The Costuming Secrets of Samurai Armor
We visit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to explore a massive collection of Samurai Armor. The exhibition featured over 100 pieces of samurai equipment, from beautiful full suits of armor to the more obscure pieces of battle gear. We chat with the exhibit curator to learn about how ceremonial samurai armor was treated as costume, and the interesting secrets of a few pieces on display.
Shot by Joey Fameli
Edited by Jon Finger
22 thoughts on “The Costuming Secrets of Samurai Armor”
Leave a Reply
One Day Builds
Adam Savage’s One Day Builds: Life-Size Velocirapt…
Adam embarks on one of his most ambitious builds yet: fulfil…
Show And Tell
Adam Savage’s King George Costume!
Adam recently completed a build of the royal St. Edwards cro…
All Eyes On Perserverance – This is Only a Test 58…
We get excited for the Perserverance rover Mars landing happening later today in this week's episode. Jeremy finally watches In and Of Itself, we get hyped for The Last of Us casting, and try to deciper the new Chevy Bolt announcements. Plus, Kishore gets a Pelaton and we wrack our brains around reverse engineering the source code to GTA …
Making
Adam Savage in Real Time: God of War Leviathan Axe…
Viewers often ask to see Adam working in real-time, so this …
One Day Builds
Mandalorian Blaster Prop Replica Kit Assembly!
Adam and Norm assemble a beautifully machined replica prop k…
House of MCU – This is Only a Test 586 – 2/11/21
The gang gets together to recap their favorite bits from this past weekend's Superb Owl, including the new camera tech used for the broadcast and the best chicken wing recipes. Kishore shares tips for streamlining your streaming services, and Will guests this week to dive into the mind-bending implications of the latest WandaVision episod…
One Day Builds
Adam Savage’s One Day Builds: Royal Crown of Engla…
One of the ways Adam has been getting through lockdown has b…
Making
Adam Savage Tests the AIR Active Filtration Helmet…
Adam unboxes and performs a quick test of this novel new hel…
Making
Weta Workshop’s 3D-Printed Giant Eyeballs!
When Adam visited Weta Workshop early last year, he stopped …
One Day Builds
Adam Savage’s One Day Builds: Wire Storage Solutio…
Adam tackles a shop shelf build that he's been putting off f…
Is the red tint in the picture because of the light in the exibit hall?
Mostly the colour of the walls/panels/ceiling beams I reckon.
Thanks for the video though, amazing pieces of history.
yep, the entire exhibit was lit with a harsh red. color correction could only do so much, unfortunately.
This is one of my favorite Tested videos ever. I love it when you guys find someone who is deeply knowledgeable and an enthusiastic interviewee & curator on their subject matter.
“If they left the house without both of those swords, they could be heavily penalized.” So great…
Quite fascinating. I never really realised how diverse the samurai armour designs were before.
Bloody annoying lighting in that place though.
Man, that’s awesome! I love the masks especially.
here’s another interesting video on japanese armour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhVTV_txGFY
then, there is a good bit of knowledge to be gained from http://www.sengokudaimyo.com/katchu/katchu.html – don’t let the author’s SCA background fool you.
Great exhibit. I like how Norm interviewed the curator, his questions and comments really show off what the curator knew.
I wonder if the lighting was chosen to protect the fabric/material.
Great exhibit. And thanks for the video.
But curator repeated one of the dummest myth about western armor plates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm11yAXeegg . Yes, you can ride on horses, yes you can get on the horse and jump from it.
Another thing is that chain mail armor definitely isn’t bullet proof or knive proof. Any piercing is deadly for chain mail.
I saw this exhibit when it was in Portland a few months ago. It is an simply amazing. Great video
Thank you for filming this wonderful exhibit, Norm! 👍
I have to agree. Nice to see something different and educational!
the western armour one is sadly pervasive. the weight difference alone would have been enough of an interesting/impressive point.
regarding the chain mail, i guess what he’s really on about is that chain mail in a composite armour setup forces you to specialise your weapons. chain mail and gambeson are pretty damn good at stopping cuts, including reduced effectivity of a common broadhead. (from how i remember japanese arrowheads, their military broadheads were quite a bit wider than some of the comparatively narrow english broadhead types, too)
what it does is force you to have a sword that is good not only at delivering cuts, and dedicated narrow arrowheads, like bodkins. we can be pretty sure about the very long needle bodkins being a specific countermeasure against layered linen and mail. the shape doesn’t do anything better against plate than what other arrowheads already did, and the artifacts are commonly not hardened, rendering them useless against plate.
Spectacular.
I love the museum shoots, very informative and interesting.
Thanks for the content.
Great exhibit. And thanks for the video, Nice to see something different and educational not just screen tech.
I saw this and the Hollywood costume exhibit video. I was thinking I would like to see the costume exhibit, but this had me looking for ticket to LA. then i looked at the museum website and found that it was over. Do you have someplace on here that tracks upcoming exhibitions?
Ed V
Yea that part kind of made me cringe. IIRR most western full plate war armor weights in around 50ish pounds or so.
Now when you get into the late 16th century some of the Jousting armor got to be really heavy and restricted movement. Often with the left arm integrated into the chest piece and the ‘shield’ bolted to the chest. But this armor was basically sporting equipment. You weren’t expected to wear it all day or fight in it.
I think Norm has really matured as an interviewer and this particular film short is a good example of how cool TESTED is.
My g/f and I were in LA over the holiday and went to LACMA. This exhibit is amazing, it costs extra but it’s soo good.
BE WARNED, there is a second exhibit on Japanese arms and history it’s not in the same building. We almost missed this whole exhibit. It’s very very worth going to both.
I really enjoyed this video, historical arms and armor are a subject close to my heart.
Another great source of armor in the U.S. is the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. They have a tremendous amount of their collection photographed and posted online with a fairly good search system. If you want to look at some beautiful armor and weapons from everywhere in the world, they are the place to go.
They should still use these!