中津城

Lien avec les sabres

Nakatsu Castle sits at the intersection of two extraordinary swordsmithing lineages. First, its founder Kuroda Kanbei was associated with 'Heshikiri Hasebe' — now a National Treasure — a blade by the Nanbokuchō-era smith Hasebe Kunishige with a chilling name: Nobunaga allegedly used it to 'press-cut' (heshikiri) a tea attendant through a shelf where he was hiding. This blade passed to the Kuroda clan and is now displayed at the Fukuoka City Museum. Second, Nakatsu's next lord Hosokawa Tadaoki was one of the seven sages of the tea master Sen no Rikyū, a supreme sword connoisseur, and owner of the legendary 'Kasen Kanesada' — named for Tadaoki's massacre of 36 poetry guests at a renga gathering, a blade whose terrifying legend makes it one of Japan's most notorious named swords. The Hosokawa collection, now at Eisei Bunko in Tokyo, represents one of Japan's finest daimyō sword treasuries.