The signature on each blade, ‘Ishidō [Fujiwara] Korekazu’, denotes Unju Korekazu, a pupil of Chōunsai Tsunatoshi who was regarded as the seventh-generation master of the Ishidō school. He was retained in the capital by the shogunate and was therefore in an excellent position to produce swords for diplomatic gifts towards the end of the Edo period. The first sword of this pair (RCIN 62622.1) has an identical signature and date to a tachi blade in the V&A which was part of the 1860 diplomatic gift to Queen Victoria from Tokugawa Iemochi. Both blades have a similar tempering pattern (hamon) of clove flowers (chōji) and strong horse teeth (gunome). The V&A has another blade from the same gift with a similar hamon, signed with a simpler signature by Korekazu. These similarities suggest that the present swords may also have been from the 1860 gift, though it is possible that they could be undocumented gifts from the 1862 Japanese diplomatic mission to the West.

The swords are almost identically mounted in the itō-maki no tachi (cord-wrapped tachi) style. The silk cords are woven in the hexagonal pattern known as turtleshell (kikkō). All the metal fittings are made of shakudō, and their ground is finely hammered in tiny regular dots (nanako), with details in gold. They are all decorated with various forms of cherry blossom in high relief, delicately carved and with details in gold. These metal fittings are typical of the type of work produced by the Gotō school, official makers to the Tokugawa shogunate.

Text adapted from Japan: Courts and Culture (2020)