Russo-Japanese War and Military Swords—A Turning Point in Modern Japanese Sword Culture

On February 8, Meiji 37 (1904), the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur before declaring war, and the Russo-Japanese War began. This war was a total war in which modern Japan staked its national fortunes, and it was also a decisive turning point in the history of the Japanese sword as a weapon. After the Haitōrei (1876), the Japanese sword was often regarded as an "obsolete weapon." Through the Russo-Japanese War, it was restored as a "spiritual symbol of bushidō," and it went on to become a mandatory item for officers through the militarist era of Shōwa. The core of that transformation is recorded in this war.

Meiji-Era Military Sword System: Redefining the Sword After the Haitōrei

With the Haitōrei (Meiji 9, 1876), the general samurai's right to wear swords was taken away. In the Seinan War (Meiji 10, 1877), Satsuma samurai who fought with swords were defeated by government forces armed with modern rifles. These two events cast serious doubt on the practical value of the Japanese sword in combat. However, in the same Seinan War, the close-quarters combat of the Battōtai, selected from the police units, was highly praised, and this later led to the use of Japanese blades for officers' military swords. That guns could defeat swords seemed like a death sentence for the sword, which had been the symbol of the samurai's soul.

Among army and navy officers, however, the sword did not disappear. It survived in a changed form. The Meiji government required army and navy officers to carry "military swords," creating a distinctive style that combined Western uniforms with Japanese swords. The officers' military sword established in Meiji 19 (1886) had a European-style outer mounting (yōzukae) housing a Japanese blade, and it was revised several times afterward. In Meiji 32 (1899), the government-issued sword for non-commissioned officers and enlisted men, the Type 32 military sword, was established separately, with a Western-style blade.

A distinctive feature of officers' military swords in the Meiji period was that officers were permitted to carry Japanese blades they had had made privately, including famous ancestral swords, fitted to Western-style mountings. This form, in which modern mountings and traditional blades coexisted, embodied the very spirit of Meiji modernization: a compromise between rationality and tradition. Many officers who went to the Russo-Japanese War went to the Manchurian battlefields wearing famous ancestral blades or new swords commissioned from renowned smiths.

Changes also came to the world of smiths. After the Haitōrei, demand for swords had fallen sharply, but the military sword system allowed smiths to secure a certain level of demand. From the mid-Meiji period, smiths who produced blades exclusively for military swords were active in Tokyo, Osaka, Gifu, and elsewhere. Renowned smiths also emerged, such as the first-generation Gassan Sadakazu, known for swords presented to the Imperial family and senior military officials. The Russo-Japanese War decisively expanded demand for military swords, which became a "survival strategy" for smiths in the modern era.

Nogi Maresuke and the Siege of Port Arthur: "The Samurai's Resolve" and the Mythologizing of the Sword

The image most deeply associated with the Japanese sword in the Russo-Japanese War is embodied by Nogi Maresuke, commander of the Third Army. Entrusted with capturing the Port Arthur fortress, Nogi repeatedly launched frontal assaults against Russian positions that were considered impregnable, equipped with barbed wire, machine guns, and fortress artillery, and he lost a vast number of his men. His second son, Yasusuke, was also killed in the third general assault, and his eldest son, Katsusuke, had already been killed earlier in the Battle of Nanshan. After a siege lasting five months, Port Arthur fell on January 1, 1905, but Japanese casualties reached approximately 60,000.

Nogi blamed himself deeply for the scale of this sacrifice. On the day of the state funeral of Emperor Meiji, September 13, 1912 (Taishō 1), he died by junshi at his home, together with his wife, Shizuko. Nogi's junshi was widely praised as "the death of a man who carried bushidō through to the end after the Haitōrei," and it deeply shocked the intellectuals and writers of the time. In Kokoro, Natsume Sōseki overlaid the "death of Sensei" with Nogi's junshi, and Mori Ōgai depicted the spirit of junshi in "The Last Testament of Okitsu Yagoemon." Nogi had committed seppuku with his military sword, and that sword was mythologized as a "symbol of the spirit of bushidō."

Militarily, Nogi's siege of Port Arthur is assessed as a war of attrition with heavy sacrifices, and opinions on it are divided. However, its image of the "samurai's resolve" was inseparably tied to the spiritual revival of sword culture in modern Japan. Nogi became a symbol of the "last samurai," and his existence served as a catalyst for raising cultural interest in the Japanese sword.

The Battle of the Sea of Japan and Tōgō Heihachirō: The "Z Flag" and the Authority of the Military Sword

The Battle of the Sea of Japan (Battle of Tsushima), fought May 27–28, 1905, saw the Combined Fleet under Tōgō Heihachirō nearly annihilate the Baltic Fleet, an unprecedented victory in history. The Baltic Fleet had made a seven-month expedition from Europe via Africa and India, and it was expected to surpass the Japanese Combined Fleet in strength. Tōgō met it with the "crossing the T" tactic. In the two-day battle, he sank 21 of the Baltic Fleet's 38 ships (including those scuttled) and captured six, a historic victory.

The scene in which Tōgō raised the "Z flag" on the deck of the flagship Mikasa and ordered, "The fate of the Empire rests on this one battle," has been passed down to later generations as a symbol of the spirit of Japanese military men and of bushidō. Likened to Britain's Admiral Nelson, Tōgō became a world hero and a symbol of victory in the Russo-Japanese War.

Among naval officers, a culture took root in which possessing a military sword with an excellent blade was directly linked to spiritual pride. This culture was inherited by the naval officer culture of the Taishō and Shōwa periods.

The Long-Term Impact of the Russo-Japanese War on Japanese Sword Culture

The Russo-Japanese War's victory dramatically changed the cultural standing of the Japanese sword. The Japanese sword, which since the Haitōrei had tended to be regarded as an "obsolete antique," was redefined as a "national symbol embodying the victory of bushidō."

Nitobe Inazō's "Bushido" (first English edition, 1900) was written before the Russo-Japanese War, but after Japan's victory it was reread and reevaluated around the world. The Japanese sword gained international recognition as an "embodiment of bushidō." Many Westerners sought the spiritual power of bushidō to explain how a small Asian nation could defeat a major European power, and they focused on the Japanese sword as its symbol. As a result, the Japanese sword gained, for the first time, the status of an "international cultural icon."

In terms of military sword demand, the practice of officers wearing swords fitted with Japanese blades continued and remained an important source of demand for smiths.

As a further decisive influence, the practice of "officers wear swords," established in this war, continued through the Taishō period into the militarist era of Shōwa. It led to the establishment of the Shōwa 9 pattern military sword (1934, popularly known as the "Type 94 military sword") and the Shōwa 13 pattern military sword (1938, popularly known as the "Type 98 military sword"). The Russo-Japanese War built the spiritual and institutional foundations of prewar Japan's military sword culture. It is an indispensable historical turning point for understanding the sword culture of the Shōwa war period.

The Russo-Japanese War and Sword Collections: Battlefield Testimony of Famous Blades

Among the swords carried by officers in the Russo-Japanese War were famous ancestral blades. Amid the rising culture of sword collecting and appreciation in the Meiji period, having a superb blade mounted as a military sword had become a kind of status symbol among officers. The wearing of "converted (non-regulation) military swords," made by remodeling traditional Japanese swords with older mountings, is also seen in photographs from the time of the Russo-Japanese War. The fact that masterpieces of old and new swords experienced the battlefields of modern warfare holds a unique significance in sword history.

Remains of forts still stand at the Port Arthur battlefield, bearing bullet marks.

The Russo-Japanese War was the last great historical stage on which the Japanese sword fully transformed from a "weapon of actual combat" into a "spiritual symbol of bushidō." Through this war, the Japanese sword established its status as cultural property inseparable from the national identity of the Japanese people. That status was inherited by the militarist Shōwa period, the postwar founding of Nittōhō, and the modern Living National Treasure system, and it forms the cornerstone of the sword renaissance of the Reiwa era.