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Okay, so I was doing some research a while ago and ran across an article. I just remembered it and managed to find it again, and it continues to press buttons and flip switches in my mind. It relays in some detail some of the findings of a man named Suishinshi Masahide. He is known as THE sword smith who brought around the Shinshinto period of sword making. Rather than focusing on the wide, pretty, flashy hamon that many liked during the earlier Edo period, he re-invented his sword smithing to focus ...

Hishigami are little paper triangles utilized when doing tsukamaki that fill out the ito on either side of the crossover. These little things do so much for the integrity of the wrap, it's almost hard to believe. These tiny, folded pieces of paper fill the ito, making the wrap more substantial, they lock the ito in place by conforming to and anchoring in the samegawa, and they keep the diamonds even by reinforcing the triangular shape of the ito on either side of the crossover.

They're ...

Now, I've been seeing a lot of hype over having an extremely long tsuka. I'm used to about twelve inches for my big hands, but some people demand fifteen! Having a tsuka that big is actually very awkward for me. While there is historical evidence that some standard sized swords with extremely long tsuka were used during the Edo period, I'm not entirely certain that it served much of a purpose besides fashion.

Now, from all I know, the modern love of looong tsuka comes from four things. ...

Who is completely, one hundred percent unfamiliar with Japanese swords? I'm sure, by now, just about everyone has had the chance to see...at least something resembling one. They're in the mall, at gift shops, in dojo, on TV, in movies, all over the web. There might even be one in the attic. Who knows? While a lot of people know of Japanese swords, considerably less know a substantial amount about them. There is so much that goes into a Japanese sword that I figure I can blog for a while to give ...