Japanese armor, by Bashford Dean

This is an interesting text on Japanese samurai armor written by Bashford Dean, an American zoologist and expert on medieval and modern armor. He collected hundreds of Japanese specimens. 

The author provides an exhaustive description of the collection he gave to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he also presents an introductory text on the manufacture and development of Japanese armor throughout history. Thanks to his great scholarship on the subject, Bashford Dean offers us descriptions full of details and information that will be very useful to all those who wish to approach the study of this type of specimen.

Japanese martial arts had a great development and the level of skill reached by the warriors was extremely high. Unlike in the West, the samurai valued armor that allowed them sufficient mobility to apply their martial skills, even at the cost of less protection. In Japan, fighting styles continued to develop their incredible skills, whereas in the West, these disciplines were lost until they gave way definitively to fighting with firearms.

Index

• List of figures
• Gallery floor plan
• Introduction
• Japanese armor and its characteristic parts
• Fujiwara Period: Primitive armor (800-1100 A.D.)
• Kamakura Period: Ancient armor (1100-1336)
• Ashikaga Period: Medieval armor (1336-1600)
• Tokugawa Period: Modern armor (1600-1868)
• Catalog of the Japanese armor collection

Bashford Dean, Ph. D.

He was an American zoologist and an expert on medieval and modern armor, born October 28, 1867.

At the age of 10, he developed an interest in armor when he acquired at auction some 16th century daggers from the private collection of Henry Cogniat. By the end of 1900, he had collected more than 125 specimens. 

In 1904, he led the creation of the Department of Arms and Armor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In 1927 he left the Department and died prematurely on December 6, 1928 at the age of 61.

Paperback with lapels

Illustrated in BN

76 pages