雷切

The legend of Raikiri begins on a stormy summer day when Tachibana Dōsetsu was resting beneath a tree. A thunderbolt struck, and in the moment of impact, Dōsetsu reportedly drew his sword — then called Chidori — and slashed at the lightning itself. He survived, but was left paralyzed from the waist down. The sword was renamed Raikiri, 'Lightning Cutter,' in honor of this act. Rather than accepting defeat, Dōsetsu adapted: he commanded his armies from a palanquin, fighting with such ferocious skill that enemies throughout Kyūshū feared him as a living avatar of the thunder god. His sword became a symbol of the indomitable will that refuses to yield even to the forces of heaven. When Dōsetsu died in 1585, still campaigning at age seventy-three, the sword passed into the keeping of Kōra Taisha, where it remains as a sacred relic of the greatest warrior Kyūshū ever produced.