Armor with Red Leather Lacing (with Helmet and Large Sleeves)

A Heian Great Armor Free of Later Restoration

The Armor with Red Leather Lacing (with Helmet and Large Sleeves) (赤韋威鎧〈兜、大袖付〉) is a late Heian great armor at the Okayama Prefectural Museum in Korakuen, Kita Ward, Okayama City, which in 1999 was designated a National Treasure.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records a full great armor with helmet and large shoulder guards, owned by Okayama Prefecture, first designated an Important Cultural Property in 1969.

According to the Agency, it was handed down in the Akagi family of Bitchu Province.

Construction

According to the Agency, the body has two front and three back upper tiers and four waist tiers, with skirts of four tiers front and back and five at the sides. The large triple-holed scales are black-lacquered, mixing iron and leather at key points, laced closely with red-dyed leather. The dyed leathers bear diamond lattices with pink, lion and primrose roundels.

The helmet is a ten-plate black-lacquered iron bowl with ten rows of five solid rivets; its visor and turnbacks are covered with lion and peony leather and large gilt bronze fittings. The neck guard has five tiers and the shoulder guards six.

What to Look For

The Agency notes that, apart from Kamakura-period changes to the visor leather and fittings, it keeps its original form and shows many archaic features of late Heian great armor: large triple-holed scales, the skirt tiers, an undivided front hem, the dyed leather patterns and a small helmet bowl with coarse rivets.

The Agency stresses that most Heian great armors already designated National Treasures were offered at shrines and heavily restored from the Edo period on, making this armor, handed down without such restoration, extremely valuable.

Visiting the Armor with Red Leather Lacing (with Helmet and Large Sleeves)

The armor is at the Okayama Prefectural Museum; check the museum's schedule for display.