七星剣

The Seven-Star Sword carries the oldest cosmological image in the Japanese sword tradition: the Big Dipper inlaid in gold, the pivot of the heavens, the chariot of the Celestial Emperor in Daoist tradition. That this symbol — drawn from Chinese cosmological religion — appears on a sword attributed to Prince Shōtoku reveals something important about the religious imagination of early Japan's greatest statesman. Shōtoku vowed to the Four Heavenly Kings of Buddhism before his decisive military victory; he wrote the Seventeen-Article Constitution synthesizing Buddhist, Confucian, and traditional Japanese ethical principles; and he wore a sword decorated with the supreme symbol of Daoist cosmic power. This integration of multiple religious traditions into a single spiritual universe is the Asuka-period intellectual achievement at its most personal. Like the Heishi Shōrinken, the Shichiseiken survived the 1615 Battle of Osaka and the 1945 air raids through deliberate protection — the same religious motivation that caused the sword to be preserved over centuries as Prince Shōtoku's sacred relic. In the medieval period, pilgrims who came to Shitennō-ji to venerate the memory of Japan's Buddhist founder-saint would have known of this sword as one of his relics, believing the stars inlaid in its blade had watched over the prince in battle and continued to watch over all who came under the protection of the temple he had vowed to build.