The picture above is a parade of the Top Ten among Japanese family crests, i.e. their basic designs have been most often used in cranking up other family crests since before the first thousand years. Besides the 18-petalled golden chrysanthemum, which is the Imperial Family's crest, the most widespread crest designs consist of the following (the clans that are mentioned first are those whose crests are shown as examples of each category in the main picture above):

Some used dots to form flowers and such -- like the famous clans under Oda Nobunaga's overlordship: Maeda, Kuki, Tsutsui, Hosokawa. The Chiba clan also used dots as flower petals. The Rusu, Nasu, and Kusunoki clans incorporated a chrysanthemum in their crests.

A few unimaginatively used kanji, such as the mighty Mori, the blunderer Ishida, and a number of well-known warrior clans like Honda, Ukita, Hara, Inoue, and Murakami.

A warlord's clan preceded the Meiji to World War II flag: the Ryuzoji's crest has already been featuring sunrays since 14th century.

Crests were thought up based on a good many considerations, and a great chunk of those couldn't survive being rationally vivisected. Handles, for example, which surround the Akagawa crest, meant good luck being pulled into the person fluttering the crest. In this case Oda's crest had its flower petals to resemble handles a bit, too.

Japan has, until today, a 'flower language' of its own. Since flowers make a lot of family crests, maybe you'd better check out what every flower means to the Japanese (click here).

There are beautiful samurai crests such as these:

And there are hard-to-fathom crests like the ones below:

There were complicated and hard-to-emulate crests like the following clans':

And there were those very famous clans whose crests were much too simple to forget (and too hard to be seen as crests when stencilled on daily stuff):

While a few warlords of 16th century already fluttered 'modern' and 'postmodern' or 'contemporary' or (in their times) 'futuristic' designs over their luggage:

The use of family crests in Japan is usually said to have started in Heian era (around the year 750), but in real life even when the capital city of the country was still in Nara (around 600) some people already put on some crests on their belongings. Even when Nara didn't exist yet -- the capital was in Asuka, in 500's -- Empress Suiko has put some symbols on her banners, for a very practical reason: she went to war a lot, and it was hard for her men to see where she was any given time in battlefields. She ordered her Generals to do the same because otherwise she couldn't scold the underachievers in the aftermath of such battles.

Why did the Japanese find famil crests? Because since the year 500 there were too many noblehouses already, especially those whose daily biz was loitering around the Imperial Palace but nowhere around the Imperial succession line.

Princes #7 and subsequent siblings had to move out of the Imperial House and made their own families, which in time evolved into clans. Asuka in late 500's was reportedly already crowded with such noblepersons. They all might have had some home addresses far away inland, but they kept mansions in the capital city, and those mansions were full of retainers, servants, errand-boys, cooks, dealers, and so forth. They might carry their bosses' (i.e. their lords') stuff -- carriages, litters or sedan-chairs, oxen, horses, food trays, vegetable baskets, etcetera; those stuff simply must be marked by something as somebody's property or else -- whatever might happen.

So that's why in 700's people put family crests virtually everywhere, from carts to arrows to tiny weeny tea cups.

The Tokugawa 'bible' of family crests. The samples that happen to get shown here include
the crests of Kato, Takeda, Nagano, Ogasawara, Moniwa, and Chosokabe clans.

The (oh, I'm tired of typing these same words all over this site!) Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1868) did a census of family crests, then put them all inside a book, and released a decree that the book was to be the official reference for making up new family crests. When the shogunate started to dwindle, the lowest-classed-but-richest merchants of Edo (Tokyo) were allowed to put on family crests on their formal dresses and such. Maybe the merchant family that today owns the largest chains of bookshops in Asia, Kinokuniya, was the first who used a crest, or perhaps it was their acquaintance Mitsui.

The Tokugawa era was one in which family crests were to follow the 'universal' pattern of being based on a circle. This was because the shogunate fixed the rules concerning where, when, how crests were to be put on people's dresses, and such things were called mon-tsuki (literal: moon of crest). Circles looked better anyway on jackets and so forth, compared to the warring period's crests that you have seen in the samples above, which didn't show any difference from the usual patterns on textile.

According to the Tokugawas, women's dresses look best with family crests whose diameter is 2 centimeters (0.8 inches), while men's jackets were stencilled with larger crests, i.e. 4 centimeters (1.80 inches).

For convenience, sumo wrestlers were allowed to use 'gigantic' family crests, which all exceeded 2 inches in diameter.

Those rules are still observed until this very minute.

Then the Meiji Restoration came and everybody were not just allowed to use family crests but also, first of all, compelled to have family names (click here if you have no idea what I mean). So family crests experienced a big boom.

It was because of the Meiji confusion that today there are so many Japanese clans and families unrelated to each other having the exact same family crests embroidered on their formal kimono (click here to see pictures).

Because the Japanese use ideographs as their 'letters', between pictures lifted up as family crests and the written words in their script no yawning gorge ever existed. Glance a sec at the following examples of evolution of the Chinese and Japanese scripts. The pictures at the upper part are what 'dragon', 'fish', and 'face' were 'written' as, before they endured several hundred years of evolution into the characters on the lower part:

As far as the 'face' character goes, no one in the world would have foreseen its retrogressing move towards what you know since 1970's as smileys.

Anyway, in 2002 there were approximately 6,000 family crests in use by the Japanese people, excluding corporate logos (if those aren't the owners' family crests). Most of them were still images derived from all sorts of plants. So Japan has been keeping its vegetarian symbolicism that originated in 600's by the landing of Buddhism.

The oldest family crests in Japan are as a matter of course those of the Emperor's.

There are exactly two of such crests.

The first is the more imperial golden chrysant, the second is the pawlonia flower and leaves called 'kiri' that I have mentioned earlier.

After the Minamoto clan ascended (1185), the second crest got a bit pulled down to earth, because Emperors started to give licenses to use the pawlonia crest to Generals and courtiers. By 16th century the pawlonia was practically everybody's crest -- Oda Nobunaga (ruling between 1568-1582) used it, because he was given the rights to, though he never flaunted it outside his own castles. Toyotomi Hideyoshi (reigning between 1583-1599) even took it as his own clan's crest, and emblazoned it everywhere. Tokugawa Ieyasu (ruled since 1603 to 1616) got the same license, but he never used the pawlonia crest -- since it had been too Toyotomiesque by the time Tokugawa clan got the power over Japan.

Since 1500, it was normal for a samurai to have his clan's crest put on his garments, either as some elegant signs on the outer robes or vests, or to get printed noisily all over the entire pants or jackets. The habit stays on until today, though by now only on mortuary tablets and tombstones and formal black kimonos (click here for everything about Japanese clothing). Family crests certainly were a collective 'must' in the age of daily wars.

Now the hard part: many clans and families have more than one crest.

You have already noticed, I hope, that the Tokugawa and Matsudaira shared one crest, so did other clans whose origins were related. While at the same time several clans used two or three different crests at once, like the Takedas of Kai; the patriarch Shingen preferred the simplified flower petals that appeared on his banners and trinkets as nothing more than four squares, while his son Katsuyori (Oda Nobunaga's son in-law) opted for the flowerist version of the same crest (such as the one in the pic above).

Katsuyori himself used two crests -- his father's and his mother's -- the Suwa clan's.

Plus he also had his personal battle-banner and regiment's sign.

So in every battle Takeda Katsuyori alone fluttered at least 4 different crests at once, and he wasn't the only one who did so.

Some warlords got their second and third crests not via family ties, but through wars. If a warlord liked the crest of the enemy that he had exterminated, he could use the crest. He might also take the crest just like a trophy -- so that other warlords would know he was the victor of such and such battles against so and so.

Some others got their second crest (or got rid of their original crest for the crest gotten later) as gifts. A lord could give a license to his Generals and vassals, just like Shoguns, Chancellor, Regents and overlords could receive crests from the Emperor. Most warlords only gave a part of their crests, or their crests were used as an exalted part of their Generals' own crests by their own initiative (like Oda crest in Takigawa's and Wada's). Oda Nobunaga didn't mind such a tribute (for it was a tribute). Tokugawa Ieyasu was also okay that his clan's crest was modified to be Honda's second (and, after the license was given, the default) family crest.

But Date Masamune, among several of his kind, killed his own vassal whose crest was too much like his own clan's. Toyotomi Hideyoshi was similarly inclined, so nobody dared to make any crest that looked like his clan's.

Thus medieval Japanese battlefields were as rainbowly-decorated as a festival every time around, while it got harder to be a soldier by then -- you would have to remember to whom all of those crests belonged.

When the world entered the 21st century, the fuss over origins and meanings of Japanese family or clan crests seemed to be reserved for foreigners plagued by nostalgic outlook and archaic concerns. Modern and postmodern Japanese never cares about family crests in real life; unless, of course, they got emails from nosy foreigners plagued by nostalgic outlook and archaic concerns (me).

But click here for the system of thought of the Japanese since time immemorial, that made all these family crests to mean more than themselves.

• Meanings of Japanese Names, Nicknames & Titles
• How the Japanese Name Themselves
• History of Japanese Clothes
• Kimono Culture
• History of Japanese Dolls & Origami
• Structure of Japanese Feudal Society
• Rulers of Japan since 660 B.C. until today
• Shoguns for Dummies
• The Japanese Greatest Warrior Clans
• Cities of Japanese Warlords
• Weird snapshots, strange truths, odd realities & wacky info about Japan: Superstitions, Shrines for foxes, monkeys & racoons, 'Voodoo', Shamans, Shogunal Food, etc.

• Samurai is identical with swords, right? WRONG.
• Japanese Swords, Swordsmaking & Swordsplay
• How a Japanese Warlord Got His Army
• Spaces, Interior Design & Architecture
• Japanese Warlords' Money
• Japanese 16th century Warlords
• Management of a Warlord's Household
• Japanese Samurai Wars
• Origins of Samurai Habits
• Bushido
• Maps of All Japanese Provinces, Warlords & Battles
• Premodern Japan: Real-Life in Emperor Meiji's World
• Japanese Warrior Codes & Samurai Beliefs
• Real Samurai Legends
• Origins of Japanese Music, Songs, Dramas & Dance
• Many traditions that we assume to be Japanese are actually imported from China: kanji, Buddhism, ikebana, bonsai, tea ceremony, and so on -- even sushi and Shinto. No kidding.