Postwar Shōwa Sword Innovation (1946-1989)

Postwar Shōwa swords (sengo Shōwa-tō) is the general term for Japanese swords made from immediately after the end of the Second World War in 1946 (Shōwa 21) until the end of the Shōwa era in 1989 (Shōwa 64). The sword prohibition order (1945) issued by GHQ (General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) devastated swordsmiths nationwide, but in 1953 (Shōwa 28) the making of Japanese swords as art swords was legalized under sword-making approval from the Commission for Protection of Cultural Properties. Following this revival, late-Shōwa Japanese swords completely shed their character as mere weapons and entered a historic turning point in which they were redefined as purely traditional crafts and art objects. If the turmoil of the Nanboku-chō period demanded practical, mass production of swords, and the Edo period matured a sword culture of peace, then the postwar Shōwa era was the age that posed to the swordsmith community the unprecedented task of revival from catastrophic rupture.

The most important institutional framework in rebuilding the postwar sword world was the Holder of Important Intangible Cultural Property system (commonly known as Living National Treasure), established by the 1954 (Shōwa 29) revision of the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, with the first designations made in 1955 (Shōwa 30). In the field of Japanese swords, following Takahashi Sadatsugu in 1955 (Shōwa 30), Miyairi Akihira (1913–1977) was designated a Living National Treasure in 1963 (Shōwa 38), Gassan Sadaichi (second generation, 1907–1995) in 1971 (Shōwa 46), and Sumitani Masamine (1921–1998) in 1981 (Shōwa 56). The designation of these Living National Treasure swordsmiths was a symbolic event that officially transformed the social status of swords in postwar Japan from weapons to cultural properties, and at the same time had a profound impact on raising production standards and training successor swordsmiths.

From the standpoint of technical characteristics, postwar Shōwa swords adopted a “return to kotō” (old swords) as their principal aesthetic direction. Whereas the shinshintō (new-new swords) of the late Edo to bakumatsu period pursued the technical reproduction of the Sōshū-den and Bizen-den traditions, postwar swordsmiths pursued as their ideal the techniques of older periods, particularly the workmanship and jigane beauty characteristic of kotō from the Heian to Kamakura periods. Miyairi Akihira studied the swords of the Kamakura-period Shizu Kaneuji and his fellow townsman Yamaura Kiyomaro, and the Miyairi lineage formed a current of the Sōshū tradition. Sumitani Masamine was devoted to research on jigane and excelled in Bizen swords of the Kamakura period, perfecting a splendid chōji hamon known as “Sumitani-chōji.” Gassan Sadaichi (second generation) carried on the tradition of the Ōsaka Gassan school while displaying a style clearly distinguished from other schools through ayasugi-hada, a jigane-finishing technique unique to the Gassan school. This pluralistic model of revival, in which each Living National Treasure swordsmith specialized in inheriting a different old tradition, was a major feature of the postwar sword world, and rebirth was realized in the form of multiple old traditions being revived in parallel rather than monopolized by a single school.

On the institutional side, the All Japan Swordsmith Association and the Shinsaku Meitō Exhibition played central roles in organizing the postwar sword world and managing its standards. The Shinsaku Meitō Exhibition functioned as a gateway for young swordsmiths, and through the wide public display of prize-winning works at the exhibition, it served the function of establishing swords in society as a living traditional craft. The revival of tatara steelmaking is also an important achievement of the postwar sword world. Japanese swords before the modern era were forged from domestically produced tamahagane, but tatara steelmaking declined with modern industrialization, and industrial steel was used in many prewar and wartime military sword productions. Within the postwar movement to return to tradition, the NBTHK (Nihon Bijutsu Tōken Hozon Kyōkai) revived tatara steelmaking and established a stable supply system for tamahagane; this deserves special mention as the technical foundation that made postwar Shōwa swords “Japanese swords” in the original sense. Even today, the tamahagane supplied by the NBTHK continues to function as material available to registered swordsmiths, and this material supply system established in the postwar Shōwa era forms the foundation of contemporary sword culture.

With the end of the Shōwa era in 1989 (Shōwa 64), the age of postwar Shōwa swords came to a close. Japanese swords of this era are characterized by four historical achievements—revival from devastation, artistic elevation through the Living National Treasure system, aesthetic pursuit of the return to kotō, and the revival of tatara steelmaking—and are evaluated as the most important period division that formed the foundation of contemporary Japanese swords. Postwar Shōwa swords, which were reborn after overcoming two institutional ruptures—the loss of their role as weapons through the Haitōrei (Sword Abolition Edict) in the Meiji period, and the prohibition by GHQ after the war—occupy a unique historical position in the history of Japanese swords, as the era that embodies the final stage of the transformation of Japanese swords “from weapon to cultural property.”