the Sword of Old Japan. 31 
or blood-channels which are cut in many of them. Very rarely 
the grooves will be filled with red lacquer ; in some blades there 
are two grooves, generally of unequal length; the grooves may 
extend nearly the whole length of the blade, or may affect a 
portion only, while very frequently they are absent altogether. 
The blades are also very variable in weight; some, even of the 
long swords, are extremely light, others have a most formidable 
weight. It seems as if each blade had been made for a particular 
individual, who, while keeping to certain recognised rules, had in 
___ other particulars allowed his personal predilections to have full play. 
Sometimes the name of the owner will appear with that of the 
forger. It is not unusual to find a good blade without a signature; 
certain makers, it is said, omitted their signature because no one 
could fail to recognise their work. It is not at all improbable 
that many signatures have been added, long after the forging of 
the blade, either by a pupil or an expert; it was customary in 
such cases to inlay the signature with gold or red lacquer, to show 
it was not the swordsmith’s own work; signatures were, however, 
added without this distinction. Mr. Gilbertson makes the 
following pertinent allusion to the subject :— 
‘If the signature of Masamune was placed, a hundred years 
ago, on a blade that no one will certify as by him, it may be 
fairly assumed that the style and quality of the blade so closely 
resembled his work that it was likely to be mistaken for it by any 
ordinary collector, and is therefore worth purchasing, though not 
an original.” 
A boy of noble birth would carry two swords from the early 
age of seven, but until he was fifteen they would be of small size; 
at the latter age he received the weapons he was to carry through 
life and hand down unsullied to his heir. ‘It can be easily 
imagined,”’ writes Marcus Huish, ‘‘that in a country where 
internal wars were constantly carried on, where private quarrels 
grew into family feuds, where the vendetta were unhindered by 
law and applauded by society, where the slightest breach of 
_ etiquette could only be repaired by the death of one or other of 
the parties, and where a stain of any sort upon one’s character 
necessitated suicide with one’s own weapon, attention was very 
early directed towards obtaining perfection in the only article of 
defence or offence a Japanese carried.”’ 
I cannot here describe in detail the ‘‘hara-kiri,” or suicide by 
_ disembowelling ; I merely allude to it as one of the reasons why 
_ a Japanese nobleman would consider it necessary to carry a keen 
_ weapon. The custom originated during the sanguinary internecine 
_ wars which for centuries desolated Japan. Prisoners of war in 
_ those fierce days were always condemned to death; but it was 
felt that they hardly deserved to suffer by the hand of the 
executioner like common felons; they were therefore permitted 
