Continuing the recent trend of writing about alma maters, here’s something really fun I spotted when googling “Ritsumeikan.”

SWORDS OF THE RITSUMEIKAN TANRENJO

Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto had a small forge (tanrenjo) set up during World War II which made swords for the military and the war effort. The forge was led by Sakurai Masayuki, the second son of Sakurai (Manji) Masatsugu, a well known early gendai swordsmith. He originally signed Masatsuna. He worked in Fukuoka, Osaka, and Kyoto (Ritsumeikan University). He was an early teacher of Seiho Sumitani (Sumitani Masamine), who became a Ningen Kokuho Tosho (Living National Treasure Swordsmith) from Kanazawa.

Good lord, you have no idea how much I want one of these things. I’ve never been a big fan of class rings and that sort of junk, but a class SWORD-sign me up! Does it just seem like a good idea because I spent all of yesterday reading the new Harry Potter book inside as the typhoon raged across Taiwan?

Check out the original page for more photos and information.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 18th, 2005 at 9:19 am and is filed under History, Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.