[Craig Peters]

I came across this looking up pictures of samurai helmets. It purports to be the only authentic suit of armour made for dogs. Is this legitimate, or a modern day fraud?

"This suit of dog armor -- identified by antique Japanese armor dealer Toraba as the only known and certified authentic example of its kind -- is believed to have been created for the pet of a wealthy, high-ranking and presumably eccentric samurai or daimyo (feudal lord) in the mid to late Edo period (mid-18th to mid-19th century). Although the carved wooden helmet and coat of black-lacquered scale mail would have provided effective protection against enemy attack, evidence suggests the canine never wore the armor into battle. More likely, the suit served as a decorative costume for parades and other formal ceremonial occasions. The samurai dog armor now belongs to an unnamed UK museum."



More pictures can be seen here:
http://www.nihonken.org/forum/index.php?p=/di...g-armor/p1

[Shahril Dzulkifli]

It's hard to believe whether the samurai dog armour is legitimate or fraud.
I never heard of the samurai in feudal Japan putting on armour to their pet dogs (If they own one).

[Mark Griffin]

a couple of the refs I've seen says it was used for hunting purposes. Obviously there are european parralesl with this.

However caveat emptor, I've also seen some of the designs done for the '47 Ronin' film touted as originals which they most certainly are not, they were invented for the film by a chum of mine.

[J. Nicolaysen]

I remember this from Toraba.com some years ago. He had a nice discussion about it. Certainly a unique one of a kind piece.

Unfortunately the website is lost. Katchu is a strange and rareified collecting group...Certainly that group doesn't make it easy for new blood

[Michael Wiethop]

Until it was eventually banned, the samurai had a horrifying sport called inuoumono in which they released dogs into a circular enclosure and shot them from horseback with arrows for target practice. Sometimes the arrows were blunt. Perhaps this dog's owner wanted his dog to be safe while he shot it?

Or perhaps this dog's owner was rich and just wanted to show off. But this is all just speculation.

[Lafayette C Curtis]

I don't think this thing has anything to do with inouomono. The scoring was based on the location of hits and this kind of armour would probably have just bounced off the blunt arrows used in the competition, making it unnecessarily hard to see and award scores for hits.

[Bob Haynes]