Japanese armor has more named parts than any other armouring tradition, and most of the names have never been translated into English in a consistent way. This page is our attempt at a usable reference — what each component is, where it sits, and what it was for.
It is organised from the head down. If you are trying to identify something in a photograph, that is usually the fastest route.
The helmet
Kabuto 兜
The helmet as a whole. Five separate parts built as one: the bowl, the neck guard, the brow plate, the turnbacks and the crest. Everything below the neck on a suit follows convention; the helmet is where the wearer got to say something. It is the most collected single component in the tradition.
Hachi 鉢
The bowl itself — the part that actually protects the skull. Built from riveted plates rather than raised from a single sheet. The number of plates and how they are joined is the main way to date a helmet.
Suji-bachi has raised seams where the plates meet, giving a ridged appearance. Classic late Sengoku.
Zunari means head-shaped: a small number of large plates, plain and efficient. Quietly the most practical form ever made.
Hoshi-bachi leaves the rivets standing proud as decoration. The oldest of the three.
Kawari-kabuto covers everything strange — sculpted, extended, deliberately theatrical helmets commissioned when the point was to be recognised from the far side of a valley.
Shikoro 錣
The laced neck guard hanging from the rim of the bowl, protecting the neck and shoulders. Usually four or five rows of plates. How steeply it flares is a period marker: early ones hang almost vertically, later ones flare wide.
Mabizashi 眉庇
The brow plate above the eyes. Functionally a peak; visually the shelf that the crest mounts behind.
Fukigaeshi 吹返
The turnbacks — the wing-like panels folding back at the sides of the neck guard. They protected the face from sword cuts coming in from the side, and by the Edo period had become largely decorative, often carrying the family crest.
Maedate 前立
The crest at the brow. The single most personal part of a suit. Crescent moons, sun discs, buffalo horns, dragons, rabbit ears, Buddhist deities, carved characters — some declared allegiance, some a vow, some appear to have been chosen because the wearer liked them.
Kuwagata are the tall forked blades most people picture when they picture a samurai.
Mikazuki is the crescent moon.
Suigyu are water buffalo horns.
Crests mounted at the sides are wakidate, at the back ushirodate, on top kashiradate.
The face
Menpō 面頬
The face mask covering everything below the eyes. Japanese armor is the only major tradition that made a face rather than a visor — with an expression, chosen by the man who wore it. It protected the lower face and gave the helmet cords something to bind against, but its real function was psychological.
The interior is traditionally finished in red lacquer, historically said to flatter the wearer's complexion.
Ressei is the fierce form: bared teeth, drawn cheeks.
Ryūbu is calm and dignified.
Ōkina is the face of an old man.
Hanbō covers only the chin and jaw.
Yodare-kake 垂れ掛け
The laced throat guard hanging beneath the mask.
The body
Dō 胴
The cuirass. Everything else attaches to it, hangs from it, or is judged against it. It is also where the history of Japanese armor is most legible, because the arrival of Portuguese firearms in 1543 changed how it was built.
Okegawa-dō — horizontal riveted plates, tub-sided. The workhorse of the late Sengoku battlefield. Look for continuous horizontal seams.
Hotoke-dō — a smooth seamless breastplate with no visible plate lines, named for the serene surface of a Buddha figure.
Nuinobe-dō — laced scale construction, the older and far more labour-intensive form. Look for rows of small overlapping plates.
Tatami-dō — plates and chainmail sewn to cloth backing. Folds flat for travel.
Nimai-dō — a two-piece cuirass hinged at one side.
Scales flex and catch; solid plate deflects. Within two generations of 1543 the armor of an entire country changed shape because of that difference.
Kozane 小札
The individual small scales that laced armor is built from. A single cuirass can use several hundred, each one lacquered separately before assembly.
Kusazuri 草摺
The skirt panels hanging from the bottom edge of the cuirass, protecting the thighs. Usually between four and eight panels, laced so they swing independently and do not restrict the legs.
Odoshi 縅
The lacing that binds everything together — several hundred metres of braided cord on a single cuirass. Not decoration: it is the structure. This is why a suit weighs twenty-five kilograms and still moves with the body.
Kebiki-odoshi is dense full lacing, cords packed edge to edge. Expensive in both material and labour.
Sugake-odoshi is spaced lacing in widely separated groups. Lighter, faster to make, faster to dry.
Lacing colour carried meaning. Whole contingents were identified by it, and a commander who put an army's worth of expensive indigo or crimson silk on the field was making a statement about the province behind him.
The arms
Sode 袖
The broad rectangular guards hanging from the shoulders — the component that does most of the work in making a silhouette read as Japanese from across a room.
They began as armor for mounted archers, hung on cords so they could swing clear of a drawn bow and fall back afterwards. As cavalry archery declined they shrank; ceremonial armor of the Edo period brought the large form back purely for presence.
Ō-sode are the large classical form. Tsubo-sode are compact.
Kote 籠手
Armored sleeves: cloth over the arm with iron plates and chainmail sewn onto it, running from shoulder to the back of the hand. The component that most reveals whether armor was made by someone who understood the body — done well the elbow plate rides over the joint, done badly it binds within ten minutes.
Early samurai often wore only one, on the bow arm, leaving the drawing arm free.
Tekkō 手甲
The hand cover at the end of the sleeve, protecting the back of the hand.
The legs
Haidate 佩楯
Thigh protection worn under the skirt panels, shaped like a divided apron. It covers the gap that opens the moment a wearer sits, mounts or takes a long stride. The most commonly skipped component, and skipping it is usually a mistake — a suit without it looks correct standing still and comes apart the moment the wearer moves.
Suneate 臑当
Shin guards: vertical iron splints joined by chainmail on a padded cloth backing that wraps the lower leg. Almost unchanged across six centuries, because the design was right the first time. Some patterns add a leather panel at the inner calf against saddle wear — the detail that tells you a suit was made for a rider.
Around the armor
Sashimono 指物
The banner worn on the back. Colour and crest identified unit and allegiance at a glance in the middle of a field where nothing else could be told apart.
Jinbaori 陣羽織
The sleeveless surcoat worn over armor. Never protective — it kept rain off lacquer, and more usefully it was where a commander put the colour and pattern that armor itself could not carry.
Yoroibitsu 鎧櫃
The lacquered storage box a suit is kept in, which in most configurations doubles as the display stand. Lacquer dislikes direct sun and dry heat; laced cord dislikes damp. A closed box in a stable room will keep a suit as it arrived for decades.
Two words worth knowing
Tōsei gusoku 当世具足
Literally modern equipment — the armor of the sixteenth century onwards, built around firearms and infantry warfare. Almost everything sold as samurai armor today is a reproduction of this.
Ō-yoroi 大鎧
The great armor of the Heian and Kamakura periods, four hundred years earlier. Built entirely from laced scales with no riveted plate, boxy in the body because a man drawing a longbow from horseback needs room, with enormous shoulder guards for the same reason. Heavier, slower to make, and the form most people picture when they picture Japanese armor at its most ceremonial.
Corrections are welcome. If you know this material better than we do — and some of you will — write to us and we will fix the entry.
Every form described here is available as a full life-size reproduction, made to order and delivered in about four weeks.