This is an interesting text on Japanese samurai armor written by Bashford Dean, an American zoologist and expert on medieval and modern armor. He collected hundreds of Japanese specimens.The author provides an exhaustive description of the collection he gave to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he also presents an introductory text on the manufacture and development of Japanese armor throughout history. Thanks to his great scholarship on the subject, Bashford Dean offers us descriptions full of details and information that will be very useful to all those who wish to approach the study of this type of specimen.Japanese martial arts had a great development and the level of skill reached by the warriors was extremely high. Unlike in the West, the samurai valued armor that allowed them sufficient mobility to apply their martial skills, even at the cost of less protection. In Japan, fighting styles continued to develop their incredible skills, whereas in the West, these disciplines were lost until they gave way definitively to fighting with firearms.