A is any of several sorts of traditional hats of Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. When preceded by a word specifying the type of hat, the word becomes gasa as in the jingasa (war hat)(see Rendaku

Rendaku

is a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word...

).

One kind of kasa for Buddhist

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

 monks is made overly large, in a bowl or mushroom shape and is made from woven rice straw. It does not come to a point like a rice farmer's hat, nor ride high on the head like a samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

's traveling hat. It is just a big hat covering the upper half to two thirds of the face. Thus, it helps mask the identity of the monk and allows him to travel undistracted by sights around him on his journey.

The samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

 class of feudal Japan used several types of jingasa made from iron or leather.

Types

Here is a list of several types of kasa:

• Amigasa
• Fukaamigasa
• Jingasa ("war hat", a type of kasa commonly worn by samurai
  Samurai
  is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...
  
  )
• Sandogasa
• Sugegasa (see Conical Asian hat)
• Torioigasa
• Takuhatsugasa
• Yagyūgasa
• Roningasa
• Ajirogasa

External links

• Haiku Topics (01) ..... (WKD - TOPICS): Hat (kasa) at Haiku Topics (in English)