Haniwa in the Form of a Shield
c. 500
- Medium
- Earthenware with applied, cut, and incised designs and red slip
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- Overall: 120 x 48.7 x 18 cm (47 1/4 x 19 3/16 x 7 1/16 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Kofun period (300–710 CE)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Haniwa (clay cylinders) topped with the form of a shield, or with a shield and quiver of arrows, appear on some tomb mounds called kofun (old mounds). There are also warriors holding a shield, their heads peeping out over the tops, or diagonally across their bodies. There are even some haniwa with a warrior’s helmet sitting at the top of the cylinder above the shield. This unusual object has a shield and quiver on the front, and the face of a warrior wearing a helmet on the reverse.
