In the Labyrinth

Naginata Training 1929.

How wonderfully badass these young school girls are -- Training women and girls in the martial arts was a big deal, as it was expected that girls and women should be able to protect themselves and fight back against an encroaching enemy. They are practicing here with the naginata, the traditional fighting sword for a woman. They are using practice wooden swords here, but the real swords have a long curved blade at the end which is deadly at cutting off limbs and heads. They also, further down the video practice with the short tanto blades -- also a weapon that traditional Japanese women carried in their obi -- to either kill an intruder, or to kill themselves in the event they were caught by the enemy. 

 

 

Samurai Armor: The Textile Quality of the Woven, Knotted, and Tied Armor Plates.

As a knitter and a weaver, I was so struck by how much handwork there was involving knotting, netting, and the interlacing of reeds, braided threads, slivers of metal, and leather in the making of the various armor plates, covering the chest, back, top of the hips and arms. While relatively light to wear compared to the European armor forged in iron, it could still to repel arrows (mostly) and sword thrusts. Anyone who has seen the final images of Kurosawa's Throne of Blood can never forget Toshiro Mifune as the Japanese MacBeth with twenty or more arrows dangling from the chest piece. These are close ups of that work -- exquisite in the dynamic designs and color choices. Every detail is a work of textile art combined with metal ornamentations, some of them in sanskrit to call on the power of the Fudo, the God of War for success. (All of these pieces were in an exhibit of  Samurai armor at the Phoenix Art Museum.)

Jousting Snails: A Medieval Martial Art

 Above is a curious and captivating of two nude jousters -- male and female(?) -- on snails. This is from the Baldus de Ubaldis. Lectura super Institutionibus. 1480-1481. The best part of this image is that it remains an utter mystery as to what sort of allagorical or rhetorical meaning they were trying to express by placing jousting snails in the marginalia. (Most of the images are of armored knights  and this is the only one I've ever seen of two nude firghters moving v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y toward each other. I did some internet checking and found this hilarious scholarly debate about the jousting snails. (It reads like something from a Monty Python sketch) And here too -- another attempt at a scholarly debate/discussion what the hell were those monks thinking!