From the very first suits of armor you see, made from iron, silver, copper, wood, gold, brocade, fur, bronze, brass, leather, and lacquer, you cannot help but marvel at the amount of required work, skill, attention and planning. The finest of details, the most elaborate designs - and each piece with its purpose, be it protection or pomp (or a clever combination of the two). Each suit took many hands over many months.
But it was when I arrived at these that it really struck me:
Arrowheads. Essential to Samurai warfare, and some of the most beautiful objects I've ever seen. Objects that stood a good chance of never being noticed again, by neither craftsman nor soldier. You could say the same for a suit of armor trampled by hooves, or a helmet pierced by Portugese muskets... Why go to those lengths, why construct works of such art to face imminent destruction?
I'm sure there's a scholarly answer to this, but my mundane mind first opined that people in feudal Japan had simple lives, with an abundance of time. That's not a particularly satisfying answer... I spent way too many hours in undergrad Anthro classes to ignore the deeper values that these objects portray. But as a human, a practitioner, a Gemini - the conclusion that made me feel the most despondent was this: Even war was artful.
And bloody, and cruel, both full and empty of glory, I imagine. But these pieces prove it was a thoughtful and communal effort, one that ironically required as much collaboration as resulted in annihilation. There was ritual and pageantry. A singular type of beauty that I don't pretend to understand.
And now we kill each other with BBs and nails in pressure cookers. We could spend a day or a week constructing weapons that maim hundreds of strangers. There are official wars that fail to consume us, unless we love or know someone wearing today's armor - and there are many more unofficial wars we can enact beyond the support of our communities.
I wish I had something enlightening to say about all of it - but in truth, I just feel heartbroken. The idealist in me wants all the violence to end, so that we can all be about the business of healing, and evolving. The realist in me knows humans (animals?) have never lived without violence, and by all accounts never will. The way of the Samurai was imperfect. But I do have respect for the respect it confers on that heaviest of acts, taking a life. If life is our brief pageant of opposites, ironies, truths - silver and wood and fur and leather - let it be beautiful. Artful.
And shared. And adored.
