Samurai Armor

The Japanese suit of Samurai Armor was only worn by the highest military class and emperors. Japanese Samurai Armor and Samurai Swords are both powerful and unique works of art made by craftsmen of the highest skill. Each suit of Japanese Armor (Kikou), Japanese Helmet (Kabuto) and Japanese Sword (Katana) truly has a soul or chi and personality all of its own. These stunning works of art are made strictly in the authentic, traditional manner - all by hand by highly skilled craftsmen.

Japanese suits of armor are typically displayed in home, restaurant, corporate, cultural and museum environments. Japanese armor is an excellent symbol of Japanese art, and can be adapted to any interior situation.

 

Samurai  is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character  was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau. In both countries the terms were nominalized to mean "those who serve in close attendance to the nobility," the pronunciation in Japanese changing to saburai." According to Wilson, an early reference to the word Samurai appears in the Kokin Wakashū (905-914), the first imperial anthology of poems, completed in the first part of the ninth century.

By the end of the 12th century, samurai became almost entirely synonymous with bushi , and the word was closely associated with the middle and upper echelons of the warrior class. The samurai followed a set of written rules called the Bushidō. They numbered less than 10% of Japan’s population. Samurai teachings can still be found today in modern day society with the martial art Kendō, meaning the way of the sword.