News

Smith & Signature Search enabled

Swordsmith Index page is now extended with specialised search facilities.

Main index page offers 3 options to search for smith records by ID (Hawley IDs are now in use), Name (romaji) and Name (Kanji), or any combination of those. Individual search mode can be chosen for each field: Is Equal To, Contains, Contains Any Word, Contains All Words, Starts With, Ends With, Does Not Contain.

You can also find a number of new tabs at the top of the main index page:

  • All Schools
  • Mei Search
  • Editor's Assistant (only available to registered users)

The first tab leads to

List of swordsmiths and schools published

Swordsmith Index is now available on NihontoClub.com. 12212 swordsmith records have been initially uploaded. With the initial data import being quite modest, the final goal is to provide a record structure giving a comprehensive view of smith’s background and features of his works in a way which allows easy data aggregation and filtering.

Basic data cleansing and correction of typos and obvious errors has been performed on the data before the initial import. Another important goal was to reduce (to certain degree) a level of ambiguity when referring to names (e.g. fathers, students, teachers), schools, places and times which often accompanies Nihonto sources. However, due to bulk operations and massive data transformations done using Excel files and SQL database, mistakes were unavoidable. Therefore all the imported records are marked as 'unverified' using a verification flag. They would need to be verified manually over next months (years? decades?) to fill the gaps and increase the data quality.

Publishing personal collections - Phase II

The feature has been fully implemented now. Registered users are allowed to post an unlimited number of collections by publishing content of Private collection type (see Create content menu once logged in). Each collection is a list of records of the following customized types:

  • sword record (available fields: Nagasa, Saki-haba, Moto-haba, Sori, Sori Type, Sugata, Type, Period, Jihada, Nakago, Mei, Hamon, Boshi, Horimono etc)
  • tsuba record (available fields: Width, Height, Thickness etc)
  • generic item record - for any other item types (available fields: Custom Type, Description)

Japanese Calligraphy Exhibition in Dublin

On 29th March, as part of the ongoing commemorative events for the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Ireland, the 60th Jubilee Exhibition of the Shodo Geijutsu-In Foundation (the Association of Japanese Calligraphy), co-hosted by the Embassy of Japan, opened at the Atrium, Office of Public Works in Dublin.

Sword glossary enhancements

The following new features have been added:

  • Each glossary term has a new field now to define its Japanese name(s)
  • When viewing the Glossary by category, terms in each category are shown in a table with 2 columns: term in English and in Japanese
  • A new page has been added: view glossary by term. It shows the Glossary as a flat table:

    New glossary view

    with sortable columns

At the moment the Glossary is almost empty. I'll try to fill up the Sword Glossary within next few months, doing it on a regular basis. Enjoy!

Sword-makers ceremony sparks public interest in Gifu

SEKI, Gifu -- Hundreds of people gathered to watch sword makers in Seki, a town famous for producing Japanese swords, as the craftsmen showed off their skills in an annual New Year's ceremony expressing hope for safety in the sword-making industry.

A total of 19 sword makers dressed in white gowns and formal headwear took part in the traditional ceremony on Tuesday, working with steel heated to over 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Nihonto Club Features


Free Membership

Instant registration free of charge

Stories/Articles/News/Community-Driven Content

Become a site contributor (free) and publish your own articles. Rich-text editor enabled - no HTML knowledge required.

Web Directory

Useful sword-related links

Networking directory

Create your personal profile and share your interests, hobbies and business details. Set up a restricted access to your profile.

Personal Image Galleries

Registered users can upload full-size images and embed them into published content

Private Collections

Share your own collection with the community

Buy/Sell Nihonto Items

Mark items in your collection as FOR SALE / Buy from the catalogue. Shopping card, automatic checkout - coming soon

Japanese Sword Glossary

Category-based glossary. Terms of the day. Fast search

Forum, Blogs, Mailing Lists, etc

More can be done if there is a demand

Japanese Language Support

This site uses Japanese characters extensively. Many computers with English or other Western operating systems don't show them by default.

If you see boxes, question marks in following text:

日本美術刀剣保存協会

you still do not have support for Japanese characters.

Attackers And Survivors Reconcile At Pearl Harbor

I found another article about Pearl Harbor and particularly liked the way Japanese pilot expressed his view on the historical event: