The Secrets of Samurai Armor 

This video is full of misinformation

Oni never had long noses

Thank you dude. This guy probably has a degree in that stuff and doesn't know poop. and you probably looked all your facts up on the internet in your free time and knew more than him. I'm not being sarcastic.

@@ordinaryjoe4143 Tested itself actually indirectly debunked what he said, Adam Savage has a whole series on building an armour tailor made for him and in the videos he moves around in them and is quite surprised how easy it is and how he feels almost no weight and can do almost everything in them. There are dozens of real experts debunking here on RU-vid and IRL what that curator says. You even can look up here on RU-vid videos of people doing actual acrobatics moves like cartwheels and saltos in full armour to show how not tin can like they were. And in the whole scientific historical weapons and armour community (the curator should be part of, considering his profession) it is a well nown fact that this whole "tank like" "tin can" talk is a victorian invention to emphasize how much more sophisticated they were. It is an urban legend similar to the "in the medieval times all people thought the earth was a disc" that similarly was invented in the renaissance to show how "stupid" they were in the medieval times and to say "look how sophisticated we are now"

Emperor shirakawa view samurai not same as a noble warrior, he disgusted when they come back from war and enter the city with blood and smell of it

No they don’t, the armor of the samurai are more mobility compared to european knights armor

Yes medieval armor was very easy to move in

@@lukedelport8231 very easy? No easier than alot of people think? Yes I think what the dude in the video was trying to get at is that it's hard to draw a bow in medieval knight armour which I think is true but honestly I don't know enough about it to argue otherwise

He didn’t clarify “alone” or “without assistance”.

@@ICTPerformance268You can get on a horse in european armor alone and without any assistance.

Lawrence Leipold @Lawrence Leipold. No, I don’t think I could. It may not be in all cases, but carrying 100+ or - pounds of restrictive (comparably) Western armor, and maneuvering myself onto 1500 pounds of moving, sometimes skittish animal, would seem to be a little more difficult than with a less restrictive (comparatively) 40+ or - pound Japanese armor, but thank you for your confidence that I would be able to. I look forward to your reply.👍🏽

Thank you!

Maybe he tried to simplify it for us to better understand.

Doesn't know shit about western armour either. The Japanese armour isn't "light" - a set of medieval plate weighs about 40 lb as well, nowhere near the 100lb he quotes.

lancer D Well, tournament armor could get to about 90lbs, though that was because, again, tournament usage, where you could sacrifice mobility for protection. That said, everyone tends to think the best preserved and surviving armor from Europe, tournament armor and display suits, was the norm, as opposed to the exceptions.

Arctic Gator he probably didnt want to make things too complicated for the viewers

No it dropped harder than that. They dropped like my grades at the end of finals.

ARMOR*******************************

+marcuspinson - Paragraphed for easy reading, because there is actual information here, good post Marcus! I've been doing HEMA and SCA fighting for 6 years. articulated European armor is very light and mobile. An entire suit of field armor (that is, armor for battle) usually weighs between 45 and 55 lbs. (20 to 25 kg), with the helmet weighing between 4 and 8 lbs. (2 to 4 kg)-less than the full equipment of a fireman with oxygen gear, or what most modern soldiers have carried into battle since the nineteenth century. Moreover, while most modern equipment is chiefly suspended from the shoulders or waist, the weight of a well-fitted armor is distributed all over the body. It was not until the seventeenth century that the weight of field armor was greatly increased in order to render it bulletproof against ever more accurate firearms. At the same time, however, full armor became increasingly rare and only vital parts of the body, such as the head, torso, and hands, remained protected by metal plate. Also, the notion that the development of plate armor (completed by about 1420-30) greatly impaired a wearer’s mobility is also untrue. A harness of plate armor was made up of individual elements for each limb. Each element in turn consisted of lames (strips of metal) and plates, linked by movable rivets and leather straps, and thus allowing practically all of the body’s movements without any impairment due to rigidity of material. The widely held view that a man in armor could hardly move, and, once he had fallen to the ground, was unable to rise again, is also without foundation. On the contrary, historical sources tell us of the famous French knight Jean de Maingre (ca. 1366-1421), known as Maréchal Boucicault, who, in full armor, was able to climb up the underside of a ladder using only his hands. Furthermore, there are several illustrations from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance depicting men-at-arms, squires, or knights, all in full armor, mounting horses without help or instruments such as ladders or cranes. Modern experiments with genuine fifteenth- and sixteenth-century armor as well as with accurate copies have shown that even an untrained man in a properly fitted armor can mount and dismount a horse, sit or lie on the ground, get up again, run, and generally move his limbs freely and without discomfort.

exactly in fact knight errent and metatron have videos where they compare their armours (european and japanese) they both weigh about the same, the only difference is the japanese armour offers better mobility and awareness, while the european armour offers better protection

Speaking of Metatron, guess who made a debunking video!

coryman125 no no don't tell me let me guess... was it skallagrim??? no wait not his style... i know lindybeige right? ummm... knight errent? no hints I'll get it eventually lol :P

History channel, cbs, nova, a few others...... hell even discovery kids.

Yes even 33 pound full plate armor has been found

TRUE!!!

A hundred pounds is crazy! Who can walk in a hundred pounds armour?

@@marvinfok65 Jousting armor?

@@marvinfok65 The funny thing is it is still theoretically capable of being worn. If the armor is very well distributed. It would obviously still be hard but.

I found his knowledge to be overall pretty surface level and boring, he had maybe a flashcard's worth of information on each piece, like they just rolled up on the exhibit and asked any museum guide there for info. Compare this video with the wonderful Hollywood Costume Exhibition video.

We're talking general knowledge, not specialised in this case. He was the one who mentioned the incorrect examples: it's a good idea to make sure your examples are correct. ;) As a curator of such an exhibition, you would expect him to know more about the armour he's showing. (typically you'd read up a bit about it). I do like that he appreciates the artistic aspects though. He probably specialises in fine art.

Well Do you know everything there is to know about Mongolian Armour? Or Italian Art? Mr Singer is a Specialist in Japanese Art not Western Warfare. The Myth comes from Jousting where armour had low mobility and could weight up to if not more than 100lbs (45kg) and the rider often needed help getting on their horse. Robert T. Singer has been Curator of Japanese Art at LACMA since 1988. He oversees 14 annual rotating exhibitions of paintings, prints, ceramics, and netsuke in the museum's Pavilion for Japanese Art.

Don't worry he didn't seem to educated with Japanese armor or history ether. "Era of Peace" is laughable when describing the edo period. More like "Era of Violent and Oppressive Dictatorship Under the Tokugawa". Era of no war maybe (if you dismiss the countless mauraders at the time and the war against christians) but "Era of Peace" Edo was not. Also you are right, my suit hardly weighs 100lbs and I'm 6'. Only a few weighed that much and even fewer of those were actually worn.

Pretty much everything the guy says is myth/urban legend. Katanas, by and large, only have the smith's name on the tang. They don't have proof marks like British weapons.

Thank you! Also, a hundred pounds is some of the heaviest tournament armor, possibly something for Henry VIII, who was absolutely huge even by modern standards; battlefield armor was considerably lighter. There are videos of modern-day reenactors doing cartwheels, jumping jacks, sprints, and easily climbing on a horse in full plate. These are history enthusiasts, not professionals trained since childhood to fight in that thing. We have records of medieval knights doing things in armor that a regular person cannot do without armor. /rant off

Aye. Kind of disappointing to hear this really common misconception from our guide.

Yeah, as a historian of medieval Europe with more than a passing interest in arms and armor of the period, I couldn't help but cringe when I heard the guide speak about European armor like that...

An armor that heavy would be jousting armor.

Yeah it quite interesting who much packing a solider have had though the ages. The upper limit has been pretty equal in all ages when it comes to military packing.

Even in the heaviest of jousting armor, a man accustomed to wearing armor could easily mount and dismount his horse. The idea that such armor was so heavy that it required a hoist or small team of men to seat its wearer comes from victorian fiction and the early days of Hollywood. No one in there right mind would wear armor that they couldn't move around properly in, in the joust or in combat.

Not to mention Roman Legionaries had to wear full sets of armor (either Lorica Segmentata or Lorica Hamata as it is now classified) all day when out of Rome. Doing daily tasks like building forts, cooking, and walking around in full sets of "European" armor.

You know, everyone is talking about how wrong he is. Don't get me wrong, he is, but there is a larger aspect to this. We all thought plate armor was cool, but cumbersome, right? At least until we learned it's flexible, lightweight, and hardly restrictive. That combined with the fact that plate armor with stop any arrow, sword, axe, or spear.....don't you just want a set of plate armor now? Just to wear around town and have fun?

armor*** and no one cares

I hear you.....Its who you know,,not what you know in these days i guess..

My nigga 9:51

Shut the fuck up every single person has already commented about the curator and honestly what were you fucking expecting. It's two Americans. Not two old Japanese men with subtitles beneath them. It's a shit curation because museums change exhibits continuously.

Woah there.

Yes that musium has beutiful samurai armour

@@zyourzgrandzmaz lmao the salt is so thicc here I thought I was in Utah for a second.

@@zyourzgrandzmaz ahhh a weeb

chill out man. If you find things that are wrong, point them out with the corresponding sources. I am not saying that there are no mistakes (the youtube channel Metatron pointed out a couple), but that you have not presented any valid argument

+Juan Everybody else already pointed out the massive flaws, there's no need to restate it. Stop trying to defend this bullshit video.

Guys its just one sentence who cares

I agree. But I'd be more terrified if the guy wearing the helmet with bong pipes sticking straight out the top was chasing after me. That would be one super crazy mother fucker.

jimmyf1312 No he would just be stoned, ... just offer him a joint ...friends forever :)

Kermit man, you're fucking hilarious and knowledgeable at the same time. I wish 1% of youtubers have those quality. :-)))

A RU-vidr? Am I one? I don't think I have videos on my channel. Either way thanks for the warm compliment.

Fucker doesn't know the sick flips knights could do off of their horses. (Like a single account of a knight doing 3 flips before landing on the ground)

That's... intense.

Thank god someone here knew this. I got so annoyed with that "curator" when he said it's just a bird with a yamabushi hat.

Yeah that's a nice idea

Was thinking the same thing. XD

Like the comment and reply so they can see!

That is if you want them to make it

Why build one? I bought one for my suit for $300. It's antique from the Edo and came with a free kikko plate in the bottom. There are quite a few antique ones out there for a fair price and many have not held armor for years so getting one to store armor in (even if it's not 'real') would be giving the box it's purpose back.

He just used more familiar terminology that was still accurate in a basic sense.

Yeah, he could have at least called it the “do” Seems like an otaku who did one google search about samurai and still thinks they use katanas 100% of the time

his scale broke cause he weighs too much

He teaches Japanese armour so I have to disagree. It's just western armour is not his expertise.

Flynn Tom ....hes BS...spewing it right and left

Wait, are you saying he got Japanese stuff wrong aswell? I'll admit I only know the first bit until his little tangent on western armour but damn. What else did he get wrong?

Flynn Tom ....watch Metetrons debunked video on this video....hell explain it

SHUT THE FUCK UP

@@zyourzgrandzmaz no you Oh hello from the future BTW

Old comment, but the introduction of firearms predated that of Portugese contact, and plate had already been in use prior. However, western armors introduced the central ridge, which added benefit in allowing a round to glance to the side in comparison to the globose shape they've used.

He's just trying to make the exhibit seem sexier to raise interest and possibly money for his own job security. IMO

The comments on Tested videos are the exact reason why nerds are despised the world over. Arrogant know-it-alls who love to pick apart the work of others over trivialities. Of course these people achieve nothing close to those they tear apart (ie. curating a show on Samurai amour). On another note, Norm asks some more insightful questions to an interesting person, thanks to both of them.

phatfish001 Tends to be far better on Tested's own site; it's on RU-vid where the analism happens, to the surprise of no-one.

phatfish001 Indeed. I would think that maybe they should just disable the comment section if people are going to act this way

***** I hate it when comments are disabled. Comments are very useful for discussion and digestion of what was just seen. It's very much possible to be civil in the comment section, and a lot of comment sections are fine places to be when they're properly tended by their "owners".

McJaews agreed.

TheKodiak72 You're nothing more than a clown.

JKC40 He's referring to the Tokugawa era which came right after that.

habojspade Except the Tokugawa period started in 1603 when Tokugawa Ieyasu was declared shogun. Then there is the Shimbara Uprising... point is that '200 years of peace' from '1600 to 1850'- he should have just said 1650.

JKC40 22 years of peace from Osaka to Shimabara, 230 years of peace from Shimabara until the Onin war.

Ehh, no "period of peace" is *entirely* peaceful. The Pax Romana was a long period of peace in Europe and the Middle East that lasted around 200 years. But even during that the Roman army was campaigning the whole time and fighting various "barbarian" tribes like the Germans and smaller wars north of the Black Sea. But this was peaceful compared to the prior two centuries where you had numerous wars in many locations around the mediterranean, often with forces that rivaled the Romans until they eventually built up enough momentum to become the dominant power. I'm going to assume that the Tokugawa/Edo period was similar. There were likely numerous minor conflicts and occasions where Samurai might have had to get involved in here or there, but there was just no knock down dragged out fighting like there was during the Sengoku period where the entire country was basically at war with itself for a hundred years, with rival factions often roughly of equivalent strength and power. I mean, right now, the Western world is essentially in a Pax America of sorts, and there are no major powers fighting each other in massive campaigns, and yet there are still regional wars being fought in places like Syria. But it's a far cry to compare the Syrian civil war with something like World War 1 or 2.

*they

you're a bit...TRIGGERED

yeah he had no idea what he was talking about. in plate armor you can do somersaults and swim short distances. he was like 50 pounds off on the weight as well

Alex Sitaras thats for the average modern person- knoghts back in the day would have been able to top that easily

The Aussie Boy of course, knights were professionals, a lot of the people doing the demonstrations were dorks with shiny toys

Dont you major in History with an art degree?

not exactly. You can get a Bachelors of Art in Computer Science. That doesn't make it an Art degree, it just means you don't take as much math or science classes as a Bachelors of Science. This guy focuses on the history of art, not the history of war or of the far east. A huge portion of the information he put out is incorrect.

BIZKIT Then please enlighten us.

+Baby Inuyasha Any more interesting facts sourced form anime?

Its not from anime, watch Skalligram

I'd trust a museum curator who has period armor over a neckbeard who busy replicas from ebay.

But you'll still believe him if he tells you that Samurai armor apparently was musket ball proof and Knights have the mobility of a brick wall and when they fall over, cant't get up?

Yoshiki Kishinuma Armored shoes weren't a thing for the samurai. They wore a woven sandal made from straw. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waraji

Of course a katana wouldn't make more than a dent in European armour. It wouldn't make more than a dent in Japanese armour, either. That's what armour is for, after all. Likewise, a knightly sword - whether one or two handed - would not make more than a dent in either European or Japanese armour - they were not designed for armour penetration. Some longswords, in later periods, were made to be dedicated thrusters and could potentially penetrate maille, but even these swords were not optimal for the task. It was more that they could penetrate maille (barely) if they really had to.

samurai don't used katana at they main weapon in battle it the spear + bow lol

Katanas aren't light. they are actually on the heavier side of the sword spectrum.

Well imagine the similarities between a samurai general leading his troops and a Knight commanding his Man at Arms while wearing full plate armor.

Really.

is it better to not have this armor and be bare of protection when being fired upon?

xXdinorabbitXx's channel have you seen the star war movie why the empire side armor is useless against regular spears, arrows and laser blasters. See thous guy dead on the floor thous white troopers. Yea some how they die from thous when their armor meant deflect laser blasters still and yet they still die in the movie. So making my point that I've have to edit. The armors only great against arrows, and melee weapons because they can absourbed it. When it comes to guns, they didn't wore tradtional armor, they have special armor plate came from the west more that is Europ country. That they got the idea of using conner plate like the knights do to deflect bullets for sure. They tested on their armor and the knight's armor why bulky is better deflecting bullets then samurai. Then they stole the idea using like knight's bodyplate.

+Louie “InfintyZero” Macorncan well if you actually use legends sources instead of movie depictions, you will then learn that stormtrooper armor is actually good armor(the plastoid composute part of the armor). the material was good enough to where it was used in darth vaders armor. you know your armors good if its from the same material as vaders armor. aside from point, youre saying no armor is better than not so substantial armor, especially when its all you can work with? k

xXdinorabbitXx's channel I was talking about the 1st starwar movie, I have re-edit my last comment about where they replace part their armor to be bullet proof. So pretty much as I am saying why I refering 1st starwar was really their armor was a joke for hollywood that how I described for samurai armor.

+Louie “InfintyZero” Macorncan in all honesty i am lost and now no long know what is the point you are proving

Two things can be true at the same time: 1. Japanese weapons and armor technology and craftsmanship was incredible. 2. European armor technology and craftsmanship was overall superior. Both of these things are true, and both are worth celebrating.

+Aqmal Danish They didnt use swords as main weapons swords was rarely seen in battles

+Alexandros grivas swords were very much seen in battle but most of the soldiers were not Samurai and we're usually using other more long range weapons

blzinhlfasian 0 Swords where never main weapons in battles always secondary

Hmm, have you by chance seen a Maximilian set of Armour? And have you seen a messerm or rapier?

***** I i didn't even notice your comment, lol. but now that I did, uhm... good?

Probably also thinks folding it a thousand times means it's superior or something

+NerdRagerGaming or he does, and he didn't want to sound like a pretentious dipshit academic so he's just explaining it for an audience that knows absolutely nothing.

maxdecphoenix You shouldn't be threatened by intelligence. You should aspire to it. Calling Academics pretentious isn't fair to anyone.

+NerdRagerGaming I agree with you gentleman ^^

well you know japanophiles...

khushita rai and the white guy knows more about japanese armour than western armour

This comment should liked 10000 more. Accurately funny 😂😂

Some years ago, obviously.

jcru40 meeee

Depends on the conditions like your purpose, terrain, temperature, humidity etc. Not that simple.

Museums need to start hiring RU-vid users to put their exhibits together.

gusbaker4u I would definitely go to an exhibit put together by Matt from Schola Gladiatoria, Lindybeige, or the Metatron.

+Sen Flores mostly because , well its annoying that people who are experts of japanese warfare and i and a lot of people are tired of people like stephan turnbull and this guy constantly parroting the old myths about european stuff that is the reason why nitwits online think that the samurai is this godlike fighter and the european is this lumbering brute... no , i wouldnt expect them to be total exoperts in western armour like tobias capwell or matt easton is... however... i would expect theyd have some education on european arm0our, im sure this museum has hosted european armour before. this guy seems more an expert on fine art and culture, not armour, so perhaps instead he should simply refrain from commenting on what he doesnt know about

***** lol I'm just laughing because of all the internet-experts in the comment section of a RU-vid video. I know the video is biased as hell lol and I'm aware that I don't know everything, however, I don't pretend to. Unlike others, and that's what I find funny.

why hurts? we just critisize ignorant people