* Image is for illustrative purposes only.Post-Great Kantō Earthquake Period
関東大震災後
The Great Kantō Earthquake of September 1, 1923, dealt catastrophic blows to Tokyo and Yokohama sword collections, destroying numerous important swords in the subsequent fires. The recovery period saw concerted efforts to rebuild sword culture institutionally — including the founding of sword organizations and the intensified documentation movement.
Description
The Great Kantō Earthquake and Catastrophic Blow to Japanese Swords
At 11:58 a.m. on September 1, Taishō 12 (1923), a massive earthquake with magnitude 7.9 struck the Kantō region directly. While the earthquake itself caused enormous damage, the greatest destruction came from the massive firestorm that erupted immediately afterward. Fires breaking out simultaneously in various parts of Tōkyō—the downtown, the hillside districts—and Yokohama, fanned by strong winds and burning for days, reduced approximately 45 percent of Tōkyō to ashes. The great fire indiscriminately consumed private collections, sword dealers' inventory, polishers' workshops, and sword-fittings artisans' workshops in Tōkyō and Yokohama, where sword collectors from across Japan had concentrated, destroying countless named swords and important blades—many not even recorded—forever.
Scale and Cultural Loss of Destroyed Swords
The number and quality of swords lost in the Great Kantō Earthquake can be grasped only fragmentarily through later investigations and testimonies, yet the loss remains powerfully felt in modern times as a "dark void" in Japanese sword culture. Tōkyō and Yokohama had accumulated named swords from throughout the nation since the Meiji era, and many of the finest collections—owned by industrialists, politicians, former daimyo families, and military officers—were concentrated there. Testimonies from prominent affected collectors report cases where individual collectors lost dozens to over a hundred named swords each. Large quantities of swords in distribution were also lost—swords stored as sword dealers' inventory, blades undergoing polishing at polishers' workshops, and swords under repair by scabbard makers and hilt makers. The destruction of documentary records, including appraisal certificates (orikami), was equally grave in that it permanently erased evidence of the provenance and value assessment of named swords.
Swordsmiths, Polishers, and Appraisers' Displacement and the Crisis of Technical Discontinuity
The earthquake dealt a devastating blow to craftsmen and experts involved with swords. Many swordsmiths, polishers, and appraisers living in Tōkyō lost their homes, workshops, and tools entirely, and all the sword-making reference materials, collection pieces, and bibliographic materials they had gathered over long years were reduced to ash. Polishing technique in particular depends on the accumulation of whetstones collected over long periods to maintain high standards, and polishers who lost their collections of precious natural whetstones were forced to suffer technical decline. For young swordsmiths and polishers, losing their masters, workshops, and materials in the midst of their training constituted multiple blows, threatening the continuity of technical transmission. This crisis of technical discontinuity became one of the direct catalysts spurring organized efforts to preserve and transmit sword-making techniques in the early Shōwa period that followed.
Reconstruction of Sword Culture in the Post-Earthquake Recovery Period
The post-earthquake recovery period (late Taishō to early Shōwa) was also an era when new movements toward institutional reconstruction of sword culture emerged. In 1925, a sword division was established at the Tōkyō Art School (now Tōkyō University of the Arts), formally recognizing sword-making, polishing, and appraisal as subjects of legitimate art education. Sword appreciation societies and research organizations established by enthusiasts and scholars were organized in various regions, and systematic survey, documentation, and preservation activities for surviving named swords were conducted. These activities laid the groundwork for the 1933 Important Art Objects Preservation Law (the foundational law protecting swords as national cultural properties) and, after the war, for the Important Cultural Property and National Treasure designation systems.
The Yasukuni Shrine Sword Dedication Movement and Rising Military Sword Demand
In the early Shōwa period following the earthquake, militarism was rising politically, and in sword culture a new movement of sword dedication to Yasukuni Shrine became prominent. The sword forging at Yasukuni Shrine (Japanese Sword Forging Society), which began in 1933, became active throughout the Shōwa period, with master swordsmiths such as Tsukiyama Sadaichi and Miyairi Shōhei forging dedication blades. Following the Manchurian Incident (1931), as military tensions rose, demand for officers' military swords increased, and attention again focused on swordsmiths possessing traditional Japanese sword-forging techniques. Combining the memory of earthquake-driven loss with militarist ascendancy, the proposition of "Japanese sword revival" took on political and cultural significance, making this period essential to understanding the modern transformation of Japanese sword culture.
Characteristics of This Era
- Catastrophic loss of important swords to fire; the 'Taishō 12 void' left a permanent scar in Japanese sword cultural history with countless named blades lost forever
- Technical discontinuity crisis: smiths and polishers simultaneously lost workshops, tools, reference collections, and irreplaceable natural whetstones
- Institutional reconstruction in the recovery period: Tokyo Art School sword division, research organizations, and systematic documentation laid foundations for postwar cultural property protection
- Complex intersection with militarist demand: post-earthquake 'sword revival' inseparably entangled cultural/spiritual recovery with increasing military sword requirements
- Mass destruction of appraisal records deepened authentication and misidentification problems, elevating Hon'ami appraisal authority while complicating future scholarly research on sword provenance