american samurai

The Japanese were great leather workers, not just in armor but also in clothing, horse related items, storage containers and leather covers for various items, here are a few examples. A pair of gloves "yugake" that would be worn with armor, made from soft deer leather, with stenciled designs. A war hat "jingasa'' made from hardened leather A pair of shoes "kutsu" made from tough leather with small iron pieces attached to the soles.

Skippy your right, samurai scale armor parts sometimes would use alternating leather and iron scales, once the scales were lacquered and laced together you would need a magnet to tell the leather scales from the iron ones. The katabira I pictured was more likely to have been worn under a kimono then under armor, this type of armored clothing would be worn while out and about. The type of under armor you mentioned would be more like a form fitting vest and shorter. These were called manchira and manju no wa, both of these types of armored clothings were often lined with small hexagon leather plates called ''kikko''. Here some examples.A 1600s chest armour ''dou'' made from many small overlapping individual scales, lacquered and laced together. This was a very time consuming and expensive way to manufacture armor. Without running a magnet over the individual scales it would be impossible to tell leather scales from iron scales. This is a ''manchira'', a type of armored vest which could be worn under armor as extra protection and padding. Small hexagon leather plates ''kikko'' are sewn between layers of cloth and hidden from view. The standing collar of this manchira was also lined with kikko to protect the back of the neck.

An antique Japanese (samurai) Edo period karuta katabira, a type of armored jacket with around 2 thousand small leather armor plates connected to each other by chain armor (kusari).