Kurihara Akihide

Kurihara Hikosaburo Akihide was a magazine editor, politician, and swordsmith active from the Meiji into the early Showa period, born in 1879 and dying in 1954. His art names were Akihide and Konan. According to Wikipedia and the touken-world.jp directory, while serving as a member of the House of Representatives, Kurihara devoted his life to reviving the declining craft of Japanese sword-making.

In 1926 Kurihara conceived the Nihontō Tanren Denshūjo (Japanese Sword Forging Institute) on the former site of Katsu Kaishu's residence in Akasaka, Tokyo, formally opening it within his own grounds in 1933. There he trained many swordsmiths and made it a center for transmitting forging techniques in the modern era; smiths such as Kasama Shigetsugu served as instructors at the institute.

In 1935 Kurihara founded the magazine Nihontō oyobi Nihon Shumi (The Japanese Sword and Japanese Taste), publishing it until 1945 to promote and popularize the sword. After retiring from politics he established the Greater Japan Swordsmiths' Association and became its chairman, and in the closing years of the Pacific War he opened a sword academy in Zama, Kanagawa, to continue training smiths. Six of the swords he forged himself are designated Tangible Cultural Properties of Tochigi Prefecture. As a "key figure in the preservation of the modern sword," he holds an indispensable place in modern sword history.