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A katana (刀, かたな, lit. 'one-sided blade') is a Japanese sabre characterized by a curved, single-edged blade with a circular or squared guard and long grip to accommodate two hands.
Amakuni Yasutsuna (天國 安綱) is the legendary swordsmith who supposedly created the first single-edged longsword with curvature along the edge in the Yamato Province around 700 AD. He was the head of a group of swordsmiths employed by the Emperor of Japan to make weapons for his warriors. His son, Amakura, was the successor to his work.
Kiku-ichimonji (菊一文字) ("Chrysanthemum-straight line"), often romanized with a somewhat misplaced hyphen as Kikuichi-monji, is a collective name given to the katana (a type of Japanese sword) made by the thirteen swordsmiths who were in attendance to the Emperor Go-Toba in 1208.
It is one of the best known of the swords created by Masamune and is believed to be among the finest Japanese swords ever made. It was made a Japanese National Treasure (Kokuhō) in 1939. [15] [16] The name Honjō probably came about by the sword's connection to General Honjō Shigenaga (1540–1614) who gained the sword after a battle in 1561 ...
Visual glossary of Japanese sword terms. Japanese swordsmithing is the labour-intensive bladesmithing process developed in Japan beginning in the sixth century for forging traditionally made bladed weapons [1] [2] including katana, wakizashi, tantō, yari, naginata, nagamaki, tachi, nodachi, ōdachi, kodachi, and ya.
The first forging of the first curved Japanese swords has been attributed to these two smiths. [131] Yasutsuna founded the school with the same name. Two tachi of the Yasutsuna school have been designated as national treasures: one, the Dōjigiri Yasutsuna by Yasutsuna has been named the "most celebrated of all Japanese swords"; the other is by ...
In spite of their original reputation as fine blades favored by the shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu and his vassals, the katana swords made by Muramasa gradually became a symbol of the anti-Tokugawa movement. Furthermore, in lore and popular culture from the 18th century, the swords have been regarded as yōtō (妖刀, "wicked katana").
Norishige is regarded as one of the greatest Japanese swordsmiths in history. [4] In the 14th century, he had a forge in the fief of Nei, present-day Toyama Prefecture . [ 4 ] He made and supplied the finest katana to samurai in the Kamakura period .