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Samurai Helmets

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21–30 of 91 posts

Re: Samurai Helmets

#21
post #8
post #2

If anyone lives in London and would like to investigate how the ancient sword arts of japan tie into meditation, I highly recommend http://battodo-fudokan.co.uk/

From the websight "Nakamura Ryu Battodo is a distillation of traditional Japanese swordsmanship ..." In other words, it is not a traditional sword system but a modern one.

Heh - I practiced Kendo with Raoul Knutsen for a few years, there wasn't much meditative about the school he followed!

Re: Samurai Helmets

#23
post #18
post #2

If anyone lives in London and would like to investigate how the ancient sword arts of japan tie into meditation, I highly recommend http://battodo-fudokan.co.uk/

I did tameshigiri for the second time last night. Speaking as someone who regularly practiced zazen for 15 years it is an incredibly Zen meditative experience!

So can be almost any phisical activity that requires simplicity and precision.

Re: Samurai Helmets

#24
post #21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the websight "Nakamura Ryu Battodo is a distillation of traditional Japanese swordsmanship ..." In other words, it is not a traditional sword system but a modern one.

Heh - I practiced Kendo with Raoul Knutsen for a few years, there wasn't much meditative about the school he followed!

I have a lot of respect for martial arts disciplines that put martial arts first and keep spiritual aspects of the practice ( if they have one ) off the marketing material.

Re: Samurai Helmets

#25
post #19

Is the fantastic impracticality of these helmets due to the handicap principal ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle )?

It's likely an artifact of the samurai fighting style which is quite different from conventional continental fighting as experienced by regular troops.

Re: Samurai Helmets

#26
post #7

After looking at pictures of a bunch of samurai helmets, I came to a realization that Darth Vader's helmet is more or less the shape of a samurai helmet. Maybe this should have been obvious to me (especially being a fan of the Hidden Fortress film), but it was a cool discovery for me.

George Lucas was inspired by samurai films. This film are called jidai seki (period films). From jidai --> jedi. Also C3PO and R2D2 are inspired by the couple of mongrels in Hidden Fortress.

Re: Samurai Helmets

#27
post #3

(define (get) (get1 (quote ()) (read)))(define (get1 b r) (if (eof-object? r) (reverse b) (get1 (cons r b) (read))))(define (put) (put1 (quote ()) (read-char)))(define (put1 b r) (if (eof-object? r) (list->string (reverse b)) (if (char=? #\) r) (put1 (cons #\. (cons #\. (cons r b))) (read-char)) (put1 (cons r b) (read-char)))))(define (final lis) (if (null? lis) lis (final1 (car lis) (cdr lis))))(define (final1 f r)…

I'm bored and we are on a site called hacker news; anyone want to join me on de-obfuscating this code?

Here's the best I could do at formatting and reading/commenting it, so far:

    ;; Usage: (get)
    ;; Parse the entirety of stdin as a sequence of s-expressions.  Return
    ;; that list of expressions.
    ;;
    ;; The definition of this function is a little contrived, because in
    ;; lisp it's simpler to prepend to a list than to append to it, which
    ;; would be the natural thing to do.  So instead, we build the list
    ;; such that it is backwards, then we call (reverse LIST) on it when
    ;; we read EOF.
    (define (get)
      (get1 (quote ()) (read)))
    ;; Usage: (get CURRENT-BUFFER JUSt-READ-EXPRESSION)
    (define (get1 b r)
      (if (eof-object? r)
          (reverse b)
        (get1 (cons r b) (read))))
    
    ;; Usage: (put)
    ;;
    ;; Read the entirety of stdin as a sequence of characters, perform the
    ;; global string substitution ")" -> ")..", then return the result as
    ;; a string.
    ;;
    ;; The definition of this function is a little contrived, because in
    ;; lisp it's simpler to prepend to a list than to append to it, which
    ;; would be the natural thing to do.  So instead, we build the list
    ;; such that it is backwards, then we call (reverse LIST) on it when
    ;; we read EOF.
    (define (put)
      (put1 (quote ()) (read-char)))
    ;; Usage: (put CURRENT-BUFFER LAST-READ-CHAR)
    (define (put1 b r)
      (if (eof-object? r)
          (list->string (reverse b))
        (if (char=? #\) r)
            (put1 (cons #\. (cons #\. (cons r b))) (read-char))
          (put1 (cons r b) (read-char)))))
    
    ;; Usage: (final LIST)
    ;; ???
    (define (final lis)
      (if (null? lis)
          lis
        (final1 (car lis) (cdr lis))))
    ;; Usage: (final1 FIRST REST)
    (define (final1 f r)
      (if (and (pair? f) (pair? (cdr f)) (eqv? (quote quote) (car f)))
          (cons f (final (cdr r)))
        (if (list? f)
            (final2 f (gather (count (car r)) (cons (quote ()) (final (cdr r)))))
          (if (or (vector? f) (pair? f) (eq? #\) f))
              (cons f (final (cdr r)))
            (cons f (final r))))))
    ;; Usage: (final2 f g)
    (define (final2 f g)
      (cons (append (final f) (car g)) (cdr g)))
    ;; Usage: (count SYMBOL)
    (define (count s)
      (- (string-length (symbol->string s)) 2))
    ;; Usage: (gather c lis) 
    (define (gather c lis)
      (if (= c 0)
          (cons (reverse (car lis)) (cdr lis))
        (gather (- c 1) (cons (cons (cadr lis) (car lis)) (cddr lis)))))
    
    ;; 1. Use (put) to read stdin as a string and perform the ")" -> ").."
    ;;    global string replacement.
    ;; 2. Feed that resulting string to (get), which parses it in to a
    ;;    sequence of s-expressions.
    ;; 3. Feed that list of expressions to (final), which does something
    ;;    to it and returns a list.
    ;; 4. (write) each item that (final) returns.
    (for-each write (final (with-input-from-string (put) get)))

Re: Samurai Helmets

#28
post #19

Is the fantastic impracticality of these helmets due to the handicap principal ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle )?

It's likely an artifact of the samurai fighting style which is quite different from conventional continental fighting as experienced by regular troops.

Can you briefly describe the style of fighting that makes this sort of headgear practical?

Re: Samurai Helmets

#29
post #8
post #2

If anyone lives in London and would like to investigate how the ancient sword arts of japan tie into meditation, I highly recommend http://battodo-fudokan.co.uk/

From the websight "Nakamura Ryu Battodo is a distillation of traditional Japanese swordsmanship ..." In other words, it is not a traditional sword system but a modern one.

Given it's less than savory origins I wouldn't consider it a basis for meditative contemplation either.

Re: Samurai Helmets

#30
post #19

Is the fantastic impracticality of these helmets due to the handicap principal ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle )?

Nope, it's due to the fact these come from the period after the samurai had changed from soldiers to aristocratic bureaucrats. It's doubtful any of these saw a single battle.
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