Kamakura Museum of National Treasures

Kamakura Museum of National Treasures is operated by Kamakura City and occupies an exceptional setting within the precincts of Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū — the warrior deity shrine founded by Minamoto no Yoritomo as the spiritual guardian of the Kamakura shogunate. Since its founding in 1928, the museum has served as the principal repository and exhibition venue for National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties belonging to Kamakura's temples and shrines.

The museum's sword collection is intimately connected to the shogunal and warrior culture of the Kamakura period (12th–14th centuries), the era when Japanese sword-making reached its first great artistic peak. Tachi presented by successive Kamakura shoguns, Hōjō regents, and powerful gokenin retainers to Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū and other major Kamakura institutions include masterworks of the Bizen, Yamashiro, Yamato, and Sōshū traditions.

Most significantly, Kamakura is the birthplace of the Sōshū tradition (also called the Kamakura tradition) — the school of sword-making that produced Masamune, Sadamune, and Sōshū Hiromitsu, smiths whose innovations in nie-based jihada and dynamic hamon reshaped the art of nihonto for all subsequent generations. The museum's location at the very heart of this tradition's origin gives it a symbolic resonance unmatched by any other venue in Japan.

The surrounding precincts and Kamakura's wider urban landscape — Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū, the Daibutsu, Engaku-ji, Kenchō-ji, and the mountain trails connecting them — form one of Japan's richest environments for experiencing the material and spiritual culture from which the Japanese sword emerged.