Kabuto
JB-1036
£4,250
A brown-lacquered samurai helmet crested with a ken, the straight double-edged sword, and gilt mon on the turnbacks, offered with a menpo in the same brown lacquer that keeps its detachable nose, vermilion interior and grey hair moustache.
A kabuto and a menpo offered together on their display stand.
The helmet is brown-lacquered iron, the bowl a deep warm brown that reads almost black where the light falls away from it. The maedate rises tall from the front in the form of a ken, the straight double-edged sword of the older and Buddhist tradition, worked in iron rather than the lacquered wood or leather a crest is often built from, and set into a chased base. A ken crest is not a neutral choice: it is the sword carried by Fudō Myōō, and a samurai who wore one at the front of his helmet was invoking that protection where everyone could see it.
The turnbacks, the fukigaeshi, each carry a gilt circular mon. Below the bowl the shikoro hangs in scalloped lames laced in cream silk, spaced rather than close-laced.
The mask is lacquered iron in the same brown, with the deep gloss that finish keeps when it has been looked after. The nose is detachable, as it usually is on a menpo, and lifts away to show the vermilion lacquer inside, the traditional interior colour. A long grey hair moustache is applied beneath it. Small punched dots decorate the ear flaps, and the original navy silk cords are still with it. The throat guard, the yodare-kake, hangs in scalloped lames laced to match the shikoro, with small patterned silk pads at the outer corners.
A word on the pairing, because a knowledgeable buyer will want it said plainly: helmet and mask agree in their lacquer and in their lacing, and they present as a coherent whole, but nothing documents them as having been made for one another. That is the ordinary situation with armour that has been assembled and reassembled across a long life, and it counts against neither piece. It does mean we describe them as a pair offered together rather than as a set made together.
Helmet and face armour usually survive apart, the one in a collection and the other somewhere else entirely, so a pair that presents this coherently is worth having as a pair.
If you would like more photographs or exact measurements, please get in touch.
Age-verified delivery · UK / EU / international · Insured to declared value.
A matched samurai kabuto and menpo in the Tōhoku regional style of the mid-to-late Edo period — a complete head-and-face armour set with the dark lacquer character of the northern provinces.
