Juyo Shikkake In Germany

[Ken-Hawaii]

I posted this several years ago, pertaining to the allowed lengths of blades:

 

The early regulations relating to the length of blades have been mentioned, several attempts were made

at reducing the number of sword wearers, as will now be seen:

 

In the second year of Kencho (1250), Hojo Tokiyori prohibited ordinary people from carrying long

swords. This regulation was enforced by Akashi Kanetsuna, since then, common people and all priests

carried long Kogatana called Wakizashi no Tachi.

 

In Tensho XVI (1588), Hideyoshi made a proclamation to obtain from common people the

surrender of their swords. Being a cunning man, he announced that it was his intention to build a

Daibutsu Temple in Kyoto, and that he required thousands of nails, and he wished people to hand over

their swords so that they might acquire merit towards a future life by stopping their earthly fights and

contributing towards a religious cause. But people were less interested in a problematic paradise than in

actually protecting themselves, and they did not rise to his bait.

 

In Genna VIII, the Shogun Tokugawa Iyetada prohibited common people from wearing swords to

avoid brawls; the Tachi was called then O Wakizashi.

 

In Kwanyei XVII (1640), Tokugawa Iyemitsu prohibited the attendants of Bujin from carrying tachi.

 

In Kwambun X (1670), Tokugawa Iyetsuna issued a regulation making the length of tachi 2'8"-9",

and o-wakizashi 1'8", and anyone carrying a longer sword was liable to punishment.

 

In Tenna III (1683), Tokugawa Tsunayoshi reiterated the prohibition to common people to wear

the long sword, but allowed them to carry a tanto; musicians and painters, even when of the Samurai

class, were debarred from carrying a big sword.

 

In Kwansei X (1798), it was decided that any sword exceeding 1'8" should be termed Naga

Wakizashi, and anyone carrying such a sword was liable to punishment. Later, the length was reduced to

1'5".

 

Finally, in Meiji IX (1877), the Haitorei was issued prohibiting the wearing of swords, except the

one sword belonging to soldiers and police when in uniform.

 

 

So, from this, it's easy to see that a lot of longer blades were cut down from tachi to katana, & finally to wakizashi. So I'd be careful of stating what a specific value might be for a blade, especially if it's suriage.

 

Ken

[Jean]

FYI, average height of Japanese people during Edo period was 1,57cm. We had this WE a very interesting conference at our token where this subject was discussed.

[cabowen]

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201112310017

 

Remember that is an average- meaning there many shorter as well as taller.

[Ken-Hawaii]

Uh, Jean, I think you mean 1.57 m, rather than cm.... Otherwise, they'd all be menuki!

 

Ken

 

[Derek]

Yes, article states 155 cm, or 61 inches, for an adult man during Edo era.  Very interesting, thank you for the link.

 

My question is if merchants could own, but not carry nihonto over 2 shaku?  If so, could a wealty merchant own a very nice, signed, ubu Tadayoshi, but keep it locked away in perfect condition?  If only to show it off in his own home?  Or would one have to be a samurai to even purchase?

[Jean]

Yes Ken LOL

[Guido]

So, from this, it's easy to see that a lot of longer blades were cut down from tachi to katana, & finally to wakizashi.

 

I have to disagree with this reasoning. Wakizashi that are cut down to this length from tachi and katana are few and far between, and in my experience usually older, valuable blades that suffered some damage and were thus salvaged. But even disregarding my empirical evidence, it wouldn't have made sense from a financial point of view.

[Darcy]

I'd like to throw out some observations:

 

1. fully matched daisho token are really rare, much moreso than samurai

 

2. the vast majority of fittings we see today are singleton, which is in keeping with the same observation in swords

 

3. there are just not a lot of daisho anything now

 

Explanations:

 

1. most of the daisho were broken up into components and scattered

 

2. daisho were not as common as movies, legends, poetry and the romantic appeal of the samurai would have us believe

 

We know the following as well:

 

1. those 500,000 samurai were not walking around in full Tokugawa spec military grade daisho kit, masters of sword fighting and death dealing at every second of the day... a lot were administrators, bureaucrats and so forth... not samurai warriors but samurai by class

 

2. the right to do something does not imply that everyone did it... because you could wear a daisho doesn't mean that everyone constantly did 

 

Dealers are still splitting stuff up today, and things like daisho tsuba existing without daisho anything else gives some weight to that theory being a component in the mysterious disappearance of the daisho. 

 

I mean... how many Tadayoshi/Tadahiro blades by the generations of this school do we see out there? Many thousands. How many Tadayoshi school daisho have passed Juyo? 

 

One that I can find. Maybe I have missed one or two. But I see one. 

 

Putting this into context I count two yari and 12 naginata that are Juyo. 

 

So we are not seeing the evidence at this point in time of a lot of custom ordered daisho. This is, again, a note on the evidence, not a conclusion, just that we are not seeing as many daisho as we expect from watching a samurai movie. 

 

And before anyone jumps down my throat and says Juyo are not everything, this is the best sampling we can get of high quality blades and it stands to reason that a matched pair of Juyo quality swords is going to pass Juyo a lot more easily than the two would as individual blades due to the high regard attached to daisho. 

 

So... we have either a daisho-destructive force that has been breaking everything up, or daisho just not being as common as we thought, or what I think is more reasonable, a combination of both. 

 

And if they are not as common as we thought in terms of custom ordered kits, there are a few other thoughts that need pondering. 

 

We can assume that these guys just didn't go out and get matched daisho, that this was somehow anathema... that daisho were very common and they were just mismatched swords. But we should then see a greater record in the fittings, and the fittings seem to correspond with the daisho token in their rarity. Not one for one, but not completely a different order of magnitude. I am still trying to build a comprehensive survey of the Juyo stuff and it is a big task but it is not something that is coming in at 10:1 of daisho fittings to daisho token. But even if it ends up at that level, daisho token are falling into extremely rare and mostly shinshinto (I've isolated 22 daisho token in the Juyo so far, Masahide, Naotane, Sa Yukihide, and Munetsugu account for half of these) and daisho are still going to end up very rare compared to singleton blades.

 

We could allow for 3 orders of magnitude say for mismatched daisho from looking at sword fittings compared to custom ordered daisho and still daisho would be extremely rare.

 

That all leaves these questions open:

 

Why so many wakizashi?

Why so many singleton blades?

 

And another:

 

Why are there so few koshirae that meet the Tokugawa specifications?

 

Even in the end if we want to dismiss non-samurai classes as being statistically significant in the consumption of wakizashi, we are left with these questions.

 

About the desirability of these things, ultimately regardless of anything else, a guy bringing a wakizashi to a katana fight is at a distinct disadvantage, something he is really going to have to make up for with skill. This is the base truth that is sitting behind the desirability difference that we experience today. You can surely get some fine work in wakizashi. But when placed beside a katana, the form is at a disadvantage as a weapon and generally the shape and structure appear inadequate. That is subjective but it is shared I think with the majority of people. 

 

Ultimately I think that the romantic notion of the katana and daisho wielding samurai is both what leads us to overestimate (in my opinion) the frequency of the fully armed samurai and affects people's judgment of wakizashi as being desirable now. 

 

I did read previously that it was the duty of the lord to provide one of the samurai's blades and his own duty to provide the other. At least one movie version of this has a poor samurai who uses a tsunagi as his dai. For whatever that is worth. I'm not really convinced by any of the handwaving arguments (including my own), I think it is an open question and can be satisfied by only examining data that none of us seems to have easy access to. That leads us down the road of conjecture and makes for interesting conversation but I am wary of drawing strong conclusions. 

 

I just am looking at the items and not seeing it lining up well with what are possibly romanticized notions that we are carrying today. 

[Loco Al]

Dear NMB members,

 

This might be a bit off topic. Although this thread has already strayed off topic a bit, where it has now become a discussion about the relative value and station of wakizashi (or the station of the Japanese who originally owned them).

 

Anyway, I would like to apologize to Darcy and all the members that I insulted with my irrational and immature response to his essay. The short essay was well composed and very convincing. He made some very good points, especially the one near his conclusion where he said that "people should always try to consolidate, to have fewer and better things, go vertical instead of horizontal..." 

 

I was thinking that I should have just quietly left the forum after my last post. I can hear you all applauding. Was I hoping to get myself banned with that post? Perhaps. I have no excuses for my behaviour.

 

When I posted that bit about the two types of well-heeled buyers, it was in response to Brian’s comment about there being "a group of buyers for whom price is not a consideration..." It was an observation that I could not resist replying to. My proposition, which was likely the inspiration for Darcy's essay, was perhaps ridiculous and should be insulting to those with much extra money to invest in high-value swords. Cheeky sword fitting collectors notwithstanding.

 

Alan

 

[Darcy]

I am in Tokyo right now and have been asking "the wakizashi question" when I have a chance... one interesting response I got was that the dealer (well respected) said that his opinion was that the wakizashi of Sukehiro, Kotetsu and Shinkai were superior to their katana in quality (score one for the "inherent value in wakizashi" point raised).

 

Rationale was that most samurai could not afford good swords, his point to me was, "The swords that you have, none of these are samurai swords. Those are daimyo swords. In the Edo period if you were presented with the average samurai sword you would think it is junk compared to what you have."

 

He then said that with the rise of the merchant class some of these wakizashi were made exceedingly good because basically, that's where the money was to buy great workmanship outside of the daimyo, and some of the merchants had very high standards as a result of their wealth.

 

We see this as well in some very exquisite wakizashi koshirae as well where nothing was spared in their fabrication. 

 

So these opinions (note: opinions) also align with the wakizashi = driven by merchants theory. But they also underscore that you need to evaluate carefully, because "driven by merchants" may also point to careful craftsmanship meant to appeal to wealth and may allow people to snarf some bonus value on the right item.