Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/177

WEAPONS AND OPERATIONS of tranquillity was not incongruous. Either belief illustrates the mood of the soldier towards his sword. A famous blade served as a second conscience to its owner; he sought to live up to the attributes it was supposed to possess; and when a sovereign or a feudal chief bestowed on a subject or a vassal a sword that bore the name of a great maker and had been cherished through generations in the house of the donor, the gift carried with it a sacred trust and an inspiration that nerved the recipient to noble deeds. Such esoterics could not survive in the cold atmosphere of nineteenth-century criticism, but it may well be doubted whether their influence upon the Japanese did not make for good.

One interesting problem with regard to the Japanese sword seems unlikely to be definitely settled, namely, its origin. An authority whose dictum ought to carry great weight dismisses the question curtly by saying that "the swords of Japan are the highly perfected working out of a general Indo-Persian type," and Japanese historians assert that the one-edged sword, the katana, for which their country is famous, was forged for the first time in the seventh century by dividing the old two-edged Chinese sword, the ken (or tsurugi). Concerning the former view, it must be confessed that the alleged resemblance between a Japanese sword and all recognised types of the Persian cimeter defies ordinary 151