* Image is for illustrative purposes only.Jirō Tachi
次郎太刀
Also known as: The Younger Blade of Magara
Description
Overview of the Sword
Jirō Tachi is one of the large swords (ōdachi) transmitted to the Magara clan alongside Tarō Tachi, positioned as the "younger brother" in relation to Tarō Tachi (blade length approximately 221.5 cm), which is the "elder brother." With a blade length of approximately 166.7 cm—a measurement roughly 2.5 times that of a standard Japanese sword (blade length approximately 70 cm)—it is nonetheless called the "younger (smaller)" sword when compared to Tarō Tachi, which underscores Tarō Tachi's extraordinary and unprecedented magnitude. Jirō Tachi was wielded by Magara Jūrōzaemon Takamoto (真柄十郎左衛門隆基), son of Magara Naotaka, who fell alongside his father in the Battle of Anegawa in the first year of Genki (1570). The tragic conclusion of the Magara family—where father and son fought together wielding colossal swords and both perished on the same battlefield—stands as a narrative epitomizing the fate of a Sengoku-period warrior clan, recounted to the present day. Displayed side-by-side with Tarō Tachi in the Kusanagi Hall of Atsuta Jingū, Jirō Tachi serves as a twin treasure embodying brotherly bonds and paternal martial valor, creating a spectacle of unique significance in Japanese sword history through paired exhibition and appreciation.
Magara Jūrōzaemon Takamoto—Inheritor of His Father's Legacy
Magara Takamoto was a warrior who inherited the extraordinary prowess of his father Naotaka and possessed the physical frame and strength to wield a colossal blade of 166.7 cm in actual combat. While his father bore the epithet "Tarō" (first), his son assumed the designation "Jirō" (second), or was called "Jirō Tachi" in later times, and the transmission of the two giant swords as paternal and filial symbols demonstrates that Magara clan martial glory was inherited across two generations. Father and son, serving the Asakura clan of Echizen Province, cultivated renown alongside their swords, with the blades' sheer size functioning as a kind of household "symbol." The image of Takamoto standing beside his father on the battlefield wielding Jirō Tachi became an emblematic scene of father-and-son relationships among Sengoku warriors, powerfully capturing the imaginations of later generations. The fact that Takamoto fell on the same battlefield with an identical fate as his father is inscribed deeply within sensibilities peculiar to the Japanese aesthetic as "tragic beauty," and depictions of father and son Magara were repeatedly taken up in subsequent military chronicles and ukiyo-e works.
Jirō Tachi's Blade and Characteristics of Nanboku-chō Large Swords
Jirō Tachi, like Tarō Tachi, exhibits the morphology of a Nanboku-chō period ōdachi, displaying the typical form of a nodachi with an elongated blade and shallow curve. The tang is said to bear a red-inlaid signature reading "Chiyotsuru Kuniyasu." The large swords of the Nanboku-chō period (14th century) emerged as a sword type in response to evolving group combat tactics and infantry methods that developed following the Mongol invasions (late 13th century), their form specialized for sweeping mounted warriors from above with extended blades. The ōdachi of the era served not only for sweeping ground-level enemies from horseback but were also wielded by foot soldiers, who swung the long blades horizontally in broad arcs to fell multiple adversaries at once in a technique known as "sweeping" (nagigirai). The ground steel exhibits the characteristic flowing itame grain landscape typical of the Nanboku-chō period, and the blade pattern is presumed to feature the bold aesthetic common to that age, characterized by interlocking-cross (gunome) disordering and undulating (midare) patterns. Currently preserved with great care as a treasure of Atsuta Jingū, opportunities for detailed public display and examination remain limited. Though Jirō Tachi is paired with Tarō Tachi as a "brother blade" transmitted to Atsuta Jingū, neither has received cultural property designation. The blade surface bears witness to prolonged battlefield use and conservation treatments, physical evidence of actual combat deployment that has attracted considerable scholarly attention from sword researchers.
The Battle of Anegawa and the Final Days of Father and Son Magara
On the 28th day of the sixth month of Genki 1 (1570), on the banks of the Anegawa in Ōmi Province (present-day Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture), a great engagement took place between the allied forces of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu against the allied armies of Asakura Yoshikage and Azai Nagamasa. Father and son Magara Naotaka and Takamoto stood at the vanguard as emblems of Asakura valor. The figures of father Naotaka wielding Tarō Tachi and son Takamoto brandishing Jirō Tachi are said to have been especially conspicuous during the battle, with their enormous blades identifiable even from a distance. Clashing with commanders of the Tokugawa forces, the Magara father and son fell despite their fierce struggle. That both fell on the same day and same battlefield transcended mere warrior mortality and became inscribed in later military narratives as a sublime finale—a warrior family perishing alongside their swords. The Battle of Anegawa holds significance as the breakthrough in Nobunaga's triumph over the anti-Nobunaga coalition, and the sublime end of father and son Magara has endured in transmission as an emblematic episode of that engagement.
The Annihilation of the Magara Family and the Miraculous Survival of Their Treasures
With both Magara Naotaka and Takamoto falling at the Battle of Anegawa, the Magara clan was effectively extinguished. When a family perishes, the dispersal of heirlooms and treasures among victors, loss to oblivion, or seizure is typically the inevitable fate. Yet Tarō Tachi and Jirō Tachi, precisely because of their extraordinary proportions, were treated as precious rarities too valuable to abandon, ultimately coming to be transmitted through the ages via dedication to Atsuta Jingū. This miraculous transmission implies that among the people of that era existed a conviction that "enormous size itself possessed protective power." The arc wherein swords that fell with father and son came to be enshrined and received pacification rites before the Kami embodies the essential core of Japanese reverence for swords. That both blades were dedicated together to Atsuta Jingū itself represents an expression of the Japanese aesthetic of treating these "brother blades" as an inseparable pair.
Cultural Significance of the Ōdachi Type and Jirō Tachi's Position
Jirō Tachi, along with the ōdachi sword type generally, represents a unique evolutionary product of continental-style large weaponry aspiration during the Nanboku-chō period and transformations in Japanese collective infantry tactics. From the Edo period onward, practical battlefield use ceased, with a tendency toward increasing scale in shrine dedications, yet large swords like Jirō Tachi bearing documented records and tradition of actual field deployment remain extraordinarily rare. In sword history, Jirō Tachi's position stands not merely as a dimensional record but as testimony to the astounding and undeniable reality that living human beings in the Sengoku age actually wielded swords of such impossible size on the battlefield—a uniqueness admitting no parallel. Displayed alongside Tarō Tachi as the "elder brother," Jirō Tachi conveys to viewers the overwhelming presence of the ōdachi type and provides an experience of Japanese sword appreciation without equal, permitting direct apprehension of the prowess of father and son Magara who bore these blades.
Legends & Stories
On the twenty-eighth day of the sixth month of 1570, at the Battle of Anegawa on the shores of the Anegawa River in Ōmi Province, the forces of Asakura and Azai clashed with the combined armies of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Among those who fell that day were Magara Naomoto wielding Tarō Tachi, and his son Takaoki wielding Jirō Tachi — father and son, each carrying a blade taller than most men, dying together on the same field. Later accounts recorded that witnesses were struck by the sheer impossibility of the sight: men actually fighting with swords longer than their own bodies. After the battle, the two blades passed through obscure hands before eventually arriving at Atsuta Jingū, the great shrine of Kusanagi no Tsurugi. That the shrine of the greatest mythological sword should become the resting place of the greatest historical swords seems, in retrospect, almost inevitable.