Yamatorige
Japanese sword
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yamatorige (山鳥毛; "feather of a copper pheasant"), equally known as Sanchōmō by its Sino-Japanese reading, is a tachi (Japanese greatsword) forged during the middle Kamakura period (13th century). The set of the blade and its koshirae (mountings) is a National Treasure of Japan. It was wielded by Uesugi Kagekatsu (1556–1623), a powerful warlord in the Sengoku period, and had been inherited by his clan.[1]
History
Yamatorige was forged during the middle Kamakura period (13th century).[2]
According to Kanzan Sato, a nihontō (Japanese sword) appraiser and researcher, it was named so in order to honor the beauty of the tachi by likening it to the feather of a copper pheasant or the landscape of sunset mountains.[3] In addition, Suiken Fukunaga, another nihontō appraiser/researcher, cites a theory written in Sourinji Denki (『双林寺伝記』) that the name came from the landscape of a wildfire.[4] Fukunaga himself, however, remarks the wildfire theory is utterly dubious.[4]
The tachi is one of the 35 swords favored by the warlord Uesugi Kagekatsu (1556–1623),[2] an adopted son and the successor of the "God of War" Uesugi Kenshin. Later it had been inherited as one of the greatest heirlooms of the Yonezawa-Uesugi clan, the head of the Uesugi clans.[2]
On March 29, 1952, the tachi was designated a National Treasure of Japan.[5] Its koshirae (mountings) are a part of the designation as accessories to the blade.[5][6]
In 2020, Setouchi City purchased yamatorige from an individual, which was then housed in the Bizen Osafune Japanese Sword Museum. The purchase cost was about 500 million yen (About $5 million).[7]
List of name variations
The official full name for the blade and its mountings designated by the Agency for Cultural Affairs is Tachi Mumei-Ichimonji (Yamatorige) Hitokuchi tsuketari Uchigatana-Goshirae (太刀 無銘一文字（山鳥毛） 一口 附 打刀拵; "An Unsigned Tachi by the Ichimonji School (Yamatorige) with Mountings for a Katana-Type Sword").[5]
Markus Sesko, a researcher on Japanese swords, calls the sword Yamatorige-Ichimonji (山鳥毛一文字).[8]
Due to both its ambiguous origin and the highly complex reading system for kanji characters, the sword has a wide variety of associated names.