A Mounted Samurai in Tōsei Gusoku Armor
A full suit of Edo-period tōsei gusoku ('modern armor') displayed on a barded warhorse, from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller collection.
Tōsei gusoku — literally "modern armor" — emerged in the sixteenth-century wars of the Sengoku period, when the arrival of firearms forced Japanese armorers to abandon older laced styles for solid iron plates that could turn a musket ball. This nineteenth-century example, mounted on a barded horse and crowned by a dragon-crested kabuto helmet and a fearsome menpō face mask, belongs to the long twilight of the samurai under the Tokugawa peace, when such armor was worn far more for ceremony, parade and status than for war. Read more in our piece on the Tokugawa shogunate and Edo-period stability.
CC BY-SA 4.0 — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
