関東大震災後

The Great Kantō Earthquake of September 1, 1923 (magnitude 7.9), and the catastrophic firestorm that followed, struck the heart of Japan's sword collection world. Tokyo and Yokohama, where the finest private collections had concentrated since Meiji — accumulated by industrialists, statesmen, former daimyo families, and military officers — were devastated. The fires that burned for days destroyed an incalculable number of important swords: individual collectors reportedly lost dozens to over a hundred named swords each; sword dealers' inventories, swords under polishing by craftsmen, blades in fittings repair — all were lost in the flames. The simultaneous destruction of appraisal documents (orikami) and provenance records erased irreplaceable historical evidence about surviving swords' identities and lineages. Swordsmiths, polishers, and appraisers living in Tokyo lost their workshops, tools, reference collection pieces, accumulated research materials, and precious natural whetstone collections, creating serious risks of technical discontinuity. Yet the post-earthquake recovery period (late Taishō to early Shōwa) also generated an energetic institutional reconstruction of sword culture. In 1925, the Tokyo Art School (now Tokyo University of the Arts) established a sword division, formally recognizing sword-making, polishing, and appraisal as legitimate art education subjects. Sword research organizations and appreciation societies proliferated, conducting systematic surveys and documentation of surviving swords. These efforts laid the groundwork for the 1943 Important Art Objects Law and ultimately for the postwar National Treasure / Important Cultural Property designation systems. As early Shōwa military tensions rose through the Manchurian Incident (1931), military sword demand increased, and the Yasukuni Shrine forging program intensified — creating a complex cultural landscape where earthquake-driven loss, institutional recovery, and militarist mobilization intersected around the contested meaning of the Japanese sword.