Since the dawn of the Yamato period (250-710), Japan's society, arts and culture have evolved drawing on the dynamic balance that alternately opposed and incorporated native aesthetics and imported concepts. We often find at the centre of this evolution an originative confrontation between Japan's indigenous sensibility for primeval nature that resonates within Shintoism, and foreign religions and ideas, Buddhism at first, imported from China through Korea in the first half of the 6th century, and later on Taoism, Confucianism and Christianity. Centuries of complex synergies gave birth to the vast and exquisite Japanese culture with its stone gardens, tea ceremony and flower arrangements, ceramics and lacquerware, literature and dramatic arts, and of course the many different schools and currents of fine arts.
Most studies on Japanese art always marvel about the lavishly decorated pottery and the intriguing dogu clay figurines of the Jomon period (c.14,000 - c.300 BCE); inspect extensively the different burial artefacts of the Kofun period (300-538); applaud the buddhism-influenced architecture and aesthetics of the Heian (794-1185) and the Kamakura (1185-1333) periods; reverence the zen gardens and the tea culture of the Muromachi period (1336-1573); admire the folding screens of the Rinpa school and enjoy the vitality and freshness of the ukiyo-e paintings and woodblock prints of the Edo period (1603-1868); while constantly drawing parallels with calligraphy, ceramics and religion, and expanding further on Japanese contemporary art and manga.
Yet, interestingly, those studies will, more often than none, completely ignore a very distinctive and rather ancient facet of Japanese art and culture; a field with more than a thousand years of constant evolution and refinement, and which played a central role for centuries in samurai affairs and thus in the country's history; an art that blends exquisitely complex and intricate geometries with minimalism and simplicity. By that, I mean the Japanese art of heraldic devices and emblems, generally known in the West as kamon.
Kamon usually feature a monochromatic circular-shaped design, which emphasizes a complex structure of symmetries. The Japanese word for "heraldry" is monsh-gaku 紋章学, which literally translate to "study of insignia", where gakumeans "study" and monsho "insignia".
Nevertheless, Japanese people generally use the word kamon rather than monsho to designate family emblems.
The word kamon is composed of two characters: 家紋, where 家 means "house" or "family" and 紋 "insignia". Furthermore, the character 紋 divides itself into 糸 "thread" and 文 "script" or "decoration", which leads to think that this ideogram first designated marks embroidered or waived into garments or fabric. It is important to remark that Kamon is not the only word used to designate Japanese heraldic devices. People sometimes talk about monsho, as said earlier, but also use terms like mondokoro, jomon, honmon, shomon, omotemon, etc., or simply mon. The vocabulary of kamon is indeed very vast, as one would except from a thousand of years old pursuit. There are of course subtle nuances, but those words can generally be used interchangeably.
Japanese heraldry developed following the same syncretism other disciplines did. It emerged during an age where society was still heavily influenced by Chinese culture, fashion and state organisation, yet those heraldic emblems were not directly imported from the continent. They drew their inspiration from Chinese motifs but matured into something uniquely Japanese, as neither China nor Korea ever adopted such a heraldic system. Kamon then slowly evolved throughout Japan's historical tides, and continue to do so nowadays, even if their imprint on modern Japanese life is considerably diminished compared to what it used to be in the past.
Kamon intersect a vast number of fields. Heraldry is of course an important resource for historians and genealogists, but kamon were so present in many strata of Japanese society, and for so long, that they can loom over studies on kimono design and history, fine arts, literature and dramatic arts, craft industry, numismatology, vexillology, religious and secular symbolism, geometry, design and marketing, pop culture, gender studies, etc.
to be continued (definitely)...
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