Genji Era

The Genji era (1864–1865), proclaimed partway through what had been Bunkyū 4, lasted barely a year but concentrated a remarkable cluster of sword-drawing confrontations between pro-imperial loyalists and shogunate sympathizers in Kyoto. On the fifth day of the sixth month of Genji 1 (1864), the Shinsengumi stormed the Ikedaya inn near Sanjō-Kobashi, striking down loyalist activists holed up inside in what became known as the Ikedaya Incident. Commander Kondō Isami later wrote to his adoptive father back home that he had survived unscathed thanks to his sword, Kotetsu — a reference to his cherished blade, traditionally attributed to the swordsmith Nagasone Kotetsu. The authenticity of that attribution has long been disputed, and in recent years a competing theory has gained traction that Kondō's actual sword was instead the work of Minamoto Kiyomaro. Barely a month after Ikedaya, in the seventh month of the same year, forces of the Chōshū domain clashed with shogunate and court-allied troops around the Kyoto Imperial Palace in the Kinmon Incident (also called the Hamaguri Gate Rebellion), a pitched street battle in which large numbers of swords saw genuine combat use. In an age when the Japanese sword had largely settled into the role of an art object and a marker of samurai status, the Genji era preserves a rare, closely documented record of blades returning to real hand-to-hand combat — and it is from episodes exactly like these that the reputations of grading terms such as saijō-ō-wazamono drew their most vivid anecdotal proof.