History of Japanese Swords

[Averageman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9czIpAawDtk

Tokyo has a sword museum?
Lately I have become intrested in Japanese Swords, I found this documentary helpful.

[SteyrAUG]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9TssFaHMK0

[DoubleW]

We have an art museum here in Nashville and a few years ago they had a Samurai exhibit on loan from somewhere in Europe. It was truly astonishing. The craftsmanship and devotion they put into their weaponry was otherworldly. I have a Japanese sword my Grandpa took of a kill in New Guinea in WWII. I’ve never taken it down to see if it was an heirloom blade or a military production. I need to one of these days.

[SteyrAUG]

We have an art museum here in Nashville and a few years ago they had a Samurai exhibit on loan from somewhere in Europe. It was truly astonishing. The craftsmanship and devotion they put into their weaponry was otherworldly. I have a Japanese sword my Grandpa took of a kill in New Guinea in WWII. I’ve never taken it down to see if it was an heirloom blade or a military production. I need to one of these days.

I hope you give it the occasional wipe down from time to time.

The vast majority of those carried by the Japanese military were military production blades, some done in factories and some mass produced by smiths. But every once in awhile a Lt. Sasaki would drop granpa's "pre meiji" blade into his regulation military furniture, or more commonly have military furniture produced to fit a family blade. So you really have to know what you are looking at.

I've seen a lot of shin guntos in my time but a few times I realized I was looking at a very non standard blade profile (too long, too short, too curved) or the quality of steel just seemed very exceptional for a mass produced item.

On the other end of the spectrum, lot's of "put togethers" exist (mix n match Army blades with Navy furniture) that were cobbled together especially for US occupation forces after the war. Researched collectors really could buy incredibly important blades for a song because people in Japan were still literally starving to death and the Walther Compton collection was an excellent example of what kind of collection an average person could build because of time and place.

http://www.satcho.com/compton/compton.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Ames_Compton

After he died, his collection was auctioned by Christie's in 1992 and it was very much a BFD in the Japanese sword collector crowd.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

Nevermind