Mirror pieces

(wrt Tomoe's mirror in RK, again) I thought I'd remembered seeing this somewhere, but wasn't entirely sure until I looked it back up again-- as with their family crests, women of the samurai class passed on their mirrors through matrilineal inheritance, from mother to daughter and thus generally from one patrilineal family to another. A woman could also use a husband's or father's crest, but was not required to do so.( Read more... )

Addendum: OMG. Enishi's glasses aren't just a random artistic fillip by Watsuki; they're actually accurate to the place and period. (I don't think that eBay item is going to sell real soon, but I've saved the pic to my own archives for later relinkage.) From the description:

Chinese, mid 19th century, unsigned. The lenses are made of 2 1/16" diameter x 3/32" thick colorless optical quartz, mounted in a decorative cast brass rimless frame with folding ear pieces. [...] The lenses have no correction and were designed to be worn as a fashion accessory. See Chapter 7 in J.W. Rosenthal's "Spectacles and Other Vision Aids" on the Development of Chinese Spectacles.

The cited text is partially available on Google Books here, with more pix.