Japanese Family Crests

Kamon are Japanese emblems or crests, corresponding to the European heraldy tradition, and are used to specifically represent and identify a family.

They are a subset of the larger body of motifs (called mon) that are symbols of temples, clans, guilds and similar groups of people. Mon first appeared by the 12th century as patterns on flags and uniforms in battles, but their wider use followed the vagaries of class and social custom.

The quartets of kamon below were selected and spliced together from the symbol categories: animal, plant, flower, furnishing, martialism, natural and pattern crests. {I think there is some crossover}




[animal crest] chicken, phoenix, crane, phoenix




[animal crest] butterfly, tortoise, bamboo grass, rabbit




[plant crest] hollyhock, bracken, cryptomeria, Oxalis corymbosa




[plant crest] grape, rice, date palm, ginkgo




[flower crest] wisteria, wisteria, tree peony, anchor




[flower crest] Morning glory, goldthread, wisteria, chrysanthemum




[furnishing crest] key, gin trap, broom, alarm plate




[furnishing crest] wooden hammer, bag, temari ball, amulet




[martialism crest] arrow, anchor, fan, gem




[martialism crest] arrow, samurai warrior helmet, anchor, arrow




[natural crest] cloud & moon, arrows of lightning, sun, wave




[natural crest] water & moon, arrows of lightning, gem, wave




[pattern crest] comma-shaped, swastika, gem, fusil




[pattern crest] tortoise-shell, Japanese quince, crossed stick, meyui pattern

• The (bilingual) Crest Japan site has more than 280 kamon available copyright free for download as .eps files. They convert to jpegs in photoshop (as has been done above) or can be used as scalable vector illustrations in Adobe Illustrator. [beware the flash show's embedded audio!] I think, from a very brief look, that there might be slightly bigger thumbnail images and maybe even more range of styles available from/via the Japanese homesite.
• The wikipedia article on kamon is fairly comprehensive : note all the links to further material.
• Pingmag 2007.
• Inspired by, and ever so slightly ransacked from, Will's Crest Syndrome post on 50 Watts from Jan, 2009.

A Sometimes Unnatural History

The images below (background cleaned) are taken from the multi-volume natural history work, 'Getreue Abbildungen Naturhistorischer Gegenstände' (1795-1807), by Johann Matthäus Bechstein.

Gibbon

Common (!?) Marmoset (Simia jacchus Linnaeus)

Three-Toed Sloth (nb.)

Lion

Hippopotamus

Elephant

Rhinoceros

Vulture

Dodo (extinct by 1681*)

Barbary Falcon

Blue Whale

Sperm Whale

Antelope

Tapir

Squirrel

Polar Bear

I originally found this fabulous polar bear image from the Bechstein volumes a couple of years ago and chose at the time not to pursue the series. I felt that, although there was a BibliOdysseyesque diversity of material (in terms of artistic merit and style, absurdity, and range of species types), the illustrations had been largely stolen or adapted from earlier works (Buffon & Von Schreber come immediately to mind).

With the passage of time and the random rediscovery of the series website, I've had something of a change of heart. Repeated appearance of some of the illustrations (both in contemporary publishing terms and on this blog) underlines the importance and relative ubiquity of the contrived sketch settings, human-like emotions and absurdly humorous representations of some of the less familiar species in Early Modern natural history literature.

In fact, after skipping through the multiple volumes of similar material that constitute Bechstein's zoological encyclopaedia, the appearance of the anatomically correct and detailed renders among the more bizarre illustrations can feel the more incongruous finds. It's a snapshot reminder of progress in popular scientific reporting and accuracy.

Basilisk (mythological)

Wood Boring Beetle

Johann Matthäus Bechstein (1757-1822) was a German ornithologist and forestry expert and a pioneer in animal and environmental conservation.

After studying and teaching theology, Bechstein's casual interest in natural history was formalised professionally with the founding in the 1790s of a forestry school and a forestry society in the German state of Thuringia.

Bechstein was a prolific author - if only a modest figure in the history of science - and is probably best remembered in the English-speaking world for his series on singing birds. He also provided the first description of several bird species, wrote a monograph on caged bird diseases and advocated for preservation of animals considered to be pests in his day (bats, for instance).

• The 8-volume series by Johann Bechstein, 'Getreue Abbildungen Naturhistorischer Gegenstände' (Realistic Pictures from Natural History), was issued between 1795 and 1807. Seven of those volumes are available from the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. (click through on a volume - band - then on anything below 'Inhalt', and then on 'Vorschau' for thumbnail pages. Easypeasy.)
• Bechstein books: Amazon | German National Library | Biodiversity Heritage Library | Googlebooks.
• Wikipedia bio.
• Previously: science | fauna.
• BibliOdyssey on Twitter.