Guide

Samurai is a word used for everything and explains little. This is the warrior class as the sources document it: where it came from, how it was ranked inside, why the sword became its badge and how much the sword really counted in combat, until the Meiji state dissolved it. The history of the blade, period by period, is in “Periods: from jōkotō to shinsakutō”.

A handful of Japanese swords have a name of their own, a chain of owners that can be followed and a legend that often outweighs the history. This topic keeps the two apart: what a meibutsu is and who catalogued them, which are the five swords under heaven and where they are today, what is known about Masamune and Muramasa beyond the myth, and which famous swords have been lost. Where the story is a legend or the opinion of a single author, it says so.

A katana is a composite object: a forged blade that may be centuries old, and a mounting that is almost never of the same date. Naming its parts is the first step to reading a listing or a certificate, because nearly all collecting vocabulary describes geometry — where the point ends, how much of the original tang survives, which fitting holds which. These are the thirty-two terms that come up most.

Japanese swords are classified first by blade length, then by the mounting they were worn in, and only last by the cross-section of the blade. Knowing which family a blade belongs to places its date and explains what it was made for. Here are the forms that turn up in catalogues, with their measurements in centimetres and in shaku.

Japanese swords are sorted into a handful of classes that are not style labels but technical and legal boundaries: each one marks a change in the steel, in the shape of the blade, or in the law that governed it. Placing a blade in its class is the first step of any kantei (鑑定), and it sets what you can expect from its steel, its outline and its papers.

The silhouette of a blade is the first thing you look at and the first thing that dates it: where the curve falls, how much it narrows towards the tip, how large the kissaki is and how the blade sits in the hand. This topic teaches you to read those features one by one, follows their evolution period by period and explains why the shape we see today in an old blade is not always the one that left the forge: almost all the great kotō blades have been shortened, and centuries of polishing change the point, the thickness and even the curve.

A Japanese blade is steel that has been chosen, folded, combined and hardened. This topic follows the forge from the iron sand to the groove of the hi, and separates what is known from what is merely repeated: what folding really does, why the catalogue of constructions is a model and not a fact, what it means to see the core, and what the quench leaves in the blade.

The hamon is the part of the blade people look at most and misread most often. Its pattern helps place a school and a period, but what speaks of quality is the texture of the hardened edge: the grain, the brightness, the evenness. This topic goes through the patterns and their schools, the activity inside the temper, where it starts, the shadow called utsuri, the point, and what polishing changes and what it does not.

The signature (mei, 銘) is the first thing many people look for on a sword and the last thing worth looking at. This topic sets it out as a reading: what it says, where it goes, who cut it and what it is worth. What other topics of the guide already explain is summarised here and referred to them, so that each thing is explained only once.

«Shape (sugata)» tells how the silhouette of the blade changes period by period. This topic sets side by side the named geometries —the Kamakura tachi against the late Muromachi uchigatana, the Keichō-shintō, the Kanbun-shintō and the style of Kiyomaro— and the shape of the dōtanuki school. Each one with a real blade measured by a museum or by the NBTHK; those with all their measurements, drawn to the same scale and run through the model of the «Custom sword» calculator, to see what changes in the hand. And, at the end, what changes at the edge from one cross-section to another, with all the zukuri.

Hardly any old blade is entirely clean: a close look finds pores, openings, battle marks or the trace of centuries of polishing. The useful question is not whether there are flaws, but which ones, where they are and how much they weigh for use and for appreciation. This topic sorts them by origin —hardening, forging, wear, fire and use—, explains the additions that cover them and how to uncover them, and ends with a table of severity.

A Japanese blade only shows what it has if it is well polished, and only keeps it if it is well cared for. Polishing sets the shape and brings out the temper and the grain, but every polish also takes away a little steel that never comes back. This topic explains how the polisher works, stone by stone; what changes when a blade is repolished; and how a sword is maintained and stored according to the NBTHK, together with its iron guard, its cord and its bag.

A mounting is an object with a history of its own: it is dated, attributed and certified separately from the blade it holds. A blade from 1500 may sit in an 1850 mounting with nothing out of place, and recognising the style tells you its period and how the sword was carried. These are the ensembles named in catalogues, and what lies behind the label «period mounting».

«Mounting styles (koshirae)» explains which ensembles exist; this topic opens the pieces one by one. Who makes a mounting and in what order, which animal the hilt skin comes from, which way the menuki face, how to read a tsuba from both sides, why a cast tsuba is no good on a sword, and what lies inside a habaki. At the end, a bestiary for reading the motifs of the fittings.

A tsuba, a kozuka or a pair of menuki can be the work of an artist with a name, a school and a style of his own, just like the blade they go with. This topic is about those artists, the kinkō: which metals they worked, with which techniques, which schools order them, and how one of their pieces is looked at today. The parts of the mounting and how they are put together are in the two mounting topics.

The saya (鞘) is the scabbard of the sword: a piece of wood carved inside to the measure of one single blade, which holds it, protects it and, in the mounting, carries it at the belt. This topic goes through it from end to end: its parts, how the sayashi makes it, its lacquers, the shirasaya and its inscription, how it is kept in good order, and what is worth knowing to use it and to commission one. The rest of the mounting is in «Mounting styles (koshirae)» and in «The mounting in detail».

A paper does not turn a blade into a work of art: it records what a panel decided about it on a particular day, against published criteria. Knowing who issued it, at what level and in what year is half of reading a listing. The other half is knowing what it does not certify: the Japanese registration of a sword, for instance, says nothing about its authenticity.

Kantei means looking at a blade until you can say who made it, where and when, before reading the signature. This is the method: the order in which a blade is examined, the question each step answers, what the tang records besides a name, what an oshigata is, and how the game works with which Japanese enthusiasts have trained their eye for centuries. The outcome of all that work, the certificate, has a topic of its own: NBTHK papers.

The gokaden (五箇伝), "the five traditions", groups the kotō schools by province: Yamashiro, Yamato, Bizen, Sōshū and Mino. It is not a chronology but an appraisal tool: you read the steel, the temper line and the outline, settle on a tradition, and only then work down to school and smith. It serves blades from the mid-Kamakura to the Nanbokuchō well, and blurs as soon as shintō begins.

A thousand years of swords leave a few thousand names and a few dozen that everyone ends up knowing. This is a quick reference, ordered by period, with the working dates the surviving blades support, each smith's school, and the concrete reason he matters. At the end, a summary of the cutting grades (wazamono) that the Yamada house published in the Edo period.

Four scales often appear next to a smith’s name and are easily confused: the cutting grade the Yamada house gave him in the Edo period, the skill rating of a twentieth-century reference work, the NBTHK papers on each blade, and the titles of today’s swordsmiths. This topic explains what each one measures, how the edge was tested, what can be read on a tang with a cutting test, and who has received the modern titles, with the sources and the date of every list.

More than 620 terms, arranged in nineteen categories that follow the order of the guide (history, blade types, shape, measurements, forging, grain, the hamon and its activity, bōshi, tang, carvings, flaws, polishing and care, mounting, fittings, kantei, papers, ranks and periods), and alphabetically within each one. This is the vocabulary used to describe blades and to write Japanese certificates: with it you can read a full description and see what it claims and what it leaves out. Long vowels carry a macron, as in jūyō or tokubetsu; where a term has two spellings or a synonym, the kanji column gives first the form this guide uses.