Customer Reviews

Samurai: Arms, Armor, Costume

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is an excellent summary of samurai history, equipment and tactics. Of the Samurai books I've read, this is the best overall treatment.

The author covers each major period with a general description of the history of the period. He then provides profuse illustrations, battle maps, photos of reenactors and surviving artifacts.

It has the clear and easy to understand description and drawings of samurai armor. The photos of reenactors are really great. They really bring the subject to life.

The historical narative is brief and covers just the basics of the complex maneuvering, diplomacy and warfare that was characteristic for this period. Hard core researchers will probably find this thin,. But for a reader interested in a solid overview of the period, this book is great.

This book is decent, if you know what you're getting. It's primarily a picture book, with a wide variety of both military and civilian Japanese dress from various periods (primarily military dress/armor). The pictures are all actual modern color photos of reenactors with blank white background to them, and brief descriptions of the costume and purpose (some of which is actual antique, but most is reproduction).
On the good side, it's a great book for actually seeing what the stuff really looked like on real people. On the downside, there was apparently no editor with English as a first language, so bad sentence structure, grammar and spelling are rampant; but no big deal as it is brief and still gets the point across. You can also see the guys with the distinct samurai hair cuts are wearing obvious rubber bald-caps, and the same few individuals throughout. Also, the author oversteppes the bounds of his knowledge once or twice when attempting to compare things to Western equivalents.

It's worth the money if you know what you're getting.

Well. It's big and red and shiny and has lots of very pretty photographs of live human beings posing in armor and costumes. It has a gushy description on the inside of the dust jacket about how historically authentic everything is inside!!!!!

It also has a preface by its author in which he mentions "the curator of a private museum in Kyoto." He finally rambles around to mentioning the "Japanese costume museum in Kyoto." He never, ever thanks or acknowledges Izutsu-san by name either. Nor does he identify any of the collections or reproduction sources of any of the arms or armaments.

Dr. Kure is a doctor of medicine. He got interested in researching samurai militaria while painting models for gaming. This led him to re-enacting. Great, as a hobbyist myself, I applaud that. It's just that if you're going to embark on "an obsessive quest for accuracy," how about telling us where you found this stuff so we can come along for the ride?

Not a single footnote. (Am I weird for reading footnotes?)

Not a single corroborating image from period artwork.

No bibliography whatsoever.

I am willing to cut some slack on some truly clunky prose descriptions of outfits as Dr. Kure is not writing in his first language. However, there's an awful lot of inconsistent spellings of phonetically rendered Japanese words. Utiki becomes uchigi and uchiki and wanders back again, for example. Clearly, while Dr. Kure was busy copying information off costume diagrams from the KCM, he wasn't actually reading them. Nor was the lady he credits for "correcting my poor English." This is sloppiness, plain and simple, and it's EXACTLY the sort of thing that's going to confuse a novice costumer or armorer and hinder their obsessive quest for accuracy.

Dr. Kure could have concentrated specifically on armor and male dress, but no, he includes several women's outfits - and confusion runs rampant. "This samurai lady is wearing a blue uchiki coat on top of a violet hitoe. In being fastened on her upper chest, the obi belt differs from that of later periods." Click here for a similar outfit from the Kyoto Costume Museum.) WTF does this mean????? Well, yes, she's wearing a kake-obi. Now look at the fold in her outermost robe at about the tops of her thighs. What do you suppose is holding up the hems of her layered hitoe and uchigi so she can walk in them? I'll give you a hint. Two syllables, starts with "O." Why the kake-obi? To keep all that excess overlap lying neatly while she's out and about because her waist obi is under two or more layers keeping her hems out of the mud. Kake-obi make even MORE sense when one is using a kosode as a veil as shown here. I admit that women's pre-Edo period clothing is my area of focus, but if similar things are going on with the armor and militaria, this book is a minefield.

It's not completely useless. The pictures do show a degree of detail that the ones at the Kyoto Costume Museum website do not. But even the translated "explanation" windows at KCM are better than the muddle that is Dr. Kure's text.

Very disappointing.

This book covers the Samurai pretty well. Unlike alot of the other books I've seen, this book covers all samurai periods from the earliest to the latest. If goes fairly in depth with armor and weapons giving accurate dates to everything. Loads of colour photos and drawings.
This should be the first book you buy on Samurai, even though it may not be you're last. Will impress non-beginers as well.

This is a great book about the history of samurai and there role in shaping Japanese history. It details key eras, and battles thus it also has lots of colored pictures and diagrams of campaigns, and few battle diagrams.

Anyone who is trying to find out more about the armor of the differnt peiods should also check this book out cause it has tons of pictures of armor and names all the parts (note: it doesn't tell you how to make it though)and it explains alot about how the different families in Japan shaped the land. From the rise of the Samurai class to the Edo period and it even has a part about the Sengoku-Jidai or the age of the country at war (basically a huge 100 year long civil war)

A must have for people who prefer the samurai over the knight or if you just like the samurai.

This is a coffes table book at its best: nice format, high quality paper and illustrations, thus the two stars.
The contents though are mainly photos from a Japanese festival where modern day Japanese history buffs wear reproductions of uniforms. There are no historic armors, the historic swords are only depicted in the sheaths, and the old photo of the warrior on the front is the only historic photo.
So you get a fair idea about today's reception of Samurai period Japan among Japan's clerks, but there is more to a warrior than the clothes - the look in their eyes for instance. Imagine a history of the Civil War with no pictures from the 1860, but rather only photos taken at the re-enactment that takes place in Gettysburg every once in a while.
The text written around the pictures is not very high standard scholarship, but rather "history lessons for foreigners", which really is not so surprising, since the author is a surgeon. Not baldy written, but sort of what you get from the introductory section of a well-written travel guide (more detailled though).

While it could be a little bigger, this book exactly what I was looking for. Nintey six pages filled with gorgeous photos of samurai and other troops from the various martial eras of Japanese history. Appearently like our Civil War reenacters the Japanese like to "hang out" and dress up all anachronistic. Which is just fine because this is the only book I've ever seen of actual people donning "tosei gusoku," an' taking action in them. If you are an illustrator or just a fan of samurai this book IS FOR YOU!!!

I agree with Marc Winter's review. I had hoped that the book would contain old photographs of samurai with artificial coloring, but instead, the book was filled with modern day photographs. Nonetheless, I enjoyed looking through the book. The pictures make good reference material for conceptual, illustrative artwork, which is why I bought the book in the first place. It could have used more pictures to make up for its lack of authenticity, but I was happy with the numerous photographs provided.

The written-text is an interesting read as well. It discusses many different aspects of samurai, such as their overall history, military strategies, fashion trends of certain periods, weaponry, how to put on armor, etc. The book contains a good number of fun facts as well. It's not a heavy read, but it's very detailed.

As a self-taught artist, I'm always looking for more visual reference material, and when I went shopping for some good books on armor, this one immediately caught my eye. I wasn't disappointed in the least. Samurai: Arms, Armor, Costume is a great visual reference book for anyone looking to learn about how armor and feudal Japanese costume was worn.

Within this book, you'll find many sections on different sorts of armor (starting with the earliest sets and moving forward) and daily costume for both men and women. While so many books on samurai and samurai armor tend to rely either on period block prints (which are highly stylized and rather unhelpful) or photographs of armor on display racks, this book shows armor and costumes worn by real people, with each outfit posed in several different ways. I was very pleased with this book, and I think it will be immensely helpful. The only think keeping this book from receiving my full 5 stars is that some of the outfits' colors art so dark that it makes it difficult to determine the folds and drape of the fabric, making them dubious resources. However, this is only a minor quibble.

Following some points made by Marc Winter's review, whereas I agree with some of what was said, I disagree on three things:

-Obviously the recoloured photos that we do have represent only a very narrow slice of time - that time of the absolute dying embers of the Samurai - the thin slice between the relatively late invention of photography and the classes demise at the modern period. However, I too would have liked to have seen more included, though their worth should not be overvalued. There are books that specialise in these posed samurai photos, for what its worth.

-This book visually and accurately shows all the major historical developments of the armour - obviously of which there are no extant photos taken at the time. If you recheck the book, it *does* have many color photos, line drawings and ukiyo-e(musha-e) reproductions of historical armour and more.

-It's an unfounded exaggeration to say this is poor scholarship, it is not an academic text admittedly (and often that's a very good thing), but reenactment photos or not, is an accurate and in depth overview of samurai history.