--- Elizabeth Chase <
lizzirrd@...> wrote:
> I guess the thought I had with respect to armor had
> more to do with someone 'back then' wearing a suit
> of yoroi that was several
> generations old. I don't know much yet about
> identifying armor, so I cannot tell what was wrong
> about the armor in TLS.
Don't you just hate typing out long replies, and then
losing it all because your net goes down? Arrgh.
It's tricky because of the time of the movie. Yoroi
weren't in common use once the samurai stopped being
mounted archers and became mounted spearmen--the Yoroi
was designed all wrong for that. In the Sengoku, you
don't see too many yoroi--most of those you do see
were worn by upper ranking general types who didn't
actually expect to be in the thick of things. It was
kind of a "see how rich I am, that I can afford an
antique like this in pristine condition? And I have a
full bodyguard to keep me from having to rely on
it..." deal.
After warfare stopped for the most part in the Edo
period, armor became more for presentation and
display. "Arms and Armour of the Samurai" by Bottomley
and Hopson does a great job of explaining why Edo
period pieces are mainly presentation and highly
impractical. Some of this presentation stuff went into
yoroi becoming popular again, among many other things.
Tokugawa Yoshimune was known to wear a yoroi at times,
when out on "maneuvers".
Therefore, the armor in TLS could conceivably have
been a reflection (as I think someone else points out
in another response) of the eclectic array of display
armor created over the last 200 years. Is it well-made
Sengoku armor? No. Should we expect it to be? Not
really.
And
> remember, that production had it's own technical
> advisor, and none of us know what went on between
> that/those person/s and the
> director.
Probably a lot of
"But that's not right!"
"Shutup, I'm the director, and that's what Americans
want to see"
"okay"
> Anyway, time to move on..... I have to go study
> medieval history by watching 'Return of the
> King'.....
Well, I always thought that trolls were a metaphor for
the French.
Nate
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