New Arrivals — Browse our catalog for the latest authentic Japanese sword arrivals. Browse →
1877-08-21
Ueno Park, Tokyo
About 15 min read
On 28 March 1876 (Meiji 9), Dajōkan Proclamation No. 38 — formally titled "Prohibition of Wearing Swords Except by Those in Full Court Dress and by Military and Police Officials on Duty," and generally known as the Haitōrei — was promulgated. Only those in full ceremonial dress and military or police officers on duty were thereafter permitted to wear a sword; all other sword-wearing was banned. Debate over abolishing the practice had existed since 1869, and the Danpatsu Dattōrei of 1871 had already made both hairstyle and sword-wearing a matter of personal choice. The immediate trigger for outright prohibition was a proposal submitted by Yamagata Aritomo in December 1875: with universal conscription in place and a police system established, there was no longer any need for individuals to carry blades. The shizoku reaction was fierce — accounts survive of men carrying their swords in bags or slung over the shoulder in protest — and the edict became one of the background causes of the samurai rebellions that followed.
For swordsmiths and metalworkers, the proclamation was, before anything else, the disappearance of a market. Demand for both blades and fittings had rested on the samurai custom of wearing swords. The First National Industrial Exhibition, held the following year, was thus the first national stage on which craftsmen who had lost the foundation of their livelihood were asked where in the new industrial order their skills now belonged.
The First National Industrial Exhibition ran for 102 days, from 21 August to 30 November 1877 (Meiji 10), in Ueno Park, Tokyo. It was proposed by Ōkubo Toshimichi, the first Home Minister, drawing on the government's experience at the 1873 Vienna World Exposition, Japan's first official participation in such an event. The word "national" (naikoku) in the title reflected Ōkubo's insistence that the primary purpose be the development and encouragement of domestic production. The Satsuma Rebellion had broken out six months before the opening and some questioned whether the exhibition could proceed, but it was held as scheduled.
On a site of roughly 100,000 square metres stood the Main Art Hall, the Agriculture Hall, the Machinery Hall, the Horticulture Hall and the Animal Hall. A large clock was mounted above the former main gate of Kan'ei-ji, an American-style windmill about ten metres high stood at the park entrance, and several thousand lanterns decorated the grounds. There were 16,147 exhibitors, 84,353 exhibits, 4,321 awards and 454,168 visitors. Following the model of the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, entries were divided into six sections — mining and metallurgy, manufactures, fine arts, machinery, agriculture and horticulture — and judged on material, method of manufacture, quality, finish, utility, value and price. The government deliberately separated the event from the older Japanese tradition of the misemono (sideshow), presenting it instead as a forum where Western and indigenous technologies met for the promotion of industry.
The award scheme was originally designed in five grades — a grand prize, first through third class, and certificates of merit. Immediately before the award ceremony, however, Ōkubo Toshimichi ordered the ranked terminology abolished, and the awards were reissued as three medals named for the patterns struck on them — the dragon-pattern, phoenix-pattern and flower-pattern medals — together with certificates of merit. In textiles, Gaun Tokimune's garabō spinning machine received a phoenix-pattern medal; it spread rapidly after the exhibition and contributed to the spinning industry during its transitional phase.
The medals themselves survive as early Meiji metalwork. The "Meiji 10 National Industrial Exhibition Medal (Phoenix Pattern)" in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum measures 5.9 cm in diameter and 0.35 cm in thickness, is inscribed "Meiji 10 National Industrial Exhibition, Tokyo," and is recorded as produced by the Exhibition Bureau itself. In such small discs one can read the atmosphere of an age in which carvers trained on sword fittings were absorbed into new demand for medals, decorations and coinage dies.
The exhibition records and illustrations published by the National Diet Library and the National Archives of Japan overwhelmingly document the core industries of the shokusan kōgyō policy — spinning machinery, printing presses, farm implements, ceramics — and no publicly available source consulted here identifies which smiths exhibited which works, or what awards they received.
Although the exhibit lists cannot be traced, individual biographies show how those who sustained the sword world conducted themselves in these years.
Kanō Natsuo was born in Kyoto in 1828 and adopted at the age of seven by the sword dealer Kanō Jisuke. At twelve he began studying metal carving under Okumura Shōhachi; at fourteen he studied sketching from life under Nakajima Raishō of the Maruyama-Shijō school; and at nineteen, in 1846, he became independent. He moved to Kanda in Edo in 1854 and became known for the katagiri-bori technique. In April 1869 he was appointed a craftsman to the Imperial Household, and in July of the same year he was commissioned to carve the prototype dies for the new coinage. In 1873 he completed the mountings for the Suiryūken, a sword of Emperor Meiji. When the 1876 Haitōrei extinguished demand for sword fittings, he turned to small metalwork such as tobacco cases and netsuke. He later took the highest award for outstanding technique at the Third National Industrial Exhibition of 1890, became a professor at the Tokyo Fine Arts School, and was appointed an Imperial Household Artist (Teishitsu Gigeiin) in the year that system was created. His Hundred Cranes Vase, shown in 1890, was purchased by the Imperial Household Ministry and is said to have been displayed in the Paulownia Room of the Meiji Palace. He was granted the Junior Sixth Court Rank on 28 February 1894 and died in 1898. A craftsman raised in a sword dealer's household, drawn to metal carving by the beauty of tsuba and kozuka, had by mid-Meiji come to stand at the centre of the nation's art administration.
Among blade smiths, the career of Miyamoto Kanenori offers a contrast. Born in 1830 into a sake-brewing family at Ōgaki in Hōki Province (present-day Tottori Prefecture), his given name was Shigahiko. In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, he travelled to Osafune in Bizen; refused admission by Yokoyama Sukenaga, he entered the school of Yokoyama Sukeyoshi and trained for seven years, becoming a retained smith of the Tottori domain in 1857. In 1863 he established a forge at Sanjō Horikawa in Kyoto, and in 1866 he forged a sword for Emperor Meiji, receiving the courtesy title Noto-no-kami. During the Boshin War of 1868 he accompanied Prince Arisugawa and took part in the pacification of the Kuwana domain, and in 1869 he undertook a retreat of more than 130 days at Fushimi Inari Shrine, forging votive blades. After the Haitōrei of 1876, however, orders collapsed and he subsisted by forging agricultural tools. The turning point came in 1886, when he received a large commission for the sacred treasures of the Ise Grand Shrine's periodic rebuilding — 66 tachi, 42 halberds and 3,800 arrowheads. The skill he demonstrated in completing it led, on 4 April 1906, to his appointment together with Gassan Sadakazu as the first swordsmiths ever named Imperial Household Artists. In 1915 he forged the ceremonial sword for the enthronement of Emperor Taishō, and he died on 24 October 1926 at the age of 97, buried at Somei Cemetery.
Later National Industrial Exhibitions followed: the second in 1881 at Ueno Park, the third in 1890 again at Ueno, the fourth in 1895 at Okazaki Park in Kyoto, and the fifth in 1903 in Osaka. With each successive event the weight given to art and craft increased, and the exhibitions took on a stronger role as venues for evaluating craft goods destined for export.
Seen from the sword world, the 1877 exhibition marks the moment when, immediately after the blade lost its standing as a weapon, Japanese craft was re-integrated into a national framework of evaluation. Fittings carvers survived as art-craft makers; smiths survived through shrine dedications and imperial commissions; and with the creation of the Imperial Household Artist system in 1890 and the appointment of swordsmiths to it in 1906, their skills were repositioned by the state itself as a tradition to be protected. That redefinition, which took some thirty years from the Haitōrei, began at Ueno.