Modern warfare is increasingly being depersonalized by long-range missiles, so-called smart bombs, and the virtual battlefield of electronic information. The current exhibition at the Nezu Museum takes us back to an era when our dirty work wasn't done for us by computers but was up-close and personal, the greatly romanticized era of the samurai and their trusty swords.
With a roomful of beautiful killing implements, this is the kind of exhibition that is bound to attract its share of otaku, hypnotized by the gleaming blades and their deadly history. But, naturally, this is not the angle the museum is playing up. Rather the emphasis is on the swords' more homely virtues as family heirlooms, objects of beauty and expressions of individuality.
The oldest swords here, like the one signed "Bungo-no- kuni Yukihira-saku (made by Bungo Province's Yukihira)", date back to the late Heian Period (794-1185), long before the Edo Period (1603-1867), when swords lost much of their functional role and assumed an increasingly symbolic one.