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Comment by Isamu | Hacker News Reader

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Isamu·

There's an interesting helmet with a large statue of Fudo Myo-o, the "immovable radiant king" of Shingon Buddhism.

I don't recall seeing another helmet with a full statue. Are there more examples?

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There's this one at Les Invalides in Paris (site not mine):

https://frompariswithlove-becky.blogspot.com/2015/03/les-inv...

Cmd/ctrl+f, "dragon". It's not quite half way down. Picture's not great. IIRC it was right inside the entrance we came in, though I don't know how much help that is as there are probably a few, even if you narrow it down to entrances open to the public.

There's a closer, somewhat sharper shot of just the top on this page:

https://thetreesaroundnunhead.blogspot.com/2011/08/paris-3-t...

Searching on page for "dragon" brings one straight to it, again.

It's a European helmet, not a Japanese one, though.

That was the first and only one I had seen, too. I suppose there may be a few more but they certainly seem to be rare. This exhibition had no other examples. The helmet with a flame-engulfed dragon that was shown mounted on an armor suit comes closest.

Armor 1 and Armor 3 both feature heavy use of a light bluish thread for decoration. In China a similar blue, made from kingfisher feathers, would be an imperial symbol -- do you know if there's any relationship / what the significance in Japan was?

I’m not aware of any such relationship in Japan. The exhibition didn’t mention it, and I haven’t heard of it elsewhere either. I think it’s just decorative here.

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