Kachimushi, the dragonfly

A helmet shaped like a dragonfly

The Minneapolis Institute of Art holds a 17th-century Japanese helmet in the form of a dragonfly: black and gold, with two large gold eyes, two removable pairs of wings and its tail raised. Its label explains that in the 15th and 16th centuries high-ranking lords added sculptural forms to their helmets so that they could be picked out on the battlefield, and that these kawari kabuto, ‘exotic helmets’, let leaders choose a motif that reflected their own character or that of their troops. In Japan, the label says, the dragonfly stands for focused effort and watchfulness, because of the way it moves up, down and sideways while continuing to face forward. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a later one: an 18th-century kawari-kabuto topped by a dragonfly, restored in 2015.

To verify: Whether the Met’s own description of its dragonfly helmet calls the dragonfly kachi-mushi and praises the way it hunts, as it is reported to do (we could not open the museum’s page)

The ‘victory insect’

Japanese Wikipedia’s article on the dragonfly says that in Japan it came to be pictured as kachimushi, the ‘victory insect’, fierce and brave, and that samurai favoured it as a good-omen emblem, hoping to share its nature. Especially in the Sengoku (‘warring states’) period it decorated helmets, armour, quivers and sword guards, as well as surcoats and inrō cases. The article gives two reasons for this picture: a belief that the dragonfly only goes forward and never retreats, and a story in the Nihon Shoki, the chronicle finished in 720. In W. G. Aston’s English translation of 1896, a gadfly stings Emperor Yūryaku’s arm while he waits to shoot game; a dragonfly flies in, bites the gadfly and carries it off, and in its honour the place is named Akitsu-no, the moor of the dragonfly. Henri Joly’s Legend in Japanese Art (1908) lists the dragonfly as an emblem of Japan and of victory, and glosses kachi as ‘victory’.

To verify: An early written source for the belief that the dragonfly only goes forward and never retreats: Japanese Wikipedia supports it only with a modern library reference answer; The National Diet Library’s reference answer on the name kachimushi, which Japanese Wikipedia cites and we could not open

Courage, and the dragonfly islands

In Japan today the dragonfly is counted among symbols of courage, strength and happiness, and it is linked with autumn. An old name for Japan, Akitsushima, can be read as ‘dragonfly island’, because akitsu is an old word for the insect. The Nihon Shoki says that Emperor Jimmu, looking over the land from a hill, found it shaped like a dragonfly licking its hinder parts, and that from this it first received the name; Aston, its translator, thought the name really meant ‘region of harvests’, and other readings have also been proposed.