How to design a Japanese mon

Now you want a Japanese device, to go with that new name?

Like with Japanese names, there are a bunch of things that need to be considered first, when building a Japanese mon, the term for the heraldry used in Historical Japan.]

Firstly, what are mon? Mon are, loosely translated, crests, with certain images, used to denote families and individuals from each other. They came into usage during the early Heian Period, as a way to tell who was from which family, and which retainers were fought for which side of a battle. Over time, they became highly ornate and detailed, and prominent started using their own mon in addition to the mon of their family. Eventually, near the very end of the timeframe the SCA covers, most everyone (samurai, nobility, and merchants) had a personal mon to identify themselves and their families.

With that in mind, here are some things to think about when starting the process of designing a mon/having a Japanese Research Herald help you design one:

What imagery do you want to call to mind?
Are you ok with your device being black and white when registered, and for the majority of its’ use?
Do you know someone who specializes in Japanese heraldry/art?
- Are they able to draw what you have in mind? If you have a European Herald draw it, it will NOT be a mon, it will be the bastard child of the two heraldric systems and you’ll hate it
How locked in to your idea are you?
- Are you willing to listen to an expert in the subject?
How good are you at reading Japanese, and if you can’t do it, do you know someone who can?

Even though they served a similar purpose, Japanese mon are significantly different than European Heraldry, in both design and depiction. As Japanese mon originally started as a way to identify families, there are general trends within mon, but they were far less permissive of interchangeable elements than European heraldry. Additionally, Japanese heraldry was far more individualized, as a small change quite frequently denoted a different family or clan, instead of a simple difference in artistic depiction. These were also frequently what the SCA calls a color on color, black on a white background instead of a riot of color. However, when being displayed, the actual color was less important in mon than the things being depicted, a sharp contrast to European heraldry. In Europe, the colors took precedence over color, and details could be changed at will, but Japanese mon need to be precise and exact, with the color generally not mattering all that much. As such, when displaying mon in an SCA context, your divice may be registered in a particular color or two, but you can actually use it on your things in any color you like.

Mon were generally nature-based, for a variety of reasons
Mon did occasionally feature non-nature things, such as kanji, kanji words, or man-made items
Geometric mon also existed, but were also less frequent than nature-based mon
Be CAREFUL when researching mon, and make sure to use only historical sources, because mon exploded in popularity and design in the Edo Period, and many of the ‘mon‘ images that can be found online date from that period, not from before-1600

Resources for research and design

While there are many different places where information on Japanese names can be found, there are far fewer acceptable sources for Japanese heraldry and mon. With that in mind, here are a few main resources that I, as a Research and Armorial Herald, have found useful. Additionally, please keep in mind that you will need to be able to explain to your Submitting Armorial Herald the items you want, as the way that mon are traditionally designed and depicted are significantly different from European heraldry, and thus your submitting herald may not know what you’ve got in your mon and be unable to blazon it.

O-uma-jirushi
- This is a book discussing and documenting many different aspects of Japanese heraldry, as well as some of the history behind Japanese mon and battlestandards, the aforementioned uma-jirushi, or ‘horse signal/banner’.
- This is less focused on mon, and more focused on battle standards and war banners. While those things frequently overlapped, they weren’t always the same thing. Also, this book has a lot more discussion of war and fighting than discussion or documentation of mon, specifically, so it’s a decent but not fantastic source.
mon.xavid.us
- This is a website crafted by the same person who documented the O-uma-jirushi, and focuses even more specifically on elements found within Japanese mon, as well as the documentation for them.
- It has a bunch of different elements, categorized by type and name, all of which are documented to a specific person and time period
- It doesn’t include all elements found in mon, only the common ones, so may not have everything you’re looking for or the specific element you want
Famous historical people
- This CAN be a good resource, but can also be pretty hit or miss. Some timeperiods only families had mon, so even if the person was famous they may not have had their own mon, or their mon may have been lost to history.
Museum displays
- These can be really good for research and finding elements that you like, because museums are usually very good about researching and sharing the history of the things they’ve found, and usually have documentation and dates for famous things and battles. That usually includes mon, if there are any attributed to the people, places, or events being described in the exhibit.
If you can read Japanese, or know someone who does, there are lots of places that can be searched online, and many different ‘local town history’ websites that frequently have information and the mon of the person who founded that town, did something famous there, or in some other way contributed to the town in a meaningful way. You can find pretty obsure mon and mon elements using these, but it’s like sifting for gold, you toss out a LOT of dirt before finding anything valuable.
(Further resources to be added later)

One final note on mon:

Do Not let heralds tell you it needs to be ‘more european’ in order to pass/be registered.

They are incorrect.

The SCA personal device submission rules and regulations have changed significantly in the last decade, and now explicitly state that devices from other cultures that used heraldric equivalents, so long as the device follows that culture’s heraldric rules and guidelines AND can be blazoned per SCA standards, are perfectly capable of passing through the registration process. Japanese mon fall into this group. Any herald that tries to tell you that your proposed mon isn’t ‘European Enough’ to be registered needs to refresh their understanding of current Submission Guidelines.

旦暮庁 TANBO-CHŌ