Interest

Reverse-Blade Sword Found in Japanese Warehouse

The 1994 manga series Rurouni Kenshin, recently revived in live-action as a film series, features a former samurai named Himura Kenshin who turns his back on his blood-stained past by reversing the blade on his sword so he can still use it to fend off evildoers without taking their lives. This sakabatou (literally, "reverse-bladed sword") is iconic, yet an invention of the manga artist, Nobuhiro Watsuki, without a basis in the real world... until now.

Last October, the Kawakami family discovered an unusual sword in their warehouse. It is short — its total length is only 28 centimeters, with the blade encompassing 22 of these. The blade shows neither rust nor hamon (the distinctive blade pattern found on Japanese swords). It is, however, reversed — what is normally the back of a sword blade is fixed in the front, flipping the blade itself onto the back. In addition, its nakago — the portion of the blade encased in the handle — is too short. For these reasons, it was not included in the offical registry of Japanese swords. However, Shiroi, the Tokyo suburb the sword was found in, is considering designating the sword a Municipal Cultural Property, a term for objects, structures, traditions and sites that are protected by municipalities across Japan.

The Kawakami family was entrusted with maintaining the shogunate's horses at a ranch called Kogane-maki during the Edo period. As a result, they have contributed 174 items (primarily clothing and horse-related equipment) to Chiba Prefecture's Cultural Properties and 14,000 items (primarily documents) to Shiroi's Cultural Properties.

The sakabatou as it appears in the Kenshin manga

[Via Yahoo! Japan; Image from Jinsei Defrag-chuu]