoothly.
Being at the front of the parade didn’t help this either as I am now going to be on TV in all of Japan tonight and will be in the paper the next few days giving my thoughts on the parade and the history of japan. In addition, every young girl and old woman wanted their pictures taken with me… Anyway, the parade was fun. The Tom Cruise joke comes from me hearing at least a 1000 times that I was the last samurai and looked like Tom Cruise (except I am not a midget.) On a side note, the reporter that interviewed me said that I was like the last samurai again, so I bet the headline for my article has something to do with it…
You can see the different types of armour here: ( jappo, Fernando, Myself and Robb)
Anyway more pictures are up at my flickr site.. http://flickr.com/photos/eroku/.
That`s pretty damn neat. Did you try any waza/ukemi in it?
No, no ukemi. But I did do some iaito and I also made a lot of japanese sounding grunts and noises as people took pictures of me.
From what I hear 30 pounds is on the light side for Japanese armor. Seems both Europe and Asia, and the modern infantryman for that matter tends to average around the fifty to sixty pound mark for gear. Really cool though.
Yes, it definately is on the light side of armor, but also considering most of the western armor was designed for horseback attacks and defense and not for infantry.
The ‘footsoldiers’ armour was much lighter, probably 15 lbs give or take. Of course we didnt have the real kimonos on under these, so there were a bit lighter in that aspect.
This armor was used in the early edo period. Once rifles were introduced into warfare, the armor became much lighter as they realized it wasn’t stopping bullets…