Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/460

448 upon a time to do in the West. The custom which obtained among the Samurai of wearing two swords, is believed to date from the beginning of the fourteenth century. It was abolished by an edict issued on the 28th March, 1876, and taking effect from the 1st January, 1877. The edict was obeyed by this strangely docile people without a blow being struck, and the curio-shops displayed heaps of swords which, a few months before, the owners would less willingly have parted with than with life itself. Shortly afterwards a second edict appeared, rescinding the first and leaving any one at liberty to wear what swords he pleased. But as the privilege of a class distinction was thus obliterated, none cared to take advantage of the permission, and the two-sworded Japanese gentleman is now extinct.

Excellent specimens of swords and scabbards may be seen at Tōkyō in the Fūshū-kwan, or Museum of Arms, situated in the ground of the Shōkonsha temple.

Japanese swords are made of soft, elastic, magnetic iron combined with hard steel. "The tempering of the edge," says Rein, "is carefully done in the charcoal furnace, the softer backs and the sides being surrounded up to a certain point with fire-clay, so that only the edge remains outside. The cooling takes place in cold water. It is in this way that the steeled edge may be distinguished clearly from the back, by its colour and lustre. The backs of knives, axes, and other weapons are united to the steel edge either by welding on one side, or by fitting the edge into a fluted groove of the back blade, and welding on both sides."

The most extraordinary circumstance connected with swords in this country is that ladders are made of them set edge up, which men climb, with the idea originally of propitiating the gods and gaining merit, though now the ordeal would seem to have sunk to the level of a mere acrobatic performance. On the occasion when the present writer witnessed one of these performances in the grounds of the temple of Asakusa at Tōkyō,