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Lot Essay
The Myochin family are the best-known among armor makers of Japan, with branches spread throughout the country active from around the 16th century until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. During the relatively peaceful Edo period (1615-1868), armor was used only for a show of military strength by the feudal lords in their annual processions to and from the capital, Edo, and the demand for new armors decreased. But the Myochin family managed to maintain a share of the dwindling market by making more and more technically excellent armors with eye-catching embossed motifs of deities, lions, and dragons. They were able to open branch schools in a number of provinces and their fame spread throughout Japan. Traditional Japanese armor has helmet, face mask, the cuirass and sometimes arm and leg protection of hammered and shaped separate iron plates all individually shaped and riveted together. These and other components are carried on a flexible body of rows of small plates laced together loosely with silk braid so as to allow freedom of movement. The technology for making such armor together with the characteristics of flexibility combined with strength were adapted by the Myochin makers for extraordinary articulated iron model animals such as the present mythical shachi or shachihoko ('dragon-fish'), doubtless in order to display their skill and spread the family name. It is likely such models would have been displayed proudly by their well-established samurai owners, as indeed a helmet or even a whole armor might be displayed, in the tokonoma alcove in the formal room in a house.
But the shachi is most frequently seen in opposed pairs of standing crests on the end tiles of the ridged roof of temples and other buildings as a defense against fire. They were believed to have some control over rain. The shachi might have originated in a Chinese legend that told of a carp who, having succeeded in swimming to the top of a waterfall, was transformed into a dragon. This concept of striving against difficulties resulting in such spectacular outcome remains central to the annual Boy's Day festival on May 5th, when large paper carp are hung from houses.
The Chinese character for shachi is composed of two radicals, that for 'fish' and that for 'tiger'. The creature is sometimes referred to as a 'tiger-fish', the face resembling a tiger or the mythical leonine shishi. However, the present example has the long face with the horns and whiskers of a dragon, the favored subject of the Myochin armorers.
The signature Myochin Muneyoshi engraved under the chin of this shachi is found on helmets made throughout the Edo period, and it is likely that there were several generations working in more than one province.
But the shachi is most frequently seen in opposed pairs of standing crests on the end tiles of the ridged roof of temples and other buildings as a defense against fire. They were believed to have some control over rain. The shachi might have originated in a Chinese legend that told of a carp who, having succeeded in swimming to the top of a waterfall, was transformed into a dragon. This concept of striving against difficulties resulting in such spectacular outcome remains central to the annual Boy's Day festival on May 5th, when large paper carp are hung from houses.
The Chinese character for shachi is composed of two radicals, that for 'fish' and that for 'tiger'. The creature is sometimes referred to as a 'tiger-fish', the face resembling a tiger or the mythical leonine shishi. However, the present example has the long face with the horns and whiskers of a dragon, the favored subject of the Myochin armorers.
The signature Myochin Muneyoshi engraved under the chin of this shachi is found on helmets made throughout the Edo period, and it is likely that there were several generations working in more than one province.