Battlefield Trophies

 

During battle, samurai would collect the heads of their opponents. Once taken, the heads would be returned to the base camp for registration. The name of the victor, his weapon used, any other circumstances regarding the duel and the name of the head was recorded on a piece of stiff paper, and tied to the hair queue.

The head was then cleaned, prepared and perfumed for display, a task completed by specially trained women. If a samurai found himself too "busy" to take the head off for registration, or his assistants had already left the field with other heads, cutting off the upper lip and nose together was also acceptable. Then, after the battle had ended, and after reuniting the pieces like a macabre jigsaw puzzle, the head could be properly cut off or reclaimed. For reasons unknown, any heads missing the lip and nose were known as onnakubi, or "woman’s heads."

Following the battle, the heads would be inspected by the commander in chief of the victoroius forces in a solemn ceremony known as the Kubi-jikken. The way the heads were displayed, and the preparations for the viewing ceremony were quite detailed. It was believed that heads could fly, and so a contingent of weapons ready bodyguards surrounded the lord during the ceremony.

Some heads were not presented to the lord. The reasons being, the facial expressions were often interpreted as being lucky or unlucky kills depending on such things as the direction the eyes are looking, whether the head is biting its lip, which eye is open, etc. Heads deemed to be showing in-auspicios expressions were taken away and attended to by Buddhist priests instead.

After the ceremony, the heads of the samurai killed in battle from both sides, vanquished and victor, were buried in large pits known as kubi-zuka, or head mounds. Most battlefields have a head mound in the vicinity.

Incidentally, the record number of heads taken by a single man in combat at the Battle of Sekigahara was Kani Saizo, a samurai serving under Fukushima Masanori, who took a claimed 22 heads, but having left the bulk of his taken heads on the battlefield, could only prove 17 kills, still winning the stakes for the most heads taken.

There is a certain etiquette for holding the head of a warrior. When holding the neck,

the left thumb should be in the ear hole, and the right thumb should be in the cheek.

Kubi jikken (首実験) is a term translates to “head inspection” in Japanese. It was a ceremonial practice by which severed heads of executed enemies were examined by the victorious to verify the identity of the deceased and ensure that the proper legal and ritualistic protocols were followed. Samurai would typically bring the heads back to the castle. The namakubi (生首) were commonly prepared before this inspection by women, usually by their wives clean, groom, dress and arrange them meticulously before presentation. They would get more rewards if they brought the head of someone important so they would sneakily blacken the teeth (black teeth were a symbol of aristocracy) of peasant heads to pass it off as someone of higher standing.

A woodblock print by artist Yoshitoshi Tsukioka portrays Hideyoshi and the head viewing Ceremomy.

A rare scene of a formal head-inspection ceremony presided over by military strongman Mashiba Hisayoshi (Toyotomi Hideyoshi), seated on a chair in his camp and surrounded by his retainers. A kneeling Samurai holds up each severed head for Hideyoshi’s inspection, who customarily holds a fan in front of his face to avoid recognition by the dead. The heads of slain enemy soldiers were collected by their killers to claim monetary reward or recognition.

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