Month: May 2023

The 36th Yearly General Meeting of the All Japan Sword Trader’s Association was held at the Tokyo Art Club on May 17th . This year, there was a re-election of the board members for a two-year term, and I was re-elected as a director. This is my fifth term since I was first elected at the 28th General Meeting in 2015. While the members are aging and the number of members are decreasing, as one of the board members, I will strive to envision a bright future for sword dealers, rejuvenate the association, and increase the number of sword enthusiasts to expand and revitalize the market. After the general meeting, an auction was held with many successful trades taking place.

The 2nd Morioka Token Ichi sales event was held for 3 days from Friday, May 12th at the Iwate Prefectural Information Exchange Center in the hope it would be a good opportunity for the people of Iwate Prefecture to become familiar with Japanese swords and attract new and existing sword collectors. In addition to making advanced newspaper advertisements, I was interviewed by local newspapers, Iwate Nippo and Morioka Times, and articles about the event were published in the Saturday morning edition. The awareness of the event was able to spread. The visitors were not only local, but also came from the neighboring prefectures of Akita and Aomori. Also, we had a visit from the contemporary Mukansa Swordsmith, Yamaguchi Kiyofusa, who is 90 years old. We were able to hear about his valuable experiences with his forging skills and Mochi tetsu (local iron).  The performance of the event was lower than usual, but I feel there is potential. I will do my best to make the next event in May 2024 a success.