- Collection type
- Object
- Description
- Wooden sheath, covered with black leather faintly incised with swirly 'cloud pattern' and decorated with arrows (in lacquer?). At the tip is in iron cap decorated with arrows. It has a cord of braided silk in two shades of brown. [El.B 27/4/2007]
- Geographical reference
- Cultural groups
- Japanese
- Date / Period
- Date made: 1775-1850?, uncertain
- Date collected
- By 1929
- Acquisition information
- Donated: 1929
- Materials and processes
- Material Animal Leather Skin, Material Iron Metal, Material Wood Plant, Material Silk Yarn Animal, Material Lacquer Varnish, Process Covered, Process Incised, Process Braided, Process Lacquered Varnished
- Dimensions
- Length: max 205 mm
- Object numbers
- Accession number: 1929.17.6.2
- Research and responses
The following notes are drawn from research compiled by Andy Mills as part of the DCF Cutting Edge Project 2006-2007. This is a fine tanto yoroi-doshi, or armour-piercing dirk, with a straight-backed and tapering one-edged blade. Colin Langton has stylistically dated this piece to the turn of the 19th century. The armour-piercing quality comes from the T-shaped blade section, which gives the blade great stiffness and reinforces both the point for armour-piercing stabs, and the blade for more conventional slashing. Most tanto (Japanese daggers) have no tsuba handguard at all, but this example bears a small guard known as a hamidashi-tsuba (see The Arts of the Japanese Sword by B.W. Robinson, published byFaber & Faber in 1961. pp.74-5).
The saya (scabbard) of this tanto is particularly attractive, bearing three ornate arrow-heads in blue and gold lacquer overlaid over the standard black ground. It is unlikely that the sheath is actually made of leather, but is most likely to be a lacquer texturing effect to produce a leather skeuomorph.
Small tanto under 25cm in length overall, which bore no ornamental furnishings at all, were known as kwaiken, and carried by women concealed in their clothing – performing much the same function as the Korean jang do described above. The kwaiken was also used for performing jigai – female honour-preserving suicide - effected by the severing of one’s own neck arteries (Robinson, 1961: 75). [SM 17/06/2008]
Related Documents File - Detailed notes by Colin Langton, 2001. Type is given as "Tanto, blade of Yoroi Doshi type (armour piercing), mounted in Buke Zukuri Koshirae, black silk wrapped hilt, black lacquered scabbard with arrowhead decoration". He comments that "This small blade dates from the early to mid Shinshinto period, very late 18th cent to early 19th cent, its form is slightly unusual as is the Hamon, it is the pattern of the Hamon which I consider dates this blade to either the late 18th or early 19th centuries...". [CF 7/1/2002]
1929.17.6.2
Wooden sheath, covered with black leather faintly incised with swirly 'cloud pattern' and decorated with arrows (in lacquer?). At the tip is in iron cap decorated with arrows. It has a cord of braided silk in two shades of brown. [El.B 27/4/2007]
On display
1929.17.6.2
Digital asset copyright: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford
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