Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1905 — JAPANESE SWORDMAKER. [ARTICLE]

JAPANESE SWORDMAKER.

ranious SwordmnilliH of Naru Practice un Ancient Art. The forge glowed 1 at the back of the little open house, and the clank-clank of the uaminer on the steel caught my quick attention, becatise 1 had read of the famous swordsmiths 6f. Kara, and this might be one of them. I approached the entrance and sat down upon n little stool that stood on the ground below the raised platform that always serves for a "counter” In a Japanese shop. Immediately the smith forgot his work and set upon me with his stock of blades, although I think he rather scorned to show them to a mere woman who could not appreciate their perfections. Over the forge was a sort of Shinto torll, on which wpre strung the usual Shinto prayer emblems of twisted rope and strips of paper, and, remembering the stories I have read about how the fuinous swords of Japan have been forged with solemn religions rites under Just such a representation of the sacred gateway of the gods, I was fascinated. . 1 might even now, i thought, be looking upon a forge where some of

the great swords of Jajnin’s great history of swords were made in perfection under the guidance of the gods; for, like everything else In Japan, this honorable business descended from father to son through generations and honorable ages, and what could be more probable than that tills old mosscovered house, almost in the shadow of one of the oldest Shinto temples in Japan, should have been the scene of some of these old fantastic rites? The little old man chatted away at me, but I understood so little of what he said that I couldn’t talk with him; so I went on my way, after having purchased a beautiful dagger with which he cut a coin In two for me. Its blade is perfect and its handle and sheath, ofT>olished cedar, are inlaid with hits of pearl, and he charged me only 1 yen 50 sen for it, 75 cents in American money.—Leslie's Weekly.