本庄正宗

The story of Honjō Masamune's disappearance after World War II is among the most haunting in the history of Japanese art. In the chaos of 1945, as Japan surrendered and Allied forces implemented weapons confiscation orders, the greatest sword ever made by Japan's greatest swordsmith passed out of Japanese hands. It was delivered to an American officer and was never returned. The sword had survived six hundred years: the Kamakura period's fall, the Sengoku wars, the Edo peace, the Meiji transformation. It could not survive the twentieth century's end. Sengoku general Honjō Shigenaga, after whom the sword is named, reportedly received the blade in battle after surviving a sword blow that split his helmet — the stroke bisecting the helmet but leaving the man alive. This mixture of violent history and peaceful preservation, followed finally by violent loss, gives the Honjō Masamune a biography as dramatic as the history of Japan itself.