Month: February 2016

This month’s lecture on Japanese swords was given by the swordsmith Shigenori Ozawa.

Mr. Ozawa, age 48, lives in Ashigarayama, Kanagawa Prefecture, and is a disciple of Yukimitsu Takano. He became certified as a swordsmith in 2005 and has been chosen as the winner at many modern Japanese sword exhibitions. He works with a new modern method of tempering swords which does not involve Tsuchioki (putting earth on the blade during the tempering process).
This was his second lecture, following his February lecture of last year, so there was a very relaxed, at-home atmosphere, and he explained about sword smithing while exchanging stories of daily struggles. Questions flew one after the other, and the allotted time of 1 hour was over in a flash.

The second half of the time was given to sword appreciation. Participants listened attentively to the explanations of Udagawa Sensei and they appear to have absorbed new knowledge.

I went to visit Kyoto this winter.

This makes the third consecutive year that I’ve visited Kyoto at this season, February, with my great mentor in the sword business, Mochida-san. Since it has a deep sword culture related to Japanese history, I wanted to see this with my own eyes rather than only boast about having visited on a school trip in my youth. Mochida-san, being very knowledgeable, explains things to me that deepen my understanding.

This year, among other places, we visited “Uji Byodoin Shrine”, which is depicted on the back side of the 10-yen coin, “Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine”, which has 1,000 red Torii gates and was chosen as Japan’s Number 1 tourist spot for foreigners in 2014, as well as “Nanzenji Temple” and “Kyoto Gyoen Park”.

We also visited the “Tamayama Meishi-to Kyoto Branch” sword trader in Kyoto Higashiyama, and that night we enjoyed the delicious Kyoto cuisine with the young shop owner Tamayama-san.

I returned home greatly refreshed.

Yesterday was a day known as Setsubun in Japan. To celebrate this, we have a ritual where we throw beans into the rooms of our houses and shout ‘Demons out, fortune in’.

We also stick an ornament made of the head of a sardine and the leaf of a Hiiragi, holly to door posts or gate ways.

This year, to further improve our luck and prosperity, we also put up an Omamori, lucky charm, on the wall facing south in our office. These Omamori can only be attached to the wall, at midnight, of 3 different days. These are known as Toji (the shortest day of the year), Omisoka (the last day of the year) and on Setsubun (3^rd of February).

The Omamori in our office comes from Ana Hachimangu shrine, in Tokyo. It is said that when they broke the ground to build this shrine, a cave was discovered, in which they found a statue of Amida-buddha. This was seen as a good omen and thus the shrine was named ‘Ana; cave, Hachimangu. To this day many people still come to this shrine to pray for luck and prosperity.

With this, I would like to wish all our subscribers, friends and customers the best of luck and good health for the remainder of the year.