Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/180

JAPAN soldier in his last resort, suicide. In general the long sword did not measure more than three feet, including the hilt, but some were five feet long and some even seven, these huge weapons being specially affected by swashbucklers and vagabond soldiers. Considering that the scabbard, being fastened to the girdle, had no play, the feat of drawing a nagatachi, as the very long sword was called, demanded special aptitude; yet there were men who achieved it in a sitting posture. A Chinese historian, referring to the Japanese invasion of Korea at the close of the sixteenth century, says of the samurai in action that "he brandished a five-foot blade with such rapidity that nothing could be seen except a white sheen of steel, the soldier himself being altogether invisible." The unsheathing of the sword was always counted an act of extreme gravity. It signified deadly intention, and when once the blade had been exposed, to return it unused to the scabbard insulted the weapon and convicted its wearer of unsoldierlike precipitancy. Etiquette required that the long sword should be removed from the girdle before entering the apartment of a superior or a friend, but the waki-zashi remained in its place.

The samurai of old Japan cannot be dissociated from his sword. He himself called it his soul. Therefore it has been spoken of here at some length. But the average foreigner takes little interest in the story of the blade or the traditions 154