Buying a Samurai Sword in Japan: Everything You Need to Know | Tozando Kyoto

This here is the real katana from 1506. It is beautiful. Would you like to hold it? May I? Yes. This here is extremely sharp, so please do be careful. Keep your hands off the cutting edge. This right here is... How does it feel? Do you think it's as heavy as you thought it would be? You know what? This feels... It's actually almost hard to describe, but there it is. This feels powerful. All right, we are here at Tozando Gion Yasaka. I'm here with Mark, the store manager. Now, Mark, when you walk into this store, the first thing you see are these beautiful samurai armor. What's the story with some of these? Well, we have here a fairly old piece. This here is a piece that would be used in battle. This is antique. It's somewhere between 350 to 400 years old. As you can see, it's not very decorated. This one here, it's something that they would send on... They would have on a person who's going to be sent first into battle, you know. So, low rankings, front lines. That's right. Put them into the meat grinder first, save the good samurais for later. That's right, you got it right there. And so, this guy here, he's especially fortunate to have survived. I mean, the guy himself didn't, but his armor did. Yeah. And we have actually with this guy here a really special document, which is for this guy. We know the kind of weapons... No way. ...that were being used. Holy. And this is the original document? This is the original document, yes. Unfortunately, some parts of it have been... Weathered? Weathered. And you can see there's a hole here where it looks like something's been eating through it. Wow. Okay, so then why would he carry something like this? Like, is this like a weapons passport? Something like that. Yeah, yeah, something like that. I mean, of course, not everybody can use every kind of weapon and you'd need training for that kind of thing. So, yeah, that's essentially what this one would be. And as you can see at the top, it has been torn, so we don't even have the full document here. Okay. So, he was swift with the pistol? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And... Bow and arrow. Bow and arrow. He's got a spear. Wow. And you see, it goes all the way down. That's cool. So, would he have to present this to someone or is this like what he's adequately trained in? That's a good question. I wish I knew. Unfortunately, there's not enough of the document here for me to make that judgment, but I would say this is probably something that would either show his skill or on top of that, it could be something that he has to show in order to receive weapons, something like that. Beautiful. So, now I can see that the armor here is obviously not as immaculate and decorated with all the ropes and all this. If you were a lower ranking, you get the bottom of the barrel gear. Is that kind of how it works? Yeah, essentially. I mean, it's what you can afford, right? Okay. Oh, so this wasn't supplied by the dynasty? I mean, it would depend depending on the clan. It would depend on the size of the clan, things like that. But a lot of samurai would have to purchase their own armor in certain cases as well. And everything was made... Would there be a blacksmith pounding this stuff out all made by hand? I mean, for the most part, yeah, made by hand. Absolutely. I mean, also the chain mail, for example, you have to see that's hours, well, hours, it's weeks, months of work. And they've really worked hard on that. But he's in fairly good condition for what he is. Now, how does something like this arrive at Tozando? Well, I mean, we have people who go around looking for pieces like this, families who have decided by themselves, well, you know, we found this, let's say in our grandfather's basement, he's passed away. What are we going to do with it? You know, we don't really have any idea what it's worth or exactly what it is really. And they pass it on to us eventually where we do what we can to pass it on to someone who will really appreciate it. Beautiful. So talk to me a little bit about some of these other pieces. They're absolutely gorgeous. You've got like these, so intricate. And you can tell the craftsmanship. I think that's one of the Oh, yeah. One of the key things that I absolutely love about the Japanese culture is Japanese craftsmanship. Oh, yeah. The attention to detail, the precision, the dedication to mastering your craft when it comes to producing beautiful pieces like this. So this would obviously be a higher ranking samurai. Yes, you're right. You're right. Absolutely. And how old would something like this be? So this one here would be, you know, somewhere between 150 to 180, something like that. Generally, I mean, it's in very, very good condition as it's a ceremonial piece. It's not really something that would be, you know, worn generally into battle. And the age of it as well is from a period in time when it wasn't really all that heavy in terms of war, battles amongst each other, things like that. There were some battles, but not that many. So they wouldn't really need really battle ready armor as frequent as someone like this guy. So would the samurai just be kind of patrolling the streets, making sure there's order? Like, what was their role in times of peace? So, of course, I mean, they would be around. I mean, in times of peace, they're here as your army, essentially. You know, there are people here who's here to protect you as police, maybe, but that's not really the function that they were given. They were given the function of warrior. So they got to fight somebody if it's necessary, sort of thing. And would that be like intruding clans from other jurisdictions? So by this time, it's the... It's united. It's united. So Japan's in a state of relative peace. Most people are fine with the current regime, so to speak. The Tokugawas have consolidated their power very, very well. And so for the most part, even they're not walking the streets with this kind of stuff on, generally. They're still just wearing this standard kimono, you know, walking around, doing that kind of stuff. And then something like this, maybe for ceremony, something like that, they might wear it. But for the rest, you can see it's sitting here on top of a box, this big wooden box. And so the reason that most of these are preserved so well is that when they're not in use, they're in the box. I have them here on display, but usually they're not always out like this. Now, what would a samurai be without a katana? And you have some beautiful katana behind glass doors. Now, these are real antiques, so... Absolutely. Actual samurai had them by their side. They did indeed. What would you say is the most interesting piece you have behind the glass? Well, besides the price of it, these two here at the top are related to the Tokugawa family. So, the Tokugawa family, as I just mentioned there, the shogun's family during the Edo period, they had multiple branches, of course, of their family. And one of the branches had this. This is a showpiece. This is not a piece that's going to be used for battle. However, the katana at the top, the full-length katana here, we know was made in 1506. 1506. So, how would you know that? Would it come with a certificate? How does it... For these particular pieces, we have five certificates and another two extra documents to verify everything about them. Yeah. So, that would be next to impossible to forge. I mean, yeah. Because you can look at it and obviously based on the Tokugawa family and the period in which it was made, it's obviously an authentic piece. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, everything that we have here is a registered antique weapon. So, we don't have anything here that's, you know, a modern remake or anything like that. Everything here is registered with the Japanese government as an actual authentic antique. Now, what would dictate a national treasure? Well, a national treasure, this is pretty close. Okay. But one step higher, I mean, this is a branch of the Tokugawa family. This is not the Tokugawa family, right? Okay. If it was somebody from the actual Tokugawa family, so it would be a shogun, you know, a direct family of the shogun, something like that, that right there would be in the museum. Okay, and can't leave the country. Can't leave the country, no way. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's no... Priceless. Well, I mean... Let's be honest. But one of the things is, actually, it's not against the law for a foreigner to own a national treasure. Is that right? Because I've heard it's next to impossible. I mean, if somebody's wanting to sell one, yeah, I mean, you could buy it. Okay. But it just can't leave the country. Oh, so there is some fine print. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But if somebody was in Kyoto and they saw this piece and wanted to buy it, they could take it home with them? I mean, I'd have to ship it for them, but yeah, it can go to the U.S. or many other countries. And then how does it work? So you have to... What's the process of actually owning a piece of Japan's history? Oh, it's pretty simple, really. You come in, you pay me some money, and I send it to you. Okay. Paperwork's done, you handle all of it? I do everything for you. Okay. And then I can mount it above my fireplace, no problem. Yeah, if you have a fireplace. Okay, perfect. Okay, so that's... because I always thought, you know, it was actually very difficult to own an antique katana or wakazashi or tanto that would be difficult to get out of the country, but it sounds like it's somewhat basic. I mean, these days, it's pretty simple. I mean, I do a little bit of paperwork here. I get them deregistered. They are registered weapons in Japan. I know that's different where you're from, but over here, they're registered. So I do have to get them deregistered. I do have to do a little bit of paperwork explaining that they will be leaving the country. Right. But after that, that's it. I put them in a box, and then off they go. And they're all... so obviously, they're made of real tamahagane. Absolutely. And way back in this period, how many actual places made tamahagane? Oh, I wouldn't know the exact number, but a fair number. Right now, there's only one. Okay, so there's only one place in Japan that will produce tamahagane, and how would modern swordsmiths actually go about acquiring tamahagane and then actually making some of these pieces? Well, tamahagane is made now in one location in Japan, in Shimane Prefecture, and there's an old forge there which they use to make the tamahagane from river sand. And what makes tamahagane tamahagane? Well, for one, it's what it's made from, so that river sand is a big part of it. Okay. But on top of that is that it is made in the traditional way. Right. So you can't just get some river sand and throw it into a modern forge and say, I got the same thing. Right. That traditional manner of making it is one of the key steps of making tamahagane. Yeah. And so yeah, so they'd make that, make that once per year, and whatever they make, they make a big batch, and the swordsmiths alive today, they just take what they can get. I guess they have to pay for it, of course, but then that's about it. And then they have that for a whole year until the next time they make it. Wow. What blows my mind is how ahead of their time they were when it actually comes to the metallurgy. Oh, yeah. They, I watched a documentary on it, and I was absolutely fascinated because it wasn't till like 200, 300 years later that they actually scientifically understood what it was they were doing. And they discovered it. And that was literally the modern nuclear weapon of the time. It was so sophisticated. That is just so fascinating that something so ancient was so ahead of its time in terms of science and technology. And it's just, again, another testament to the Japanese mastering their craft and getting really, really precise in how to make these beautiful pieces. Oh, absolutely. And you know, they have more than a thousand years of history of making swords. So they had a lot of time to get it right. But at the same time, there's, you know, we know about the historical fact that we have people, we have swordsmiths going out to battlefields, finding these broken swords and saying, why did this break? What did we do wrong? Let's try and make this better. You know, so it's not like it was just purely luck. They really put in a lot of effort and work and a lot of research into what they're doing to make sure that they could make the best possible blades. Now, true or false? In the R&D process, I heard that they would take prisoners and see if it could slice through them. Okay, I can't say it's neither true nor false. Okay, there were cases where they used people as a way of showing what the sword could do. There are swords that have inscribed on the nakago, so the tang of the blade. Things, you know, they say this has successfully sliced through three people, things like that. Okay, okay. Now, if you were a betting man, which one of these swords has blood on it? Good question. I would say this one right here. Okay. And the reason for that is that this one here is from the late Muromachi period. And the late Muromachi period is part of the warring states period, the civil war of Japan. Okay. Right? So at that point in time, we do have warring clans. We have clans attacking each other. We have people trying to consolidate power to see who can be the next ruler of all of a unified Japan. And this comes from that period, right? So there is war, and there's plenty of it going around. So the chance that this one was used is a lot more likely than any of the others here. Interesting. Yeah, so all the other ones are mainly in peacetime for the most part? I mean, for example, these ones here, they're a showpiece, even though they are also the katana at the top, 1506, also warring states period. But it's a showpiece. They're not going to walk out into battle with that. Right. So yeah, for the most part, we do have a lot of them from the peacetime of Japanese history. Very cool.