Samurai Swords: A Collector’s Guide: A Comprehensive Introduction to History, Collecting and Preservation

Japanese swords, and particularly those wielded long ago by the famous samurai warriors, hold a continuing fascination for collectors of fine arts and historical military weapons. This book will doubtless enhance the appreciation of the wide variety of Japanese swords (as well as the related polearms), their manufacture and their preservation.

A fascinating opening section of the book explains how the elite samurai class dominated Japan and her people’s way of life for more than a thousand years, how technological and ideological advances overtook the samurai in the 1860s, heralding more up-to-date political and military systems of governance, and how such changes affected sword design and manufacture.

Important though the samurai period was, aspects in other sections of the book will rightly be seen as being of more relevance to today’s sword collector: namely, the chapters on the modern Samurai sword; different types of swords and their construction and testing; collecting and studying Japanese swords (and the tremendously important etiquette involved); and the techniques of preserving and polishing swords.

The pages are floridly illustrated with dynamic paintings, specially taken photographs, detailed diagrams, and maps. In addition, there is an in-depth glossary; which also included are most useful tables explaining many Japanese calligraphy symbols, both of great reference value to the collector.