New Arrivals — Browse our catalog for the latest authentic Japanese sword arrivals. Browse →
Shōwa 20s to Shōwa 30 (early 1950s)
日本全国
About 16 min read
In September, Shōwa 20 (1945), the GHQ/SCAP, which began the occupation administration, ordered the surrender of weapons, including swords, nationwide as part of disarmament. Over 200,000 blades were collected from the Kantō and Tōkai regions alone, and it is reported that most of them were disposed of by dumping at sea. Because the confiscated swords were gathered at the US Eighth Army ordnance depot in Akabane, Kita Ward, Tokyo, they came to be collectively called "Akabane swords" after the place where they were stored. In Shōwa 21 (1946), the Ordinance Prohibiting the Possession of Firearms and Similar Weapons (Imperial Ordinance No. 300 of Shōwa 21) was enacted as a Potsdam ordinance, and the possession of firearms and swords as such was in principle prohibited.
In Shōwa 22 (1947), some 5,600 blades were returned to the Japanese side on the grounds of their artistic value. Of these, 1,132 were returned to their owners, and the 4,576 whose owners could not be identified came to be held by the Tokyo National Museum. The handling of these Akabane swords remained unresolved for a long time. After the Act on the Disposition of Confiscated Swords was enacted in Heisei 7 (1995) and took effect the following February, the remaining 3,209 blades were transferred free of charge to 191 public museums nationwide in Heisei 11 (1999). The largest number of blades transferred went to Seki City, Gifu Prefecture, with 480. Okayama Prefecture followed with 228 in total, and the Saga Prefectural Museum with 114. This works out to half a century from defeat until the swords were brought back under national protection.
Under the Occupation, not only the possession of swords but the making of swords itself was effectively banned, and forging techniques handed down from master to apprentice over centuries lost their place of practice and faced the danger of being severed. What legally restructured this situation was the enactment of the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties in Shōwa 25 (1950) and, in the same year, the Ordinance Controlling the Possession of Firearms and Swords. A framework emerged under which swords were not treated as uniform weapons but could be possessed as registered artworks.
On the side of sword-making, a system was adopted under which swords, as artworks, could be made only with the approval of the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Properties. The Weapons Manufacturing Act, promulgated in Shōwa 28 (1953), excluded swords from "weapons," and sword-making came under the Ordinance Controlling the Possession of Firearms and Swords. Sword-making moved from "prohibited" to a stage where "only those who have received approval may do it." Forging a sword without approval was not permitted. This approval system was subsequently maintained as the Regulations for the Approval of Artistic Sword Manufacture, and the current regulation corresponds to Ministry of Education Ordinance No. 3 of Heisei 4 (1992). On the possession side, the legal framework was also established as the Firearms and Swords Control Act, which took effect on 1 April Shōwa 33 (1958). Its 1965 amendment in Shōwa 40 gave it its present title, the Firearms and Swords Control Act.
Takahashi Sadatsugu is the representative swordsmith who made swords after the war under this approval system.
Takahashi Sadatsugu was born in Ehime Prefecture in Meiji 35 (1902). He began his training in Taishō 8 (1919) at the Chūō Tōken Kai in Tokyo, and in Shōwa 11 (1936) he established a forge in Matsuyama. At the 1st Sword Exhibition in Shōwa 13 (1938), he received the Prime Minister's Award. In Shōwa 15 (1940), he forged a sacred sword for Kamakura Hachimangū, but with the defeat of Shōwa 20 came the forging prohibition order, and the path of sword-making was closed to him. As sword-making gradually shifted to an approval system, he forged a sacred treasure sword for the periodic rebuilding (shikinen sengū) of the Ise Grand Shrine in Shōwa 26 (1951). In Shōwa 30 (1955), he was designated the first swordsmith ever to be recognized as a Holder of an Important Intangible Cultural Property (Living National Treasure). He remains to this day the only swordsmith from Ehime Prefecture to have been selected as a Living National Treasure. He continued to make many swords for the imperial family, including the guardian sword for Crown Princess Michiko in Shōwa 34 (1959) and guardian swords for imperial children in Shōwa 35 (1960) and Shōwa 40 (1965). He died on 21 August Shōwa 43 (1968). One of his works is said to have come into the possession of Aung San, the founding leader of Burma, and later to have been passed down to Aung San Suu Kyi, his daughter. This shows that postwar sword-making was not confined to domestic cultural-property administration.
From prohibition to approval, and from approval to designation as an Important Intangible Cultural Property: from the Shōwa 20s through Shōwa 30, the state's stance toward those who made Japanese swords reversed, from "manufacturers of weapons" to "holders of a traditional technique worth protecting." The nationwide competitive showcase of new sword-making became established as an institution with the Shinsaku Meitō Ten, which the NBTHK began in Shōwa 30 (1955), and this is the lineage that continues into today's Gendai Tōshoku Ten.
The institutional work of the postwar sword revival was carried by the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords (NBTHK), founded on 24 February Shōwa 23 (1948). Behind its founding lay a sense of crisis that the Japanese sword itself might be lost through the GHQ confiscation and destruction of swords after the defeat.
The Society began appraisal in Shōwa 23 (1948), the year of its founding, and in Shōwa 25 (1950) it established "Especially Precious Sword" as a higher grade. In Shōwa 30 (1955) it began holding the Shinsaku Meitō Ten. In Shōwa 33 (1958) it set the still higher grade of "Important Sword," in Shōwa 46 (1971) the highest grade of "Especially Important Sword," and in Shōwa 48 (1973) the grade of "Kōshu Especially Precious Sword." In Shōwa 57 (1982) it abolished the old system and moved to the present four-tier system. In Shōwa 43 (1968), the Japanese Sword Museum opened in Yoyogi as a facility attached to the Society. During the Shōwa 50s, it opened its Nittōhō Tatara works in Okuizumo, Nita District, Shimane Prefecture, resuming the production of tamahagane. In April Heisei 24 (2012), it became a public interest incorporated foundation. In March Heisei 29 (2017), it closed the Yoyogi sword museum, and in January Heisei 30 (2018), it moved and reopened the museum in Sumida Ward. From that same year, it has held its forging competition as the Gendai Tōshoku Ten.
The sword-making division of the Gendai Tōshoku Ten is organized into two categories: "tachi, katana, wakizashi, naginata and yari" and "tantō and ken." Special, excellence and encouragement prizes are awarded (in the 2019 competition guidelines, the prize money was 100,000 yen for the special prize, 50,000 yen for the excellence prize, and 20,000 yen for the encouragement prize). The Society describes its purpose as "preserving and improving the traditional techniques of sword-making, metal engraving and blade carving, while spreading the excellence of modern technique to many people and raising interest in swords as cultural properties." More than seventy years after its founding, the distinctive feature of this revival framework is that one body brings together the functions of appraisal, exhibition, raw-material supply and public display.
The legal framework governing possession was developed in parallel. The Firearms and Swords Control Act, in force since Shōwa 33 (1958), was amended in the first revision of Shōwa 37 (1962) to bring folding knives with short blades within its regulated scope. In the second revision of Shōwa 40 (1965), it added import controls on handguns and changed its title to the present Firearms and Swords Control Act. Amendments have been repeated since, including in Shōwa 46 and Shōwa 52, and across the Heisei and Reiwa periods. However, the basic structure, under which registered artistic swords may be possessed, was settled in the Shōwa 20s and has been maintained to the present day.
The postwar revival of the Japanese sword was achieved not through a single competition but through several systems meshing within a few years: a registration system that made possession possible, an approval system that made sword-making possible, a competition that evaluated and publicized technique, tatara operations that secured tamahagane as raw material, and a museum that preserved and exhibited works and materials. Moving the sword from "weapon" to "cultural property" required that none of these be lacking.
The approval system for sword-making and the Shinsaku Meitō Ten and Living National Treasure designations of Shōwa 30 (1955) sit at the junction of that chain. Forging practice, which had nearly been cut off under the Occupation, was publicly recognized once again, and the circuit by which it could be competed over, critiqued and handed on to the next generation was restored here. That Japanese swords continue to be newly made every year as a living demonstration of traditional technique rests on the framework assembled in this period.