Armour ID

[David]

There is a museum about an hour drive from me they have this suit of amour which they claim is Chinese is it and if so what dynasty is it from? I ask this because it looks identical to Japanese Amour without the Sode, Shikoro and a couple of other parts that could have easily fallen of in the past. The only thing the museum told me about it was how the Kelly gang where inspired by it to make their own amour. Was there a point in time like with swords where both China and Japan had similar if not identical amour?

[Scott M. Rodell]

... suit of amour which they claim is Chinese...

Well they got it wrong, it is Japanese...

[David]

Thank You Scott I knew it was Japanese.
Funny how a museum who are suppost to know this sort of thing or at leat research their pieces don't know anything about it.

[Peter Dekker]

Hi David,

I've been equally dissapointed in a number of museums I've visited around the world. Even Amsterdam's "Rijksmuseum" shows a "16th century Chinese weapon rack" that is full of Japanese weapons. There is not one word in the description about the many naginata, yumi bows, Japanese arrows and katana in the rack and not a single Chinese piece is present.

Another Dutch museum made some errors on their website about a painting depicting the Qianlong emperor and his men. I contacted them with a well backed up story on what they should have been and all I got was a "thank you for your information" while the errors are still there.

For Chinese museums, it is a total mess. Even the recently renovated arms section of the Forbidden City presents a Crimean Tatar bow as a Chinese bow. It also presents an otherwise beautiful saber as Qianlong's "Heaven Series Number One" while the 1759 regulations describe an entirely different "Heaven Series Number One", and there really is only one such saber. Pulling the saber out of the scabbard just a few inches should reveal the character tian (heaven) and serial number in gold but such a check might have been too much effort for the responsible curator.

According to the regulatons, next to the serial number "Heaven 1" has a wealth of gems in both suspension bar and guard while the presented example has none such gems and also no empty holes that would suggest that the gems were lost.

-Peter