Ceremonial armour feels so strange concept. For something to become ceremonial it must first have real use case. You don't just go around inventing things from zero. Maybe you will scale it up and make it more impressive, but to have meaning it must first at some point had some real use.
Ceremonial armors aren't made for fun. Should our descendents of the year 3000 look at the British bearskin (the tall furry hat of the Royal Guard) and think "of course, this was standard combat attire".
That white scale "armor" in the first pictures doesn't look like armor at all. It looks like a gambeson, the padded layer worn under plate armor. Fighters might wear that when in the field but not in combat, and strap on the plate pieces when headed for trouble. Unclear if the show got that.
Also, not glamorous enough to attract the attention of Important People in the Pentagon...that's the most important requirement. Let the Designers work in peace!
You're right. See my other comment in this thread but it seems like Loyola changed the quote where it initially said 'military-style'. Personally the helmet reminded me of helmets worn in Vietnam but they definitely do not match the design used by Nazi's in WWII.
And civilian khaki's were probably to pose and steal valor from the military. Almost everything style wise is deep with symbolism that sometimes loses touch with any original meaning.
The article makes it clear they are not sure that this person served in the military or whether they bought/acquired the armor from someone who did after the fact, nonetheless it's a possibility and it's pretty cool.
They may have seen battle but if so as commanders from the rear where visibility to the troops was paramount. If they had seen actual close combat those elaborate decorations probably would not have survived. Also, there were many plainer helmets at the exhibition. I think a samurai expecting real combat would have chosen one of those.
The huge collar is a really interesting feature. That's sure going to make it hard to attack the soldiers neck, with not that much cost to mobility or even visibility. I think the neck is one of the trickier articulation points in European plate armor and space suits, for similar reasons. The giant collar seems like a gordian knot type of solution. But if anyone gets as far as deploying hooks to the battlefield, perhaps as part of a halberd-like weapon, those collars will be trouble.
Some of these are almost certainly just ceremonial pieces, but the ones that aren't would have served a distinctive signpost for troops under a samurai's command, the same way that flags strapped to armor and horses were common in premodern warfare through the world. Fighting without radios or even so much as binoculars is extremely confusing, and if you're leading a bunch of peasant militia who get a bare minimum of training, you want it extremely obvious who's giving the orders and where to try and group up if people get separated in battle.
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