次郎太刀

On the twenty-eighth day of the sixth month of 1570, at the Battle of Anegawa on the shores of the Anegawa River in Ōmi Province, the forces of Asakura and Azai clashed with the combined armies of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Among those who fell that day were Magara Naomoto wielding Tarō Tachi, and his son Takaoki wielding Jirō Tachi — father and son, each carrying a blade taller than most men, dying together on the same field. Later accounts recorded that witnesses were struck by the sheer impossibility of the sight: men actually fighting with swords longer than their own bodies. After the battle, the two blades passed through obscure hands before eventually arriving at Atsuta Jingū, the great shrine of Kusanagi no Tsurugi. That the shrine of the greatest mythological sword should become the resting place of the greatest historical swords seems, in retrospect, almost inevitable.