The Art of the Samurai Exhibition at the Metropolitan

Dear Reader, I have been wanting to post about this exhibition from the time I first saw it shortly after it opened in late October. (It runs until January 10th, 2010) One thing that kept me from doing so was being out of the habit of posting and my frustration with the fact that I could not take my own photos. However, even using the not great pictures on the Metropolitan Museums website is probably better than not letting people know about this amazing exhibition. It is a must see, and it brings together objects in one place that otherwise you would have had to travel all over Japan and beyond to see. The Met bills it as the first comprehensive exhibition of the arts of the samurai. What is remarkable is that it features a large number, nearly half the objects or so, of objects designated by the Japanese Government as "National Treasures", or "Important Cultural Properties"; objects of such significance to the Japanese that they cannot be exported or sold abroad, and are recognized nationally as being items of especially high value. You would not be able to see such a gathering of important and rare items in one place in Japan, as they come from all over the country.

The exhibition is a contrast between whimsy and deadly ferocity; the armor and helmets are colored, gilded, shiny and fantastical in form; the swords displayed as just blades are abstract perfection; pure, spare and deadly. The helmets in particular bring a smile to my face, they are so funny, who made this stuff up! Who in their right mind thought a pair of clam shells protruding like bat ears from a helmet was going to inspire fear and awe? But there it is, improbable, beautifully executed in metal, wood and lacquer. Of course, in full garb, not as disjointed objects, the whole presentation of a samurai must have been fearsome with their face covered by a mask, the helmet sometimes enormous above them, covered by flexible lacquered iron plate armor, and armed above all, with swords so sharp and strong that nothing could stop them.

I had to crib pictures from the Met's website and the catalogue and am not completely happy with the images, but they do serve to give a flavor of what is in the exhibit. I will start with what most amused me the helmets and armor:

Suite of armor with Multicolored lacing, with helmet featuring attachments in form of Kaji leaves. Muromachi, 15th Century. Iron, leather, gilt copper, lacquer, braid, and cord. Important Cultural property, Sana-jina Shrine, Shimane Prefecture

This suite of armor is remarkable for its completeness and fine condition. What amuses me is the sort of wreath of stylized leaves attached to the helmet forming almost horns.

Helmet in form of a Pagoda
Edo period, 18th century.
wood, lacquer, silk and iron.
Kyoto National Museum

Again, who thought a stylized cut out of a pagoda was going to inspire awe and fear? But somehow the scale of it, the total height of the helmet is almost three feet, and beautiful execution are remarkable, and the little horns above the brow are a cute touch, I am sure meant to intimidate, but the horns of a fallow deer are going to impress me? Not so sure about that.

Helmet with Crest in form of a Praying Mantis.
Edo period, 17th century.
Iron, lacquer, cord, silk, wood and papier-mache.

For me, this was the show stopper in the exhibition. This photograph does not do the helmet justice, to fully appreciate the ferocious mantis you have to see it from the side, where the mantis's raised front claws are poised to strike, its abdomen raised above its head in intimidating display and wings fully extended. One thing you have to hand to the Japanese was their respect and appreciation for insects, I can think of no equivalent in the West of an insect used so naturalistic-ally in the context of war. Yes the bee was a symbol for Napoleon, but not decorating a helmet like this. And this is just one of several bugs, and while this particular helmet is no longer on display, there are others nearly as impressive. Due to the fragility and age of many of the lacquer and silk objects were rotated out and into the exhibition.

Helmet with crest of Clamshells.
Edo period, 17th-18th century.
Iron, lacquer, silver, gold, silk and wood.
Iwakuni Art Museum, Yamaguchi Prefecture.
(scanned from the exhibition catalog)

This helmet cracks me up, what look like huge bat ears are in fact clam shells, done in gilt and lacquered wood, outward facing in heraldic stance. Who thought this up, who ever thought that left overs from dinner, the discarded clam shells would intimidate your enemy? And yet like the pert ears of some diminutive dog, these ear like decorations indicate an enemy at full attention. I guess. Whatever, this helmet illustrates the whimsy, imagination and incredibly beautiful execution of the armor in the exhibition.

Helmet in form of Rabbit ears.
Edo period, 17th Century.
Iron, lacquer, wood and papier-mache.
Yasukuni-jinja Shrine, Tokyo
(scanned from the catalog)

Like the helmet before, this rabbit ear helmet is so over the top as to amuse rather than terrify. Only distantly resembling rabbit ears, they are almost like long horns, except for their concave red painted interior surface. Another example of many of the improbable forms of the samurai helmets in the exhibit.

The range of forms that the helmets take is so idiosyncratic that it leads one to think that they reflect their owners own wishes, beliefs, and how they wanted to present themselves to the world. It is almost as if each samurai had a vision quest and from it took an emblem that was theirs alone. Certainly on the massed field of battle, a distinctive helmet allowed one to be picked out from a crowd, which may partly explain the diversity of the forms employed. But there is a humor, whether intended or not, that makes this exhibition so rewarding for the viewer.

But last, but definitely not least, the swords. The swords are the real draw, nothing else like them exists in the West. The ultimate expression of the warrior, and the height of technological innovation for their time, just the blades are presented, no hilts or scabbards or fittings, those are displayed separately. When you learn how the blades were forged, you look at these lengths of steel with awe. It takes 16 men three months to make a true Japanese sword. The steel is specially smelted in a three to four day melt, then forged, folded and folded and again and again; as much as fifteen times or more, to create as many as a million layers of steel, producing an reproducibly hard and strong blade. To give it flexibility a lower carbon steel rod is inserted into the blank, all this forged again, shaped by hammer, before being tempered in a ritual heating and sudden cooling that produces the final shape and hardness. And then, another specialist, the polisher takes the blade and grinds and polishes it for two weeks to create the final shape and polish. In the exhibition is a great brief video of the process, and online there are others.

What impressed me about some of the blades in the exhibition was their extreme age, the earliest examples date to the Kofun period, that is Fifth Century A.D., and the recognizable polish, tempering line, and form of the true Japanese sword is seen as early as 7th Century with one of the most beautiful swords in the exhibition, a straight blade known "Water Dragon Sword" is Nara Period, 8th Century, and nearly in perfect condition. This is a continuous artisinal tradition, over fifteen hundred years old, and still being practiced today by artisans, some of whom themselves have been designated as living National Treasures. We have no equivalency in the West, our history is too fractured for a traditional form of art to have survived and be valued for a millenia and a half.

Below is just one example from the Met website, as the swords have to be seen in person to be appreciated.

Blade for a Slung Sword, known as "Dai Hannya Nagamitsu"
Kamakura period, 13th Century.
Steel, Length 29 inches.
Tokyo National Museum
National Treasure

Just one example of many, this blade is noteworthy for the wave like tempering pattern along its cutting edge, and is by one of the most renowned swordmaker of his day, Nagamitsu. To quote the exhibition catalogue:

"This sword is called "Dai Hannya name because in the Muromachi period it was valued at 600 kan (equal to about 2,250 kg of silver) and that there are 600 volumes -also refered to as kan- of the Dai Hannya Sutra (Heart Sutra)."

It boggles the mind, a single sword being worth the two and half tons of silver. Yes that is right, tons of silver. Granted silver is not gold but that is an enormous value for a simple steel blade.
To read the catalog entries is to get lost in a whole vocabulary that attempts to put into words slight visual differences between blades. I will quote from one such description from the catalog entry for 86, a dagger by Masamune:

"The forging pattern is itame (wood grain), formed by mixing hard and soft steels, and is rich in ji-nie (visible crystals of steel in the flat area of the blade) with chikei (bright, short curving lines). The hamon (tempering pattern) is gunome mixed with notare (compact, irregular waves and broad undulations, respectively), has numerous nei, and is rich in variations, including areas of nioi, a tight, "snowlike" pattern comprising a crystalline structure in which the individual crystals of the steel are visible to the naked eye. Nioi is sometimes likened poetically to clusters of blossoms on distant cherry trees....."

As you can read above, there is a whole language in Japanese to describe the patterns visible on the swords resulting from the chemistry and forging of the steel. It is rather like reading the description of wines, an attempt to put into language a sensuous experience that is beyond verbalizing. It makes for tough but rewarding reading, forcing you to really look at what otherwise appear to be relatively similar if not nearly identical lengths of sharpened steel. You then start to see the patterns on the blades and one really is distinct from another.

Of course my inquiring mind posits the question; after all the enormous effort and labor that goes into the forging of a sword such as these, does it produce a demonstrably superior blade to any other? How would a typical European knight fared against a Samurai? Would one of these fabulous swords sliced the knight up into pieces, armor and all? I'd like to think so, but I don't know, they never faced each other in battle. By the time the Europeans encountered Japan they already had guns, so had the edge on the sword weilding Japanese. Of course the Japanese quickly adopted Western armaments, and became a world power by the beginning of the 20th Century.

On a concluding note, the Times had a little blurb noting that more men have been going to this exhibition than is usual, which is interesting. Certainly I am fascinated, and normally I eschew masculine things, but like Achilles who was hiding in the womens quarters in drag, when shown swords, went right for them, and blew his disguise and so was drafted into the Trojan war. Perhaps it is in our male dna, a fascination with weapons regardless of our various persuasions. Just a thought.

Archaic Greek Horse fragment

I have not been posting for awhile, but I recently acquired a bronze horse head that has me very excited. See the photo below:

While small, it measures just 2 1/2 inches high by 2 3/4 inches wide, it is monumental in feeling, beautifully sculpted and very expressive. The volumetric and stylized treatment of the locks of the mane date the piece to the early 6th Century B.C. It is early archaic, the period just following the Daedalic period when Greek art is starting to come into its own drawing from influences from the Near East and Egypt. It is just a fragment probably part of an attachment to a large bronze vessel, perhaps from a horse such as flank the hydra handle from the Schimmel collection below:

photocopy of Hydra Handle from: Ancient Art, The Norbert Schimmel Collection

Edited by Oscar White Muscarella

Verlag Phillip Von Zabern. Mainz. W. Germany 1974

This handle has horse protomes of a type which my fragment may have come from. On my example the back is relatively plainly done, indicating it was meant to be seen principally from the front, which is typical of a handle or vessel attachment. However it is interesting to note that the horses in this hydra handle are not nearly as well modeled as my new acquisition.

Recently a scholar brought my attention to an Archaic Greek bronze tripod in Berlin, which is probably an even liklier parallel of the type of object my horse head came from. See below:

Bronze Tripod decorated with animal heads and figures,

from Metapontum, mid-6th Century B.C.

Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The horse heads on the top are very close to mine, as you an see below. However, the modeling on mine is more naturalistic, the eyes again are not symbolic glyphs as in the Berlin example. But the scale and probably configuration of the head and limbs make it very likely that my head comes for such a tripod, and of the same period.

Detail of the Berlin Tripod above showing the horses, which have similar manes.

Note however that they eyes are done as stylized symbols as opposed to naturalistic eyes.

Below is an even closer parallel in type since it has the two front legs upraised, as must have been in my piece. This comes from another tripod like that above, and was in the Christos Bastis auction at Sotheby's New York. However even this, which is charming, is less sensitively modeled than mine, its eye again is an ideogram, rather than a seeing eye. Also the mane is less articulated and detailed than in my example. But the type is exactly what mine probably was.

A Greek Bronze Protome, ca. 6th Century B.C. Scanned from the

catalog of the Christos Bastis sale, Dec. 9, 1999, in New York, lot 78.

Height: 7 1/8 inches.

When I first saw my bronze horse head, I was immediately reminded of a favorite piece of mine in the Met, a fragmentary marble horse head that nonetheless is commanding, incredibly expressive and beautifully sculpted, see below:

Head of a Horse, Attic, 2nd quarter of the 6th Century B.C.

Marble, Height: 13 7/8 inches, Bequest of Walter C. Baker 1971

scanned from: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Greece and Rome.

published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987

Let me quote from the accompanying text:

"In Archaic art the horse is probably rendered with more care more consistently than any subject aside from the human figure. Not only was it valued for such qualities as beauty and speed, but ownership of a horse was available only to men of means. In Athens, for example, the middle class of citizens were called the "knights", being those who could maintain a horse and fight in battle on horseback.......This extraordinary piece shows every possible sensitivity to the articulation and texture of the horse's face; at the same time, the mane and forelock are ordered into stylized locks that convey the resilience of horse hair but that would hardly fall so regularly in real life...."

This could have been written about my little bronze horse head, it shares not only the stylized volumetric locks in its mane, but the sensitive modeling commented on above. Parallels for my horse head are quite rare and hard to find, but here are a few below:

Horse and Rider, cast separately, 3rd quarter of the 6th Century B.C.

Bronze, Height: 23.6 cm. London, British Museum

Scanned from Greek Bronzes by Claude Rolley

Sotheby's Publications, London, 1986

Again, this horse shared the stylized volumetric treatment of the locks of the mane, but while of a similar scale to my horse, the head of this horse is not done with the same level of sensitivity or detail, the eye for example, is an abstract glyph rather than the eye of a living horse looking back at you as in my horse head. However, the example above is a complete figure, of a fairly large size for a bronze, making it quite an important and rare thing.

The other parallel that came to mind when first looking at this piece are objects from the Norbert Schimmel Collection now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here is one of several that feature horses of a similar style to mine:

Mitra with Horse Protomes, Greek from Crete, 7th Century B.C.

Height: 15.4 cm, width: 24.2 cm.

Scanned from Ancient Art, The Norbert Schimmel Collection

Edited by Oscar White Muscarella, Von Zabern, W. Germany 1974

One of several pieces featuring horses, they all share the same stylized mane and expressive faces. While just a repouse relief, the quality is not equal to that of my horse.

Below are other views of the bronze horse now in my collection:

Here you see how the eyes are modeled in the round, not as mere glyph symbols, giving the horse expression and a focused gaze; it looks back at you.

This side view allows you to glimpse the sensitive modeling even of the underneath of the horse head, and again, you can see that focused gaze given by the sculptural modeling of the eyes.

The back view. Here the mane is rendered as a flat surface and in general there is less of the detailed modeling on the front view. This is typical of ancient Greek art when an object was meant to be seen primarily from one view, the other was done summarily. But the fact that it is finished and not rough or unfinished indicates that this object was fully cast in the round.

While we may never know precisely what this horse head came from, it remains a very rare example of the early Archaic style, when Greek Art was rapidly developing, and one style follows another in rapid succession until the culmination of the full Classical Style which was to remain with variations for nearly a thousand years through the Roman Period, the art style of the Mediterranean World.