Nihontō

The Manggha Museum has decided to celebrate 2019 – a year of double jubilee, in which we celebrate the centenary of establishing Polish-Japanese relations and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Museum – with an exhibition of Japanese swords from the collection of the Japanese Sword Museum Bizen Osafune. Swords in the land of Bizen, now the prefecture of Okayama, have been manufactured from very ancient times - from the Heian period (794-1185) - on a large scale and were of exceptional quality. Famous for the quality of its products, this region was included in Gokaden ('5 traditional regions'), the most important centers of sword production in Japan.

At this exhibition you will be able to see 37 swords from Japan from various periods of the Japanese sword chronology: kotō (794–1596) – the period of the "old sword" when there were many specimens treated to this day as incomparable masterpieces and a model for modern swordsmiths, through examples from subsequent periods: shintō (1596–1780) – the period of the 'modern sword', shinshintō (1780–1877) – the period of the 'new modern sword', gendaitō (1877–1945) - the period of the 'modern sword' up to shinsakutō (times after 1945) – the period of “newly made swords”, when swordsmiths-artists were often looking for patterns in the past and they tried the high skills and expertise of old masters not to be forgotten.