"Blue samurai armor?" Topic

Now I've seen alot of red armor, and I've decided to paint one of my forces with red armor, and mostly light blue slik,

I would love to have the other side in blue armor for the classic red vs blue ting, but I havn't seen blue armor before, I've seen red, all black, black with gold trim, natural steel, but not blue, so the question is, did it exist? I only need a single example of blue armor and I have my excuse to paint an whole army of them.

link

Several blue laced, and bluish armour sets a bit down the page (should open to page 2 of many).

link – is the one most blue in total, I think.

Any help?

Gunny means blue plates, not blue lace (sageo, if you want to get technical). Blue of all shades was a popular colour for sageo – still is too, for kendo armour.

As an off the wall guess, you might find that a blue pigment that could be used in lacquer wasn't widely available in Japan at the time. Or not, I'm not an expert.

"Or not, I'm not an expert."

But I bet you can spell "samurai".

Allen

GF:

Your best bet would be to go with blue lacing on either black or russet colored plates. Dean

I'm a noob, what exactly is lacing in this case, lets say I have a armor like the one on the right
picture

With square amor plates, so with blue lacing, the armor would be black, but the black lines between the armor plates would be blue?

The armour on some samurai figures tends to be…representational, at best.

Start here link . Note particularly this page link

Whether it is historically accurate or not, it seems that you find blue armor (armour, for you english chaps) with light blue lacing on many of the figure sites. It's mostly on Warrior Monks. So it probably did exist but not very wide spread.

GF:

Hard to make out the lacing on those figures. In fact, there was a form of folding armor that didn't even use much lacing – except maybe for the attachment of skirt plates, etc. medlibrary.org/medwiki/Tatami-do Also note the style of chain mail particular to Japanese armor link

Here's another example with very little exposed lacing picture . Dean

Nice armour Dean. Yours?

On page 91 0f Stephen Turnbull's Samurai Warfare there is a colour plate with a Sengoku Hidehisa, one of Torotomi Hideyoshi's generals in 1587, in dark blue armour. I've never come across blue Japanese armour before, so he may be unique. Other the other hand, if there is one who's to say there were not others?

Dean, that last armor looks like the one thats on the figure.

Nice armour Dean. Yours?

Nah…I wish. Found it on the 'net.

There was a samurai armour show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art just over a year ago. In it was a Sengoku Jidai armour set in light blue. I seem to recall it being from the Honda clan, but I don't remember for sure. I'm not sure it was a common color, but it definitely existed. I don't have time to review this video, but it's a talk from the show:

link

It might show the actual armour set. Note that there is definitely a set with blue lacings in there as well.

Ok, since most of the armor the perry's make don't have that much laceing, I'm thinknig of having red silk, the hest peice will be natural metal, with the hip plates decorated with blue.

There was a samurai armour show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

I didn't see any blue armour, but that set of lectures is very interesting. Thanks for posting that.

A couple of years ago I visited Fukuoka in Japan which has a wonderful museum crammed with Samurai armour. Amongst the displays you could see red, blue ( in various shades), yellow, green and black armour. The range of colours was astonishing. SO yes there was blue samurai armour, as well as just about every other colour you can imagine.

I recall seeing a suit being reconstucted for one of the museums in New Zealand which was a dark blue. I just checked, I was wrong, black lacquer and blue lacings here link

You can see a bit of what is in the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria here link but no blue armour.

My guess is there would be a suit here or there that was blue but quite rare.

David
kingsfordminiatures.org

I did my samurai in red, blue, green, and brown armor. Blue armor was pretty common from what I gather. But painting samurai, you can pretty much do whatever you want..

Blake

@Gunfreak: another useful idea is the Date clan's uniform (yes, they did come close to uniform issue): Black armor with indigo blue cloth and banners.

I'd chase down a bottle of P3 'Coal Black' for the armor color, washed with Citadel 'Badab Black' or P3 'Armour Wash'. Coal black is a very dark bluegreen, and the wash will give you a nice lacquered look.

The Date clan fought against the Sanada, and the Sanada wore red armor w/ fairly neutral cloth. This gives you a historical Red vs Blue. (it's what I'm doing for my late-Sengoku armies).

Date you say, funny I happen to play as Date in Shogun Total war.

Remember, though, that Edo-era armour may have been more elaborate and otherwise different from Muromachi-/Sengoku-era armour…

Yes, a lot of the Edo-period armor is … fanciful, to be polite about it.

The Date info is pretty solid, though, since it comes from the Date clan's own archives originally!

The blue looked good in the movie 'Ran'.