I could probably google this but considering that I don't know what names to look for, I figured it would be quicker to just as a question here.
During the final battle... when the reinforcements for the imperial troops arrive, the grunts are wearing cone-head helmets and some of the officers are wearing big-wigs (more like huge-wigs).
Was there any practical purpose for this or was it purely for appearance?
Priests adore prophets, prophets resent priests
I can't answer your question as to why, but the officers are wearing lion wigs. See Akage (Red Lion) dir Kihachi Okamoto, 1969, for a lot more about lion wigs, as worn by Toshiro Mifune.
Kambei of the Gormful Gumi.
I will. Thanks for the tip.
Priests adore prophets, prophets resent priests
The use of distinctive headgear, uniforms, clan logos and banners are all used to reduce incidents of "Friendly Fire"
In close quarter hand to hand combat involving large troops - it can be difficult to distinguish your own comrades from the enemy combatants, especially in the heat of intense battle conditions.
If they didn't have distinguishing headgear, it would be easy to kill your own comrades by accident.
Ranking officers also wore more different headgear than their own troops. This was so that troops could easily locate them and follow their lead.
However, this also had the reverse effect of making the opposing ranking officers easier targets for enemy troops.
That makes good sense... thanks.
I've done some group battle exercises in martial arts training and it can be a mess to keep track of people in a fight involving as little as 6-10 people. Numbers in the hundreds makes the very idea staggering.
Battle formations never lasted once it got to the H2H fighting stage, so I can appreciate how a wacky hat here and there helped people to keep their bearings and not stab one of their mates.
Priests adore prophets, prophets resent priests
The use of distinctive headgear, uniforms, clan logos and banners are all used to reduce incidents of "Friendly Fire"The Shinsengumi had that distinctive uniform - though blue and white, not black and red as shown here - probably for this very reason. Most of their fighting would have been hand-to-hand in streets and buildings, very confusing.
In most pre-modern age Japanese films, the soldiers have uniforms of a distinctive color and wear those clan flags sticking up over their heads. The outfits in this movie seemed new to me. Could it have been a Meiji era development?
On that topic: are Meiji-era films new-ish? Seems most samurai/military films take place in the 1500-1800 era or earlier, or jump to WWII. But lately there's been this film, Miike's Izo, The Last Samurai, Memoirs of a Geisha.
Well, I wouldn't really say new, there's quite lot of drama set in the Bakumatsu (end of Edo, beginning of Meiji restoration) period. Not surprising, when you think what dramatic changes were taking place. There's a lot more Shinsengumi drama, and stuff about Sakamoto Ryouma and the like. I recently saw The Choshou Five, which deals with the five samurai of the Choshou clan who came here to England, at great personal risk, in 1863, to learn modern western ways, engineering, shipbuilding and so forth; very interesting, until it suddenly lost interest in the plot and wandered off into the realms of cheesy romance - a pity.
I agree, I haven't come across much drama set squarely in the Meiji era. Izo hops all over the place, since he is given to time-travelling, but does begin in the 1860s. Memoirs of a Geisha is rather later again, isn't it? The Last Samurai doesn't really count, since it's set in the vast and spacious regions of Tom Cruise's ego and not in Japan at all.