Samurai armour was made from strips and plates of iron covered in lacquer, to protect it from rain, and bound by brightly coloured cords.
The average weight of a suit of armour was about twenty-five pounds, which became heavier when the cords became wet. To prepare for battle, it could take a samurai up to an hour to don his armour. Some inventive samurai would hang their armour from a room's rafters and lower it down himself when required to in order to save on time. The higher the ranking of a samurai, the more armour he was entitled to wear, and as well, the more colourful it was.
With the arrival of the arquebus, a firearm brought by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century to Japan, steel plates were added toarmour for better protection. Masks were added more frequently to samurai helmets, kabuto, towards the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to scare an enemy warrior during battle.
