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of. Now, when our country had arrived at the Heavenly rule of Sûjin Tennô, the 10th of the mortal Emperors, he feared to dwell in the same palace with the ‘Divine precious thing,’ and so he caused a person called Amakuni, a man of the department of Uda in the province of Yamato, a far-removed descendant of Me-hitotsu-gami, to forge an imitation of the sword, and as for the ‘Clustering clouds’ that had descended from the Divine age, he was pleased to offer it up to the shrine of Tensho Daijin. Under the heavenly rule of Keikô Tennô, Yamato Také no Mikoto, at the time of his expedition against the East, went to pay reverence at the shrines of Isé. His aunt, Yamato Himé no Mikoto, was the resident of the shrine at that period, and she besought that the Divine Sword of the ‘Clustering Clouds’ might be handed down to him from the shrine, and so gave it over to Yamato Také no Mikoto, together with a tinder-case attached. This is said to have been the origin of the custom of fastening a charm-case to a sword as a guardian for children. Yamato Také no Mikoto, having accomplished the subjugation of the East, offered up the sword at Atsuta in the province of Owari. Up to the present day, the virtue of this sword, permanent and immutable even unto the end of myriads of ages, is the guardian of our country and our homes, and the protector of our own selves. In no way can it be fully described by the pen! The second “precious sword” was buried in the Western seas at the time of the death of Antoku Tennô (1185 A.D.)”
Throughout the whole of the above passage, the word ‘sword’ is invariably rendered by the Japanese word ‘ken,’ which signifies a long, straight, double-edged sword, as opposed to the ‘katana,’ of modern times, which has but a single edge, and is slightly curved towards the point. The ‘ken’ is the oldest form, and the ‘katana’ the newest, while between the two comes a sword much like the ‘katana,’ only a great deal more curved. A beautiful specimen of a ‘ken’ is now in the possession of the most noted fencing master of Yedo.
