On August 6 the results were announced of this year’s competition of contemporary sword craftsmen.
Our staff member, Yoichiro Kawakami, placed 6th in the Excellence Award! This was his first serious attempt applying to this competition in the area of sword polishing. In total, there were 49 polished items (Shinogi-tsukuri) excluding Mukansa polishers submitted for this part of the competition. Kawakami was placed 14th among all the skilled polishers. The Yushu-sho/Excellence Award comes after the Toku-sho/Special Award, but is above the Doryoku-sho/Effort Award. This was a great opportunity for him to showcase his skills in polishing for his more than 20 years of experience. This year, he polished a contemporary sword from scratch that was the size of 2-shaku 3-sun 6-bu forged and engraved by Ryujin Taro Minamoto Tadashige.
I was very satisfied with the result. Moving forward, I encourage him to continue to grow his skill and enter the competition again.