JAPAN
of the helmet, and on the breastplate. Every person of any social status had his badge, and noble families had three,—one principal and two alternatives,—smaller folk being content with two and the ordinary samurai with one. A general or a feudal chief sometimes conferred on a subordinate, in recognition of meritorious conduct, a surcoat having the donor's badge woven or embroidered on it, and the recipient was entitled to wear the garment as long as it was wearable, but not to adopt the badge permanently. Yet badges were not necessarily a mark of aristocracy in Japan. Merchants and manufacturers might have them woven or dyed on a garment, being careful only that the dimensions of the device should be unostentatious compared with the large badges, sometimes three or four inches in diameter, blazoned on the costumes of nobles and high officials. Even that restriction disappeared in time, and from the seventeenth century common mechanics might be seen wearing tunics with badges that stretched across the whole space between the shoulders behind. Just as in Europe a crest or a coat of arms is put upon carriages, household utensils and ornaments, so the Japanese applied these badges not only to their garments but also to their equipages, their dining apparatus, the gates of their residences, their tombstones, the tiles of their roofs, and the metal ornaments on the beams of their houses. The only place from which the badge had to be
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