Albert Furuto is careful not to speak over the exposed blade. He turns his head away when he talks or covers his mouth. Saliva might corrode the sword. Touching the blade is taboo, too, lest the oils and sweat from your hands tarnish it. The sword we are currently not speaking over likely dates back to the 1600s. And though we can't touch it, Furuto promises that the blade is still very sharp, at once delicate and deadly.
Michael Nii, who along with Furuto is one of the longest-running members of the Japanese Sword Society of Hawaii, says a Japanese sword "can cut a gorilla in half, no problem." Not that he's actually used one for this purpose, of course. Sometimes he'll use a sword as part of his iaido practice, the Japanese martial art of drawing the sword, or for tameshigiri, the art of testing the sharpness of a blade on a target. "We used to use sugarcane, but no more sugarcane already," Nii says, referencing the end of Hawaii's sugar industry. Instead of cane stalks, for target practice Nii uses "cheap bamboo mats," he says. "Roll several mats to the size of your thigh, and then you soak it in water in a bathtub so it has the consistency of a leg. Stand it up on this pole. And then you cut through it. It will go through it like butter."
In the past, Furuto has hiked into the mountains and sliced bamboo for kadomatsu, traditional New Year's decorations. But for the most part the approximately twenty members of the Japanese Sword Society, of which Furuto is president, treat swords as neither weapons nor tools but as art. The club also educates people about nihonto, or Japanese swords: Nonmembers bring in blades that have been in their families for generations, and JSSH guides them on how to trace a sword's provenance, gives advice on caring for it, which might involve steps like maintaining the steel with clove oil, and instructs them on proper handling "so they don't have to spend up to $200 an inch" to polish the blade, Furuto says. (But members can also direct you to local polishers if you need it.) "And it's also a social group because, you know, we like to look at swords, see nice blades," he says. "Your knowledge increases your appreciation, because now you can start discerning the quality of workmanship."
Albert Furuto of the Japanese Sword Society of Hawaii examines one of his nihonto (swords), paying special attention to the curvature and patterns on the flat of the blade, which can range from resembling wood grain to waves (BELOW).
At the moment, Furuto, Earl Kawaguchi and I are gathered in the lounge of the Marco Polo apartment building, where Kawaguchi lives. He's brought a few swords from his collection. The groundskeepers stop to watch Furuto unsheath a long, curved sword and examine the blade. He raises it to eye level and looks down its length, turning it to the sunlight, pointing out the design lines in the steel and the nie and nioi, crystals formed during the tempering process. Nie are larger, discrete bright areas, whereas nioi look like stipples of mist on the blade. "When I look at it in the moonlight," Kawaguchi says, "it gives me like ..." he trails off and shivers.
Kawaguchi found this sword while working at the Kokee Radar Station on Kauai. It was leaning against a bookshelf in a corner; he offered its owner $300. His most prized blade was given to him in a pawnshop in St. George, Utah. After the owner realized how much it would cost to restore it, "they decided to give it to me, figuring I would take better care of it," Kawaguchi says. The handle was broken, the blade rusty, the saya (scabbard) chipped. He spent nearly $5,000 to restore the blade and sent it to Japan for the fittings. "This is my baby," he says, showing me the rebuilt handle wrapped in white ray skin, pebbled and pearlescent in the light, peeking out from under an intricate, eight-string wrapping style that was once reserved for daimyo, or feudal lords (tsukamaki, or the art of sword handle wrapping, is an entirely different aspect of Japanese swordcraft). From the scabbard he slides out a small, hidden knife. "Just an accessory," Kawaguchi says. "To eat a fruit. Or to kill someone."
He shows me the chrysanthemum mon (crest) on the tang (the part of the blade that extends into the handle). The chrysanthemum symbolizes the imperial family of Japan, but whether the emperor actually gave it to a samurai is unknown. "Maybe if I have a windfall of money, I'll send it to get papered," Kawaguchi says. "Right now I'm just enjoying [its] beauty."
Tsukamaki, or the method of wrapping the handle, is an art in itself.
Members don't know the history behind most of their blades. They can only imagine the samurai who once held them and whose blood they might have spilt. One JSSH member's nihonto has been "papered," or authenticated. It was a gift from Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a sixteenth-century samurai and daimyo and one of the most powerful men in Japanese history. But authentication is an expensive (hundreds of dollars or more) and lengthy (years-long) process, so most owners forgo it. (And maybe it's better to imagine what the sword once was than to find out it's commonplace.) Authentication involves sending the blade to Nihon Bijutsu Token Hozon Kyokai, the Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords, which was founded in 1948 in Japan to preserve the dwindling craft. By the middle of the twentieth century, more Japanese swords were in America than in Japan, a result of Japan being forced to surrender its weapons at the end of World War II.
In later years, swords deemed cultural treasures were returned to Japan. Many blades outside of Japan, though, don't have a known chain of custody; one of JSSH vice president George Garcia's most prized blades, for example, is not authenticated.
Perversely, he values it because its provenance isn't clear. He guesses the blade was forged in the 1400s to 1500s, based on its length, shape and curvature. "The signature says Masamune," he says, acclaimed as Japan's greatest swordsmith, who created blades that exemplified beauty and harmony. But because "it shows traces of a very old alteration, we think it's Muramasa," another legendary smith who was infamous for creating "bloodthirsty blades ... a little bit disturbed. Some people say if you look at a Muramasa blade too long, it will drive you crazy because of the lack of harmony." And yet the blade's temper line is suguha with notare, he says, "smooth and gentle, and has a flow like a long swell." It's difficult to verify who made the sword, Garcia says. He bought it on eBay for $2,000, but "it could be worth ten times as much. What I do know is that I get a little nervous, a little cold sweat, when I handle it because it's extremely sharp."
Japanese Sword Society of Hawaii members (left to right) Albert Furuto, Anne Hillier and Earl Kawaguchi examine the signatures and dates on swords. A blade's provenance is of critical importance—when or if it can be established. Hillier, who often helps translate any available documentation, says she joined the club for the opportunity to see antique swords and to help perpetuate Japanese sword knowledge.
"Tour of Duty was really good for me because I bought a Rolls-Royce after," Furuto says. "Then I traded it for swords." An actor and retired stuntman, Furuto's first role was in The Karate Kid Part II, when the film production built a replica Okinawan town in Kaneohe. He went on to work in movies like Godzilla and on TV series like Tour of Duty. "I did everything—falls, getting blown up, getting shot, fight scenes, car stunts," he says. What he didn't get to do on-screen, though, was Japanese sword fighting, the directors favoring flashy fights rather than the more restrained Japanese style.
Furuto traces his love of movies and swords back to his childhood. "When I was young, back in the '50s and '60s, we'd go to Toyo Theater [by Honolulu's Chinatown] and watch samurai movies," he remembers. He loved the swishing of the swords and grew up with his own toy samurai swords and the real one his father owned. So about forty years ago, when one of his college professors at the University of Hawaii at Manoa told him about the JSSH, which met in the quarry (now the university's lower campus), Furuto immediately sought it out.
Though extensive scholarship exists of the 1,500-year history and eras of Japanese swords, not so much is known about the origins of JSSH. "The original history has been lost," Furuto says. He estimates it dates back seventy years, and of its original members, only the 94-year-old Denichi Tanaka ("I believe he fought in World War II ... on the Japan side," Furuto says) is still living.
A thirteenth-century katana (a single-edged sword that's worn with the edge facing upward) with the swordsmith's name and date written on the tang.
But many of the current JSSH members' sword collections began with Robert Benson, who owns the Bushido Antiques store in Honolulu and is now recognized as one of a handful of American experts on the polishing and restoration of Japanese swords. Furuto bought his first sword from Benson, and in later years became interested in children's swords. "In the Tokugawa era, courtwear dictated that you have a pair of samurai swords," Furuto says. "And that's why if a child was going to be the next daimyo, he would have to appear in court, and he would need the right formal dress. That was one reason I was told why there are children's swords." Now, he owns more than twenty children's swords. He's drawn, in part, to what these swords symbolize: "the spirit and the love that the parents have for the children that they would make these things," Furuto says. "And the child, too, wanting to emulate the dad—it's like when I was going to those movies and I wanted to emulate the samurai. And so I just felt that there was a love and concern for the future generations. The love parents have for the children is special."
Nii has purchased a sword for each of his three daughters. After acquiring one for his youngest, he discovered it in the book Modern Japanese Swordsmiths, which dates the blade to the early 1900s and shows the signature by Minamoto Morinobu on the tang. It's valued at one million yen (about $6,300). The first sword he ever bought, from Benson in the 1980s when Bushido Antiques was on Maunakea Street in Chinatown, is for his eldest: "First blade for first girl," he says. It was forged in the 1400s by swordsmith Munemitsu, verified by the Nihon Bijutsu Token Hozon Kyokai.
Furuto joined the Japanese Sword Society in the 1980s, inspired in part by his love of samurai movies. Today he's president. The club helps people appreciate sword craftsmanship, he says, and possibly avoid painful errors. "It's about education—if people have some nice swords, they won't give them away to a pawn shop that's not going to give them the right value."
Nii came to nihonto while researching his family's lineage, which originated centuries ago in Hiroshima. "I started thinking somebody in my family might have had a sword," he says. But if they did, he hasn't found it. Still, he's drawn to them because "you're holding history that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years." And part of the joy in collecting is in the hunt: Collectors scour eBay and pawnshops, and Nii often attends the annual San Francisco Japanese Sword Show, the largest in the country, where he says he's often elbowed aside by buyers from Japan eager to reclaim their heritage.
Not every JSSH member owns a sword. Anne Hillier came to them through Touken Ranbu, a video game that personifies legendary historical swords as hot young men. It launched in 2015, igniting a new generation of women interested in Japanese swords and inspiring sword-adjacent fitness routines as well as exhibitions of some of Japan's most treasured swords. It even motivated a crowdfunding campaign that raised 45 million yen, more than a quarter-million US dollars, to construct a replica of the Hotarumaru sword—a designated Important Cultural Property of Japan. Hotarumaru means "firefly," deriving from a legend that fireflies had repaired the blade.
Hillier, who works for the Hawaii Department of Education, joined the club for the "opportunity to see real antique Japanese swords, right here in the city where I live. These items are hundreds of years old, preserved and handed down and bought and sold, and still exist." She says nonmembers often bring family heirlooms to the club to learn more about their nihonto. "I'm descended from peasants, so we didn't have any Japanese swords in the family." But since joining the club, she's learned more about the other Japanese Americans in Hawaii, "the priests and teachers and writers and more educated and higher-class people who owned swords"—the previous generations long gone, their swords outliving them as they will outlive their current owners. As Kawaguchi says, "We're just caretakers of the swords."
