Sword Mounting with a Gilt Bronze Ring Pommel, and Its Blade

One Sword, National Treasure since 1958

Sword Mounting with a Gilt Bronze Ring Pommel, and Its Blade (｛金銅荘環頭大刀拵／大刀身｝, Kondo-so Kanto Tachi Koshirae / Tachi no Mi) is a Kofun-period craft object owned by Omura Shrine in Kochi Prefecture, made an Important Cultural Property on 28 June 1956 and designated a National Treasure on 8 February 1958. The quantity is one sword.

28 June 1956 is the day of the two Hyogo chain swords at Kasuga Taisha. Those became National Treasures on that same day; this one waited two years.

The title sets two things side by side inside brace brackets, mounting and blade divided by a slash. The address field in the Agency's database is blank, the seventeenth such case.

Two Slips in One Record

The commentary carries errors in two places.

The first comes where it says the sword is valuable for having been kept hidden in the depths of the shrine building: the verb phrase for having been kept is written with its characters transposed.

The second comes where it says the blade had rusted and lost its shape and was newly polished afresh: there the verb is written in a form that does not fit the sentence.

Both are small slips in the writing rather than in the facts.

With the wood-sorrel sword at Kasuga Taisha, one character was dropped from a phrase meaning the rest.

Here two slips fall within a single commentary, the most met so far in one record.

Dimensions Given in Two Separate Runs

The figures break off and begin again.

First the mounting: 119.0 centimetres overall, the pommel 7.4 long and 10.6 wide, the grip 19.4 long and 3.8 to 3.2 wide, the scabbard 103.2 long and 3.3 to 2.8 wide, and the guard 5.6 centimetres across.

Then the blade: 68.3 centimetres long, 2.9 wide at the base, 2.3 at the point, the tip 2.0, the tang a little over 11.2. The unit is stated twice.

The grip runs 3.8 to 3.2 and the scabbard 3.3 to 2.8: widths given as ranges, narrowing toward the end.

The tang carries a qualifier meaning slightly more than the figure given. A number with such a suffix appears here for the first time.

The pommel at 7.4 is nearly two-fifths of the grip's 19.4. The ring at the head takes up much of the hilt.

Two Hedges Stacked on the Dating

On when it was made, the record does not commit.

Continental style appears to have been taken up by degrees, it says, and the sword is probably thought to date from the close of the Kofun period.

Appears to, probably, is thought: the hedges run one after another.

At the Kozanji Buddha hall, the record noted another view and then said its own reading seemed reasonable. That weighs two positions.

Here only one view is offered, with reservations about how firm it is.

The period field also carries two entries, one naming the Kofun period and one an older general term. The classification itself is not settled on a single word.

Seeing It

The sword belongs to Omura Shrine. The field for prefecture gives Kochi and the address field is blank.

Later work on it is recorded: the blade had rusted and lost its shape, and was newly polished afresh.

What had corroded was restored by polishing. With the engraved mirror at Suijinja, marks of a fire were left as they were.

Here the object was worked on. On that basis the record calls it relatively sound, well forged in the steel, with a plain temper pattern.

A part is missing as well: the fitting at the base of the guard is recorded as lost. Kochi Prefecture also holds the Koya cutting of the Kokin Wakashu, owned by the prefecture itself. This sword is a shrine holding, not kept on permanent display. Check before travelling.