Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/175

 vested with subjective qualities. As Excalibur, flashing over the mere, summoned from its depths a mystic arm, so the sword of Japan was supposed to be capable of bringing to its owner one of eight things, good fortune, revenue, wealth, virtue, longevity, reputation, sickness, and poverty. A classic of the seventeenth century denounces such theories as irrational, and substitutes for them a creed equally superstitious and more illogical. "A sword," it says, "has no responsibility. The fortunes of the owner are of his own carving. The fortunate sword will sooner or later pass out of the possession of an evil owner. Otherwise a famous blade would indeed be valueless. For if it were possible for a knave to procure wealth, dignity or renown by possessing a fine sword, the noble weapon would become the mere tool of a malefactor." Thus some form of faith in the sword's occult potency survived all the attacks of reason. Great families treasured an ancestral blade as a talisman, and even furnished a vicarious demonstration of its potency by abandoning themselves on its loss to a mood of helplessness. There consequently flourished a class of experts professing the art of kenso, or ensiognomy (if it be permissible to coin a word). Concerning this art, the classic quoted above says: "The countenance of a blade cannot be read unless its other qualities have been determined in the main, and just as the expert should