http://cgi.ebay.com/EDO-Japanese-SAMURA ... 0639779413

item#130349292786


I just thought this was beautiful enough to share with all of you. If only money were no object........

And did you see the prices for those tin toys made in the thousands?!!! Sure and we're crazy for our obsession. John

LOL for sure. But one day when i inherit a billion dollars from uncle sam, I will have 1 full samurai set from nihonto - naginata and saddle to samurai armor (I am allowed to dream, it's all I have left).

Saddles generally fetch really low prices in Japan now, but from a distance that one looks to be a very good example.

I looked at a couple of tsubas that seller was peddling on Ebay and they all look like repros.

Jason, its a nice saddle but the seller does not own the items, they take pictures from items for sale in Japan and hyper inflate the price and re-list the item list on ebay....some of their items are sold already in Japan and they still list the item as it it were still for sale..

All, There is in fact considerable lacquer loss on the inside right of the cantle and flaking on the inside left. There also seems to be damage to the kamon on the pommel. What is happening on the unseen areas? I think I would like to see a little more before bidding. A few years ago I finally achieved an ambition to have a display of a mounted Japanese warrior wearing armour in the Oriental Gallery of the Royal Armouries. For this I needed a replica harness, silk fringes, tassels and all. To this end I ordered a replica set from a firm in Japan, including a fibre-glass saddle and cast aluminium stirrups. When it arrived I was amazed just how good their products were. Instead of the expected replica, they sent a real old saddle, decorated with cranes in makie, presumably because its value was little different from a replica.
Ian Bottomley

Here is a picture of a very complete saddle set, age unknown but it seems to have most if not all of the required parts. from>> http://www.japanauctioncenter.com/view2 ... /f82135476

Add to the above the fact that this saddle was made during the Edo period. A period of history when the samurai as a class were in decline, in fact were already decadent and had no use for a saddle of this caliber.

Show me a saddle from the sengoku Jidai or earlier and I would pay this kind of money and more, because it belonged to a real samurai!

Just MYOHO

The Edo period was several hundred years....in that whole period there were no "real" samurai?..they never rode horses in the Edo period...because they stopped having huge wars within their country that butchered tens of thousands of their own people they suddenly became "decadent"?...The Edo period is were some of the best work was done in my opinion....the Japanese had the resources and time to develop their artistic and scientific skills....at the end of the Edo period they were able to transform their country from a feudal society to a world power within a few years...

My point was not the justice or injustice of feudalism but the relevance of the samurai as a military class. In effect there was no need of a military class in the Edo period which was really only from 1598 onward not several hundred years but less than three hundred (1878) if one were to be exact. When the imperial edict proscribing the wearing of swords was issued.

Of course samurai rode horses during the Edo period. They paraded back and forth from Edo to whatever province they came from on a regular basis because the Bakufu required the Daimyo to attend the capitol where their families were literally held hostage. Their saddles were made more for comfort than for security of seat in battle. Make no mistake the Tokugawa were cruel and paranoid masters. In many ways the Edo period was more cruel than the sengoku period. The samurai as effete and useless as they became later in that period, did not ride to war, did not fight much at all in fact. Ergo as a class were ineffectual and unnecessary. In times of peace, a man of war is shunned. The romantic notion of the proud warrior portrayed in popular folklore was in fact largely a myth. In the latter part of the Edo period, the samurai were mostly up to their eyebrows in debt to the rice merchants, having presold their stipends well beyond the next harvest. The 250 years of peace which was the Edo period, were not kind to the samurai at all. So you tell me.... when did the samurai cease to be the warrior class? (when the wounds that they received at the battle of Sekigahara healed)

All good police states need a lot of feet on the ground, and the samurai quickly adapted from soldiers to security forces...a soldier is a soldier no matter what you call them, they also became the civil servants who ran the country including police, fire, tax collection etc. They were able to keep the country under control rather bloodlessly right up to the end...and despite being called the "peacefull" period there was a lot of rebellion, riots, civil unrest, criminal gangs, etc...even a large war....they were not exactly hippies!! "ineffectual and unnecessary" I dont think so...they just changed with the times.

There is a nice Edo kura with complete leathers in my collection, so I checked on this topic a while ago. Design and construction of the "kura" remained literally unchanged for almost 900 years up to this day. Therefore the suggestion that saddlemakers suddenly ceased to make good saddles and the samurai horsefighter class completely went into retirement just because it happened to be Edo time is off course nonsense. Here are some bits about the "kura":

"The horse and the technique of fighting on horseback(bajutsu) was brought to Japan by the mongols. By the 6th century horses were widely used. The typical "kura" type of saddle probably did not develop before the Heian-Period in the 8th century. It gradually developed to its final shape and basically did not change anymore from the Kamakura-Period until modern times(!). It was now perfectly adapted to the highly specialised art of horseback combat as practised by the samurai nobility.
These techniques, usually fighting with bow and arrow, polearms or with the long sword(tachi), required extreme , even artistic skill. Only samurai of the highest ranks were allowed and could afford to use a horse in combat. The training of the a samurai combat horse was expensive, complicated and took a long time.

The saddle frame consisted of 4 parts: pommel, cantle, a 2 piece saddle tree holding both together, being the seat at the same time. The 4 parts were connected with special cords supplying a limited flexibility. The saddle was made from hardwood and had a weatherproof layer of laquer. The visible outer parts were decorated in varous styles typical for Japanese laquerwork. Seat cushion as well as leathers were usually made from laquered leather. The saddle was used with a saddle blanket from woven textiles dyed or stitched with with various patterns. The stirrups(abumi) in their distinctive shoelike shape as the saddles did not change anymore after the 13th century. They were made from iron and were either laquered or decorated with inlays of brass, silver or gold."

Martin

The Summer and Winter Campaigns of Osaka 1614-15
The Shimabara Rebellion 1638
The Keian Uprising or the1st Ronin Rebellion of Yui Shosetsu (Aborted) 1651
The 2nd Ronin Rebellion second half of the 17th century (date uncertain)
The Jokyo Uprising 1686
The Oshia Heihachiro Rebellion 1837
The Boshin Senso 1868-69, I guess this could be considered after the Edo period.
These are just some of the confrontations and included many other up-risings. Thus the Daimyo needed standing armies to police and enforce Bakufu policy and were in fief to the Shogun. The Samurai besides being military were the administrators and judiciary of the Bakufu. Although the great numbers were no longer needed the Samurai were essential and it was by and through them that the flowering of many aspects of Edo culture came about. This was not the decadent period that some people think of it as. It had its’ own problems, but, would require chapters to illustrate. John

Martin, any pictures??? Here is a link to the Soma clan horse festival, http://www.buzzintown.com/new-delhi/art ... d_660.html