Battle Surcoat (Jinbaori) with Fan

The most suitable material for a durable, visibly striking, and warm battle surcoat was wool, which in the seventeenth century could not be produced in Japan and had to be imported from Portugal and the Netherlands. It arrived pre-dyed, most popularly in a deep scarlet derived from cochineal. This surcoat has an elongated shape and a decorative epaulet-like strip called a “sword support” (tachi-uke) sewn to the upper shoulder. The position of the shoulder piece indicates that this example is an early jinbaori, but the use of mid-eighteenth-century European silk reveals the piece to be a replacement, possibly to conceal use. At the center of the back is a cut-out and finely stitched white wool (rasha) appliqué in the shape of a Chinese-style military signal fan (tōuchiwa or gunbai). It appears to be only a decorative pattern, not a family crest.