Monday, May 4, 2009

Top five Samurai Sword Websites

Over the last few years my admiration of the katana, and more specifically the Nihonto has grown. This has resulted in a considerable amount of bandwidth expended in research. ‘Research’ is a euphemistic way of saying that time I should have been working, I spent surfing the Internet.


So here is a list of my top 5 websites to drool over the Katana or Samurai sword.

  1. Nihonto Australia - This website has a large selection of blades. The resolution of the pictures is not that great. Taking good photo’s of a blade which shows the features properly is not an easy task.
    My engineering mind rebels against their repeated errors of the length of the swords. They insist on giving the length in cm, but stating that it is mm a katana does not have a blade length of 68.3 mm.

  2. ModernTosho.com - The guys at moderntosho.com have also put a lot of work into displaying the work of modern Japanese smiths. When I visited the site recently they did not have a lot of blades for sale, but their gallery is definitely worth visiting.

  3. Rice Cracker - this is not the most user friendly site to navigate. The high quality pictures showing hamon activity in detail are at least 3 clicks away. They do have very good quality photo’s which show the swords beautifully.

  4. Nihonto Antiques - Another site which is not particularly pretty at first glance. You can however find great pictures of nihonto with just one click. The pictures of the products on offer are very good with a rather nice montage for each sword.

  5. SamuraiSword.com - The site appears very cluttered with lots of highlighted and coloured text on the home page. They do however offer lots of information on the swords they have on offer and have good photographs of the blades. My only complaint with this site is that they do not include prices on the site, but then again if you have to ask you probably can not afford it.

If you have any other website you think should be added to this list please leave a comment. I would love to hear from you.


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4 comments:

Karen Marzo said...

Cool Blog! It is crisp and easy to read. I love the photo! I also like how you have the introduction on it's own page.

I've got mine as a sticky at the top of my page. I'm still trying to figure out how to do cool photos as part of my blog page. I'm not real good with wordpress yet.

If you have any feedback for my blog site I'd appreciate it!

km
www.karenmarzo.wordpress.com

Albert Sjoberg said...

Hi Karen,
Thank you for the positive comment.
I have visited your blogs, both on Blogger and Wordpress. I left a comment on Wordpress.

Cheers
Al

Satori said...

Albert, I enjoyed reading through your blog very much. Like Karen, I also love the photo. Isn't it a scene from the movie, Ame Agaru? Or is it just a very similar one?

Albert Sjoberg said...

Thank you for the positive comment Satori san.
The photo is from the poster for the 1966 film Sword of Doom. The Japanese title was (Dai-bosatsu tôge).
I liked the one line spoken by Shimada "Study the sword to study the soul, you fool... an evil mind makes an evil sword."
Come visit again, I will continue to update and improve the site.
Arigato Gozaimasu.

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GO RIN NO SHO
The Book of Five Rings

It is said the warrior's is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways. Even if a man has no natural ability he can be a warrior by sticking assiduously to both divisions of the Way. - Shinmen Musashi No Kami Fujiwara No Geshin