The Reality of Female Sword Dealers and Female Business Owners in the Japanese Sword Industry

The Japanese Sword Industry as a Traditional Craft and the Historical Background of Women's Entry

The various occupations involved in nihontō — buying and selling, appraisal, polishing, saya making, and silver fittings work — are all worlds in which skills and commercial practices have been handed down through apprenticeship systems and the inheritance of family businesses. Because vertical connections — from master to apprentice, from parent to child — have formed the backbone of the industry, entry from the outside has never been easy, regardless of gender. The reason why the industry has long maintained a male-dominated structure is believed to stem more from customary and social factors than from institutional ones.

For example, the license required under the Secondhand Articles Dealer Act to buy and sell swords as a secondhand goods dealer contains no provision that allows rejection on the basis of the applicant's gender. Likewise, national certification systems and the bylaws of recognized bodies governing craft skills such as sword polishing, metal engraving, and saya making contain no clauses that make gender a requirement. In other words, while the institutional doors have been open, what has been pointed to as the real barrier to entry is the unequal distribution of opportunities to participate in the industry's human networks and apprenticeship relationships.

Changes in the Appreciation Audience Brought About by the "Tōken Joshi" Phenomenon

An indispensable context for understanding the shift in the industry's atmosphere is the sword-appreciation boom that spread from around 2015. Spurred by media content such as online games, anime, and stage productions, the number of appreciators — centered on young women — grew rapidly, and the term "tōken joshi" (sword girls) came to be widely used in the media.

The changes this phenomenon brought to the Japanese sword industry went beyond a simple increase in visitor numbers. In the peripheral areas of the industry listed below, the opportunities for women to participate as contributors became visibly more numerous.

• Public relations, interpretation, and event planning staff at the Japanese Sword Museum, art museums, temples, and shrines
• Planning and sales of sword-related merchandise (replica swords, armor replicas, stationery, apparel)
• Web media, social media content creation, and writing related to swords
• Editing and production of books and photo collections on sword subjects

As contributions in these peripheral areas accumulated, women's presence within the entire cultural sphere of nihontō acquired a depth that it had not had before. Cases in which interest that began as that of an appreciator gradually developed into a desire to "become involved in the industry in some form" have also begun to appear in individual news reports and in statements from those directly involved.

Women as Sword Shop Proprietors and Successors

Alongside the diversification of the appreciator base, cases of women becoming involved as owners or successors of sword shops and antique dealers have begun to appear in both domestic and international reporting and in comments from industry insiders. The increase in women taking over family businesses has been reported across many sectors of Japan's traditional crafts and fine-arts industries, and the Japanese sword industry is seen as no exception to this trend.

When the various aspects of this point are organized, the following patterns can be identified.

• Family succession type: Cases in which a woman enters management by inheriting a sword dealership or antique business that her father or grandfather ran. As a route for accumulating relationships with business partners and product knowledge, family succession has always existed.
• New-entry type: Cases in which a personal interest in swords leads someone to obtain a secondhand goods dealer license and start an independent business. This route is easier to pursue for those whose sales model is primarily online.
• Co-management type: Cases in which a woman handles part of the management, public relations, or purchasing responsibilities while sharing them with a partner or family members.

It must be noted, however, that public data showing the proportion of female proprietors and successors across the industry as a whole is currently limited, and that any understanding of the overall picture remains at the level of inference drawn from the accumulation of individual cases.

Online Trading and Changes in Entry Barriers

The normalization of internet-based information disclosure and transactions in the buying and selling of swords has had a steady impact on the industry's structure. Sword trading had traditionally centered on face-to-face negotiations between dealers, bidding events, and transactions conducted through industry connections. Within such commercial practices, access to the industry's networks was directly tied to the survival of a business, making entry from the outside relatively difficult.

The spread of online marketplaces is working to ease this structure. An environment in which product photographs, descriptions, and prices can be published on the web and reached by buyers nationwide and worldwide has created sales channels that do not depend on local connections or industry networks. As a result, the barriers for new entrants who had limited access to traditional distribution channels have been lowered, and an environment is taking shape in which it is easier to start a business regardless of gender.

The increased weight given to abilities such as writing skill in product descriptions, photographic composition, and information dissemination via social media as factors that differentiate a business is also cited as one reason why it has become easier for contributors from diverse backgrounds to enter.

Internationalization and Multilingual Communication as a New Arena

In response to growing interest among overseas nihontō enthusiasts and inbound tourists, sword dealers are increasingly called upon to communicate and provide customer service in English and other foreign languages. Cases in which women make their presence felt as the people who handle overseas sales and communications by leveraging their language skills and international sensibility have been reported across the fine-arts and craft industries in general, and a similar trend is gradually spreading in the sword industry as well.

The ability to convey the history, methods of manufacture, schools, and historical background of nihontō accurately and engagingly in a foreign language is a specialization that requires not merely language ability but simultaneously an understanding of cultural context and the power to explain it. Cases in which female enthusiasts who have engaged in self-study and research driven by a deep interest in swords themselves become contributors who produce specialist content in this area can be confirmed through personal blogs and social media.

The spread of online marketplaces that offer columns and product explanations in multiple languages can serve as one outlet in which this kind of skill set — combining language ability with sword knowledge — can be put to use.

What Women's Entry into the Japanese Sword Industry Signifies

Women's presence in the Japanese sword industry is at a stage in which it is slowly but steadily expanding its base — from the position of recipient as appreciator and buyer to the position of contributor in areas such as information dissemination, management, and craft skills. The factors that are driving this change are not the result of a single movement but of multiple forces overlapping.

The expansion of the interested audience through the appreciation boom, the lowering of entry barriers through online trading, the growing need for language skills and cultural communication in tandem with internationalization, and changes in social norms around family succession — these are working in concert to gradually update the image of who carries the industry. On the institutional side, it has been confirmed that no barriers based on gender exist, and the groundwork is in place to accelerate future change.

TOUKENZA's online catalog also features explanatory columns on nihontō from various periods and schools. Those who wish to deepen their interest in swords, or who are considering a purchase, are encouraged to make use of the column index and the inquiry form as well.