What samurai wore under armor: layers beneath the yoroi

These are the clothes under the plates, not the formal kimono. Yoroi is the armor. The do is the torso piece, the cuirass. Haidate are the thigh guards, plates that sit over the legs like an apron. Hakama are the pleated trousers of public dress, worn over a robe when the armor stayed in its chest. Kimono, hakama, and kamishimo, the stiff-shouldered formal suit of Edo duty, live on the clothing page. The shells themselves, from early great armor to later close-fitting sets, are on the armor page. This page stays in the gap: cloth between skin and steel.

Film still dresses that gap in two ways. A full kimono and a wide hakama vanish under a shining do, or the chest is bare and the plates do all the work. A real dressing order starts with cloth. The Nagoya Sword Museum, walking through one early Edo tosei gusoku in its own collection, puts hitatare, hakama, shin wraps, and socks on the body before any plate. Tosei gusoku is the closer armor of the late warring years and the Edo period. The museum is explicit that other armor types close differently. The cloth problem stays either way. Something has to take sweat, and something has to keep a wad of pleats out of the thigh guards.

Layers from the skin outward

Read the stack from the skin out. Two names in one row usually mean one garment. A man did not wear a fundoshi, a shitagi, a hadagi, and a hadajuban as four separate shirts. The loincloth is its own piece. The other words name the shirt layer, not extra shirts piled on top of it.

Compare them by the mess they prevent. Each one fails differently if you leave it out.

• A fundoshi covers the groin and stays there when other ties are opened.
• A juban takes the sweat so a silk robe above it is not the wash rag.
• Close trousers give the haidate a smooth thigh instead of a stack of pleats.
• The armor jacket keeps the sleeve out of the kote. On a yoroi hitatare, that sleeve is also the cloth a bystander can see once the do is shut.
• Kyahan tidy the calf so the stride stays clear of the sandal.
• An uwa-obi never touches skin. It sits on the do and moves weight to the hips.

Fundoshi, the base layer

A fundoshi is a loincloth. Japan Reference describes a strip of cloth fastened at the waist, passed between the legs, and tucked or tied at the back. Another name is shitaobi, "waist cloth under." Same garment. Laborers wore it, foot soldiers wore it, and samurai wore it under armor. Early pieces were linen or hemp. Cotton became more common from the 16th century. Wealthy men sometimes used silk. The same article calls plain silk unsuitable, so fiber was a practical choice, not a single house uniform.

Several cuts share the job. The rokushaku is the long common strip, on the order of six shaku by one shaku (that article glosses a shaku as roughly 34 cm). Mokko and Etchu fundoshi are shorter arrangements. The cuts differ. Under yoroi they share one job: cloth on the groin when everything else is plate, cord, or trouser. Skip it and the lowest edges of the armor sit on bare skin. Sweat from a long day in the do also starts here. Washing and camp grime sit with bathing and hygiene. The fundoshi is the piece small enough to launder when the brocade is not.

The short shirt, and the words that mean underwear

Shitagi means underwear. Hadagi means what sits on the skin. In armor talk both point at the inner layer. They do not add a pattern of their own. The short robe in that layer is the juban, also called hadajuban. The Sengoku Daimyo costume notes treat those two names as one garment: once the kosode, the narrow-sleeved robe, became something a man could wear in public, the juban or hadajuban took the old underwear job.

Before that shift, the notes say, a kosode or a hitoe (an unlined robe) was the usual undergarment. Heian and Kamakura under-kosode were white. Older court language called a sweat cloth kazami or asetori, "sweat taking." The idea is plain. A washable layer protects the clothes above it from sweat and skin oil. Under armor, that idea lands on the juban. A full kimono is an outer robe. Its sleeve is made to be seen. A hadajuban is cut to stay hidden: a short collar, about half the usual width in those notes, and short narrow sleeves, covered once the armor robe closes.

The word juban itself is late. The costume notes trace it to the 16th-century Portuguese gibão, a jerkin, and they note evidence that the first use sat near gusoku no shita, the clothes under tosei gusoku. In ordinary dress the same word mostly means that hidden kosode-shaped shirt. A Sengoku juban and a field armor shirt share that history. You do not have to stack both every time. If the jacket under the do is already a plain, close, washable gusoku-shita, it may be doing the sweat job itself.

Why a full hakama fights the thigh guards

Hakama on the street are supposed to have body. The costume notes count panels: a cheap pair might be two widths of cloth, a common pair four, a full formal pair six. More panels mean more fullness and more pleats. In the Edo period the long nagabakama became the formal norm, and people then used kobakama, "small hakama," for ordinary hakama as well. That is a trap. A 16th-century kobakama can mean a knee-length pair of two or three panels, the sort lower-ranking warriors actually wore. An Edo label with the same word may mean "not the trailing court pair." Look at length and fullness before you decide you are seeing armor underwear.

Under the haidate, fullness is the problem. The Nagoya museum hangs those thigh guards like a waist apron, tied behind the body, sometimes with a shoulder cord if the piece has a loop for one. An apron over a pile of pleats rocks, pinches, and snags the lacing. The skirt plates of the do, the kusazuri, hang in the same neighborhood. A trailing hem has nowhere honest to go.

If you are deciding whether a hakama can live under haidate, go in this order.

1. Count the fullness. More panels, more pleats, more bulk on the thigh.
2. See how the hem finishes: gathered with a cord, closed into a tube at the calf, or left as a wide leg.
3. Picture the haidate on top. Folds that remain will sit under the plates.
4. If the hem trails, it is formal dress. Leave it for the audience.

The cuts that pass that test have their own names, and a man wears one. Momohiki are tight trousers. Tattsuke-bakama, also called Iga-bakama in the costume notes, are hakama whose legs end in tubes tied around the calf, one strap under the knee and one at the ankle. Those notes date the form to the later 16th century and compare the tube to kyahan joined onto a shortened hakama. They were popular with military men and with people on the road. Kobakama, when it means the short few-panel pair, is the third answer. Yamagishi Motoo lists all three as the lower half of gusoku-shita. Early armor often used a fourth answer that looks like hakama and is not the street pair: the matching trousers of a yoroi hitatare, with cords at the hems so the legs could be tied in.

Off-duty dress and under-armor dress

The public suit and the under-armor suit can share a family of patterns. Hitatare cloth, a crest, even the word hakama. The job splits them. Street clothes announce the man. Armor clothes disappear, or they show only where the plates refuse to cover.

Takada Shizuo, cited in the Sengoku Daimyo notes, has bushi unwilling to go out in public without hakama over the kosode. By the end of the Momoyama years a man might drop the hakama at home. Out of doors, that read as sloppy, closer to a laborer's dress than a warrior's. Kamishimo pushed the public silhouette further: matching hakama plus kataginu, the sleeveless shoulder piece that makes Edo formal dress look squared off. None of that is a pattern for the inside of a do. The clothing page keeps crests, season, and audience rules. Here the test is physical. Public hakama should flare. Armor trousers should vanish under the haidate.

Shins, feet, and the bow glove

Kyahan are cloth leggings. In the Nagoya dressing order they go on with the robe and the hakama, over the trouser, before the plates. Two cords, one high on the shin and one low, hold the wrap. The museum's reason is footwork: the calf stays neat. Before the Nanboku-chō period, the 14th-century decades of rival courts, the same wrap was called habaki. New name, old job. Do not confuse either word with the suneate. Suneate are the shin guards, armor, and the guide puts them on after the cap and before the haidate. Kyahan are the cloth those guards can sit against.

Tabi are split-toe socks. The same guide allows indoor dressing in tabi alone, and puts straw waraji on after the kyahan when the man is actually going out in sandals. Sandals, clogs, and the rest of the road wardrobe are on the footwear page. A hard cover on the top of the foot is a plate. Treat it as armor, with the suneate, until a label calls it cloth.

Yugake are easier to misfile, because they are gloves and the kote are also on the arms. The Nagoya museum defines a yugake as a leather glove for drawing the bow. It is one hand, the drawing hand, and it is there so the string has leather to pull against. It is not a sweat liner stuffed into both sleeves. The same guide says the usual habit is to put armor pieces on from the left, with the yugake as the exception, and it treats the "keep the right side free" story as the leading theory among several. That is dressing custom for the plates. It does not turn the glove into underwear.

Yoroi hitatare and the Edo dress robe

Hitatare, written 直垂, started as an open-collar jacket. In the Heian period, laborers wore it with short, narrow sleeves. Nobles used a similar cut as nightwear. Warriors took it up because the neck was comfortable, and by the Kamakura period it was ordinary daywear for warrior houses. Sleeves grew when the garment became a public robe. Later it hardened into formal dress. An Edo hitatare worn to an audience sits in that public line, next to kamishimo. It is not the robe under the plates.

Yoroi hitatare, 鎧直垂, is the armor version: hitatare plus matching hakama, from the end of the Heian period. The Sengoku Daimyo notes say samurai attached to the court had been wearing suikan under armor, a hunting-style robe with large sleeves, and that those sleeves were a nuisance. Other warriors were already in hitatare as day clothes. The comfortable cut won. Sleeves were made shorter and narrower again, back toward the old laborer's shape, while the cloth itself was often showy. Color and pattern followed the owner's taste and purse. A Portuguese dictionary of Japanese from the 16th century, cited in those notes, records a Sengoku pronunciation, yoroi-bitatare. Yamagishi adds the working details: cords at the sleeve cuffs and at the hakama hems, so both could be tied in.

The Nagoya guide, a modern demonstration on one tosei gusoku, still starts from a yoroi hitatare and says the sleeve cord draws the cuff in so the cloth does not roll up when the kote goes on. Armor types differ, so one demonstration is a single method. The cord's job is to keep the sleeve out of the arm armor.

What changed when the armor got tighter

Early yoroi of the Heian and Kamakura periods, the great armor called ō-yoroi, was a large shell for a mounted archer. The armor timeline keeps the plate story: boxy cuirass, big shoulder guards, then lighter wraps for men on foot, then thicker plates once guns spread. The cloth followed the shell. A roomy cavalry armor can hide a robe. A close cuirass has no room for a six-panel hakama, and a wet brocade sleeve binds inside the kote.

Under that early shell, the first robe was not always a yoroi hitatare. Court-serving warriors wore suikan. The sleeves were the problem, so hitatare replaced suikan under the armor, and suikan stayed on as ceremonial dress for Kamakura samurai. The yoroi hitatare that took the field slot was often loud in pattern. Fiber was stricter than pattern. In the early Kamakura period, those costume notes say, silk was generally for generals. A plainer fiber on everyone else matches that rank rule. The sleeve still mattered, because the do and the shoulder guards cover the body and leave the arm's cloth in view. Brocade at the cuff is display you can get without uncovering the chest.

Tosei gusoku brings the next cloth. Yamagishi's account is that half of the story. In the medieval period the under-layer was yoroi hitatare: a warrior's ordinary hitatare with the sleeves narrowed and with tying cords at cuff and hem. In the early modern period the armor form changed, tosei gusoku became the common field armor, and that robe declined. Records, including domain paperwork, call the new clothes gusoku-shita, "what you wear under the gusoku." A 1638 haikai anthology already uses the word. The dictionary gloss is a jacket-like layer under tosei gusoku.

The new jacket borrows from European clothes. Japanese called those traders and their fashions nanban. Yamagishi describes a standing collar closed with buttons, sleeves that are tubes or narrowed cuffs with a button to draw them in, and a cut he reads as mixed Japanese and foreign. Unlined, lined, and padded versions exist, so the same pattern had a summer and a winter weight. The lower half was momohiki, tattsuke-bakama, or kobakama. Field cloth was often tough hemp, dyed indigo or brown, plain or patterned, sometimes with five or seven family crests. The crest stayed. It was dyed onto hemp that can take sweat.

Why the plainer cut won is the campaign, not a sudden taste for drab. Men were on foot more often. Marches ran long. A trailing hakama fights that stride, which is why kyahan and calf-tied tattsuke-bakama exist at all. Muskets, on the armor timeline, pushed plates thicker and lacing gaps smaller. Closer plates leave less room for a sleeve that was designed to be seen. A hemp shirt can be washed. A nishiki yoroi hitatare cannot be treated like laundry. Cotton fundoshi, more common from the 16th century, belongs to the same practical shift. From the Sengoku period on, a manchira can also sit at the shoulders under the do: a short vest of mail or leather, armor rather than a shirt, so the cuirass does not bite. The Nagoya museum classes it with the small armor pieces. Do not file it next to the juban.

Peace put the silk back. The Nagoya museum's own history of the habit says that once the Edo peace held, armor was rarely worn in a real fight and became a formal sign of house rank, brought out for celebrations. Yamagishi dates a textile upgrade to that same mid-Edo turn. Plain silk, crepe, and figured silk were favored, and the expensive sets used gold brocade, silver brocade, and nishiki. That is the world of the Met's 18th-century Matsudaira hitatare and the Tokyo museum's 19th-century shokkō robe. Fancy under-layers in glass cases are a poor guide to a Sengoku baggage train.

Revival dressing added a third cut. When people put on old-style ō-yoroi and dō-maru again, they sometimes copied medieval kariginu and hitatare. Yamagishi says those clothes should be called yoroi-shita, beside gusoku-shita and beside the medieval yoroi hitatare. The early armor robe has tied cuffs, and silk on it was mostly for generals. The field gusoku-shita is hemp and buttons, built for a closer cuirass. The later yoroi-shita is an old silhouette made again because the armor on display was an old silhouette too.

The belt on the cuirass

The uwa-obi is the last cloth in that tosei gusoku order. It goes on after the do is closed, so it sits outside the plates. The Nagoya guide defines it as the belt laid over the yurugi-no-ito, the loose cords that connect the cuirass to the kusazuri, the skirt plates. In that demonstration the belt is also called kukuri-jime no o. Two names, one sash. Drawing it in steadies the do at the waist and takes load off the shoulders. The guide compares it to the hip belt on a pack frame. Their example, an early Edo tosei gusoku with gold leaf on the plates, weighs about 20 kg. On that cuirass, its job is to let the hips carry the do.

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