AYUMI NAKANISHI / ANAKANISHI@STARBULLETIN.COM
Gordon Robson held up examples of Japanese swords last week during a lecture at Hawaii Tokai International College.
Samurai-sword market The cutting edge of sword collecting has generally been ceded to the Japanese for some time now, but the collapsing economy there has been kind to American collectors, according to experts Gordon Robson and Mark Robinson.
opening to U.S.
The elaborate swords are
a graceful tribute to
Japanese artisanshipBy Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.comRobson and Robinson visited Honolulu recently to lecture on Japanese swords for the Japan-America Society at Hawaii Tokai International College. Robson is a professor at Showa Women's University in Tokyo, and Robinson is a long-standing collector with roots in Hawaii.
When we're talking Japanese swords, we're talking about the gracefully curved weapons of samurai times, pieces that were as much a tribute to artisanship as metalsmithing. These generally come in three styles: the long, graceful katana; the medium-length wakizashi; and the tiny, knifelike tanto.
Each has specialized fittings, often equally made to an exacting degree of craftsmanship, and these pieces make up the value of a sword. They include the often-elaborate tsuba (hilt guard), menuki (ornaments on the handle), saya (scabbard), kojiri (metal scabbard tip), same (handle wrappings) and even the tsuka (handle), which is hidden beneath the same but contains makers' notations.
"The main thing that fascinated me was the incredible way Japanese swordmakers forged steel," explained Robinson. "It was equal to or better than what we can do with modern technology. They used a very pure ore and smelted it over a period of several months with a combination of iron and steel, folding it into layers. The byproduct of that is the very distinctive wave patterns along the blade."
These wavy marks are the signature of an authentic blade, made up of layers of smelted metal into a kind of metal composite stronger than mere steel. There were several dozen layers, sometimes as many as 75.
"The swordsmiths also coated the blade for final tempering with a special refractory clay, making the layer thinner along the cutting edge and thicker along the spine," Robinson explained. "This crystallized the steel of the edge and also created the typical curve of the blade as it warped during tempering."
"Blood-testing" actually did occur, Robinson said. Criminals with death sentences were stacked up two or three deep and slashed at. The number of criminals the sword could cleave with one blow was carefully noted on the tsuka.
For a while, the biggest repository of Japanese swords was the American attic, as most blades left Japan at the end of the war as booty and souvenirs. "Of those, maybe 10 percent were family heirlooms and valuable blades," Robinson said. "The rest are mass-produced military swords that are valuable as military artifacts but not as pure swords."
During the 1970s and '80s, Japanese businessmen with a yen for collecting often bought up these souvenir blades, creating a boom market for Japanese swords. This has leveled considerably, thanks to the downturn in the Japanese economy. "Now, you can go to Japan and get quite good deals on swords," Robinson said. "A Japanese collector may have trouble justifying spending money on a sword when he has to buy food."
The collectors' market also created a boom in Chinese-made fakes, Robinson warned. "These are often sold on eBay, where it's difficult to determine if something is a fake or not."
The value? The days of million-dollar swords is long over. A wartime sword can bring $300 to $1,500; an antique sword with certification papers can bring up to $10,000. "A rare Edo-period sword with a known swordmaker's mark can command up in the hundred-thousands, but those are few and far between," Robinson said.
If you have a sword yourself, heed the advice of virtually all antiques appraisers: Leave it alone!
"Maybe some light oil on the blade to keep it from rusting," Robinson said. "'Fixing' it will only ruin the value."
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