Gilded peach-shaped helmet

These helmets are thought to have been prepared for the cavalry responsible for guarding the first Lord of the Yanagawa domain, Tachibana Muneshige, on the battlefield. A considerable number of these helmets were produced from the 16th to 17th centuries. Impressively, 239 helmets have survived and are stored in our museum to this day. They were designed under the influence of a Western model that was similar in style and very popular at that time in Japan, especially in the Kyushu region, which was the first to adopt Western culture.
However, there are no remaining flags that originally accompanied the helmets. According to the document of the Tachibana family, each of the helmets had a tube on the back in which the black and white battle flag was inserted.