A gift from Emperor Meiji to the King of Italy

[PietroParis]

Hi All,

 

Today I visited the Royal Armory in Turin - which was the first capital of the Kingdom of Italy - and I stumbled into an armor donated by the Emperor Meiji to King Vittorio Emanuele the 2nd in 1869:

 

 

The armor was displayed next to a sword, but the written explanations were unclear on whether the sword itself was part of the imperial gift. This is the best I could do picture-wise, considering that armor and sword were hosted in a large glass case, and that my photo skills and camera are what they are...

 

Global view of sword and saya:

 

 

Fittings:

 

 

Blade:

 

 

What do you think, is this sword worthy of an Emperor's gift to a King?

 

Cheers, Pietro

[TETSUGENDO]

Everything looks first rate Pietro, beautiful.  Wonder what happened with the tsukamaki.  All the other fabrics look reasonably well preserved, odd that just the ito was affected.

 

-S-

[PietroParis]

Are you referring to the missing stripe of fabric on the top of the tsuka? In the third “fittings” picture I see the same feature on the saya. Of course I have no idea of what it means...

 

Cheers, Pietro

[IanB]

There is far more to this story. Back in the Tensho era in an attempt to prevent Philip II of Spain sending Franciscan monks to Japan, the Portuguese Jesuit  priests in Japan sent a delegation of  four Japanese youths, who had been converted to Catholicism, to Spain to demonstrate how successful they were in converting the Japanese to their religion. Not only did they meet King Philip II, they then travelled to Rome and met the Pope, met with the Medici in Florence and visited Turin before returning to Japan. Wherever they went they gave gifts of armours and swords, the Duke in Turin being given an armour, and almost certainly there would be swords as well. I went to Turin and saw the helmet of the Tensho armour, but could not find the rest (however, Dr. Orikasa says he saw it when he went there). In addition to the do-maru shown above was an Edo era horse harness and l also saw a magnificent daisho on a superb katana kake when looking around the stores. As I said, I could not find the earlier armour nor any swords that may have been part of the original gift.

Ian Bottomley

[PietroParis]

Hi Ian,

 

I was told that the armory halls were recently rearranged, the sword and the armor pictured above were all the Japanese items I could see (but I may of course have missed other stuff). Here is a picture of the glass case, from the museum’s website (see also the link in my first post for more pictures of the armor).

 

 

Cheers, Pietro

[Logan09]

Are you referring to the missing stripe of fabric on the top of the tsuka? In the third “fittings” picture I see the same feature on the saya. Of course I have no idea of what it means...

Cheers, Pietro

The Tsuka and the Saya are missing the Ito. Not sure if the strips are over the fabric. If they are they're used to give the Tsuka its final shape, and to make sure the Ito is flush to the Fuchi and Kashira.

[Peter Bleed]

I'm a bit surprised to see all those 3-5 Kirimon. Nice, but not very "imperial" IMHO

Peter

[ChrisW]

It is a very pretty blade! I love the hamon on it. I wonder who the smith is?

[TETSUGENDO]

Here is a picture from the Tetsugendo website of a similar koshirae with the wrappings intact.   It is dated circa1700 and the mounts are papered to Goto.   I doubt Emporer Meiji would gift anything of lesser quality to a King.

-S-

[raynor]

Blade steel looks oily and the hamon very controlled.. high quality koto bizen work maybe?

[Jean]

Ito Maki no Tachi

[MauroP]

Hi Pietro,

the koshirae has been messed up a little bit. The kashira is correctly positioned as a tachi mount, tsuba as a katana mount (see orientation of the kiri-mon). Anyway a great piece.