Japanese Collectables and Sword Show

Samurai Sword Lovers Share Their Stories

A scene from The Japanese Collectibles and Sword Show hosted by the Midwest Token Kai from April 28 to 30, 2023

Participants exchange their sword information at the 2023 Sword Show organized by the Midwest Token Kai.

   “The Japanese Collectibles and Sword Show” was held at the Hyatt Regency Woodfield in Schaumburg, Illinois, from April 28 to 30, bringing Japanese sword and arts lovers from across the country.

   The show was filled with Japanese swords, sword fittings such as tsuba and menuki, samurai armors and helmets, antiquities, books and everything related with the sword.

   The show was reopened by the Midwest Token Kai after years of interval, and has been run by Mark Jones, Manager of Token Kai, since 2013. Most participants were not only collectors, but also protectors and preservers of the Japanese sword, so that the show invited some experts from Japan to conduct shinsa, formal evaluation of the swords and fittings.

Mark Jones, Manager of the Midwest Token Kai

   Manager Jones explains, “This year’s focus is shinsa. The experts look at swords and say if there is a personal sign which says who made them, when they were made, whether they are genuine, kept good condition or not.” After their evaluation, the experts issue a certificate which is nicely written in Japanese.

   At his table, Jones displayed some samurai swords and fitting pieces of tuba, menuki, fuchigashira and more. He said that he specialized in basically general antique samurai swords, one was made prior to 1945, another was made prior to the 1860s which was more his specialties. A hilt of a sword had a family crest of shogun Tokugawa. His sword fittings were made in the early 1600s to 1800s.

Talk with Collector Bobby Block

   Bobby Block is an award-winning journalist who has worked in major newspapers for 40 years. As an overseas and national correspondent he has covered happenings in Latin America, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Washington D.C. and now Florida. He also covered and lived in regions of conflict such as Rwanda and Bosnia for a half of his career. He was a staff reporter in a team of the Wall Street Journal and contributed to the 2002 Pritzker Prize for Breaking News when the Journal won it for coverage of 9/11. He has received numerous awards from many organizations including the U.S. Congress and the United Nations.

   He is co-author of the book “Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security” and was appointed as Executive Director of the First Amendment Foundation.

   During his career as a journalist, he also has poured his energy and passion in the study of Japanese swords.

Bobby Block talks about history of his treasure sword at his table

   Block claims that most Americans don’t understand that the Japanese sword is an art, not a weapon, but he saw some photos that Douglas MacArthur and others seized hundreds of thousands of swords and pushed them into the ocean or buried them in the ground when Japan was under the American occupation after WWII.

   Block says, “It’s a religious article. It’s a spiritual article. It has much more than just a weapon,” and that why the Sword Show is an important opportunity to explain people that the sword is much more than a tool.

   When Block started collecting Japanese swords, one of his educators was Kazushige Tsuruta, a Japanese dealer. He visited Tsuruta in Japan and spent a lot of times in his educator’s home or store. Seeing his passion toward the samurai swords, Tsuruta said, “Your soul might be Japanese sometimes in your past life.”

   Block says, “I see the swords in poetry, I don’t see them as commodity. I see them as imagination that sweat and attempt to do something bigger than them. That’s art, that’s poetry. That’s what I see that we celebrate in the Show.”

Drawn to the Japanese Art

   In his childhood, Block was surrounded by the Japanese art which were collected by his grandmother who visited Japan in the 1960s and 70s that made her lover of the Japanese arts and food. “So her love of Japanese art must have made an impression on me,” he says.

   As a Journalist, his first overseas assignment was London where he saw stores selling Japanese prints, ukiyo-e.

   One day he saw a wakizashi and koshirae on a counter in a store and asked the store owner if the sword was for sale. The owner said, “Though, it has no signature, maybe it’s a masterpiece.”

   “Anyway that started a life-long hobby. I was 25 at that time when I bought my first sword,” he said.

   The first phase of his collection was shinto and shin-shinto because they were more affordable, and then his attention moved to koto (late Heian period to 1595). Later years, he has been more interested in social blades which were loved and wore by significant daimyo, feudal lords.

   Block showed one of his social-blade collections to the reporter. The sword was made by Magoroku Kanemoto, the best swordsmith among sword makers in Mino, a famous region for sword making.

   Block says, “This sword was obviously made for some important persons, and this is like a connection to the period of sengoku (about 1467-1615). It’s a piece of poetry, but also connects you to history and to the famous people. One person who wore this Kanemoto was Hideyoshi Toyotomi.”

   “So, when you look at it, you think how many famous people looked at this and studied it. How many people put this in as a part of their treasure possessions and handed down from child to child,” Block continued.

A scene from The 2023 Japanese Collectibles and Sword Show. Many collectibles are displayed at the show.

   Block’s collection includes sword related collectibles such tsuba, netsuke and komai plates. He is attracted by their detailed carving even in a tiny part of them. Komai plates were made by tsuba makers. After Meiji government banned citizens from wearing sword, tsuba artisans began to make komai plates to survive. They figure out and carved Japanese legend or heroes on a plate. Those plates became very popular as a souvenir for foreign visitors and as an export item. Komai plates were one of the items that Block’s grandmother collected.

   He said that he liked the show because it was a good chance to experience those collectibles.

   One thing Block worries about is the young generation who does not have the same appreciation towards the Japanese sword and art as much as his generation does.

   According to Block, there used be two shows in Florida; however, organizers get older and passed away, so it was difficult to open the show. Now Block and his fellows are going to open a sword show in Florida in June and trying to bring in ikebana, bonsai, Japanese cooking and more to attract younger people.

   Japan has the same tendency as Florida, but Block pointed out that the most enthusiastic collectors of sword were teen-age girls in Japan nowadays because of popularity of anime “Token Ranbu” which described transformation of swords into handsome boys to fight with bad guys. As an active journalist, Block seems to know everything.

Sword Study Reveals Facts

   When Block started his collection about 40 years ago, few English books were available to study swords and fittings. Now many books have been translated into English, and libraries of such books are available. Many books are also available to buy in the Midwest Tokenkai’s show, and Block bought a four-inch-thick book, Higo Kinko Taikan. It not only shows photos of tsuba, but also explains each tuba maker and a period, his school, surrounding people and so on.

   It is difficult to understand what kanji characters engraved in a sword, even most Japanese cannot read them. According to Block, discoveries of new facts have been brought by non-Japanese scholars.

    For instance, an excellent sword maker in the early 1500s, Muramasa’s circumstance was shrouded in controversy including his teacher, his students, development process of his techniques and so on.

   An Austrian scholar Markus Sesko accessed the scrolls form the Japanese National Library where digital pictures of the scrolls were available through online. Those scrolls had kept all the travelers’ records at every check point along the Tokaido Road. Every traveler had to present his or her name, where they were from and going, who they would stay with, what they are going to do, and so on.

   Sesko studied those records about 500 years ago and found that outside Kyoto, a famous sword maker Nagayoshi, who had some equipment on his back, was going to visit a sword maker in a town with a younger sword maker Masazane to make some swords.

   The record revealed that the two men stayed at Muramasa’s house for 18 months, and the three men exchanged their sword-making techniques and related information and made some swords. They also sold some of the swords they made and left for the next village to work with somebody.

   From Sesko’s devoted research, Muramasa did not have a teacher and student at that point, and he was developing his brand “Muramasa” with trial and error.

   Block said, “This is the information out of Sesko’s love of swords. So these characters come to life because we now they are not just names of the book. They were working for the money, they were traveling, they were trying to show what they can do, selling few things, move on to the next town. So those kinds of things make for me the hobby alive because these are in poetry. It’s also history.”

Hundreds Years of Heritage Comes to America

   A sword was inherited in a samurai family for hundreds of years, and the last child of the family was a daughter who didn’t want to keep the sword. She wanted to keep only koshirae, outside of the blade, and wanted to sell the blade to someone within Japan, but reluctant to sell it to overseas.

   Block persuaded her to sell it to him because he devoted himself to preserve Japanese swords and respected Japanese culture and history. She finally agreed with him.

   The origin of the sword was passed down to her family. The ancestor was a vassal of Sakai Clan, Lord of Himeji Domain in Harima Province in Ed period. The ancestor saved many villages from flood, and the Domain Lord Tadashige Sakai gave a sword of Kunimasa to him to honor his works. Since then, the generations have been handed down the sword for hundreds of years, and now it was entrusted to an American, Bobby Block. He said, “All those people of hundreds of years to take care of it. I have to honor them by doing the same. For sword collectors, our job is to protect our swords for another 500 years and pass on to our children.”

Bobby Block

Japanese Artistry and Block’s Life

   Block has comprehensive interests in the Japanese art such as iaido and bonsai and looks forward to visiting Japan in November to see a bonsai show and autumn foliage in Kyoto.

   “I really do believe if we can understand something, we learn more about ourselves by learning about others. So by learning about the Japanese culture not only I learned about appreciation of that but learning appreciation of my place in the world,” he said.

   He loves to see craftsmen, who are making baskets or finishing bento boxes with urushi lacquer, through workshop windows on the side streets in Kyoto. He says those are their livelihood, but their works mean the craftsmen themselves, and he feels that it is always nice to see.

   He said that people should pay the same level of attention to every piece of article, even a tiny part of the article, no matter if the work were big or small. That attention can be found in the Japanese artistry that almost overwhelms him. “It’s attention to the smallest detail. That’s something, a good example of seeing that and learning to apply that to my own life. I try to apply the same level of detail and attention to the things in my life,” Block said.

Chris Bowen, U.S. representative, and Shinsa

   Chris Bowen is the person who brings experts from Japan to shinsa in the show. He has welcomed them to the show for eight or nine times in the past two decades.

   According to Bowen, the participants of the show bring 400 to 500 swords for shinsa in the three days. He said, “Swords are very old and very traditional Japanese craft and art, so they want to preserve this craft as art for the future generations to appreciate.”

   The Society for Preservation of Japanese Art Swords (not-for-profit organization) was founded in the Meiji era, and its judges examine the details of a sword to see authenticity of the sword and estimate the year of the production if the sword doesn’t have maker’s name and then they issue a certificate. The judges visit abroad and educate foreign owners about the value of the sword and history and the way to preserve swords.

Interview with Chris Bowen

Q: How did you become interested in the Japanese sword?

Bowen: When I was 12 or 13 years old, there was a series of Sunday-night TV program hosted by the former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer. It showed samurai movies, especially, Akira Kurosawa’s productions such as Tsubaki Sanjuro and Seven Samurai.

   I was not interested in such movies, but on my mother’s repeated request, I reluctantly watched it with her and after 15 minutes, I was kind of hooked.

   One day, there was a kind of garage sale at a supermarket, and I found a picture of Japanese sword for sale. I wanted it, and it was cheap, so my father gave me money and I bought it.

   When I took of the handle, there was Japanese writing. I was interested in and curious. So we went to museums and universities, but had hard time to find what it said. No one, even most Japanese couldn’t read it.

   Finally Japanese man, Buddhist professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a kendo instructor, could read it. I was so fascinated.

   He said the maker’s name as Umemoto, the place he lived and the year he made it. He also said most Japanese swords have that information. That’s really interesting for me.

   So I started to research and collect them. I was only 13 years old at that time.

   After graduated from college, I worked and ended up going to Japan around 1989 because I wanted to study Japanese sword and learn more.

   I was able to get a job at a university in Japan, so I worked and studied Japanese swords in my spare time. That’s how I met these experts. It was more than 30 years ago. So we kept keep in touch. I’ve brought them for 4 to 5 times in recent years for shinsa.

Q: I see. So what is your profession?

Bowen: I’m retired now, so I have been studying Japanese swords and enjoying the nature. I live in Wisconsin near the Mississippi River. My house locates in a wood.

Q: Thank you.