#meta..?

One sword that I’ve been anticipating for a while is Onimaru Kunitsuna of the Awataguchi school, especially for his special connection with Tsurumaru since the beginning, when they were both family swords of the Hojo Regents. Three times Onimaru had almost lost him through a millennium of turmoil, and three times the crane found his way back to him through miraculous twists of fate.

Onimaru is one of the Five Great Swords of Japan, commissioned by the Fifth Regent(1227-1263) of the Hojo family and hailed as the heroic defender who purged a heinous demon who brought harm to the clan. The first time they met, Tsurumaru was dragged out from within the grave of his previous master in a cruel surprise. Being a sword who could not choose his master, he was forced to serve Hojo Sadatoki who ordered the annihilation of the clan of his previous master. That was a knot in Tsurumaru’s heart that did not fully dissolve with time, while Onimaru was the treasured sword of the Hojo Clan who still knew of loyalty to only one master in a sword’s lifetime. Nonetheless, they both served as the family swords of the Hojo Regents of the Kamakura Shogunate.

However, there is no everlasting glory for any figure in power. The Hojo Regents were defeated by the combining forces of Emperor Go-Daigo, Nitta Yoshisada and Ashikaga Takauji. Fortunes switched as Nitta Yoshisada burned down the Kamakura Shogunate, Onimaru fell into the hands of Yoshisada as the last of the Hojo Clan committed suicide, while Tsurumaru was lost in the turbulence(1333). Onimaru was won by the victorious sides in the chaotic and bloody political warfare that followed, finally landing in the collection of Ashikaga Takauji, the last victor who successfully built the Ashikaga Shogunate after bringing about the fall of the Kamakura Shogunate. Perhaps at that time, Onimaru finally understood what Tsurumaru felt when he was brought to Hojo Sadatoki from beyond the grave.

As the Ashikaga Shogunate lost power and Ashikaga Yoshiaki gave away his treasured family swords to win favor with the warlords, Onimaru was presented to Oda Nobunaga. For more than two centuries the crane was lost from sight and he only remained in the vague memories of Onimaru, until one day he showed up at the doorsteps of Oda as a gift from an unknown opportunist. The unexpected reconciliation was brief as Oda callously handed both of them to his retainers. Onimaru went on to be the possession of all three Unifiers of Japan while Tsurumaru was passed through many unknown hands until he resided in the Fushimi Shrine, shut away from mortal desires.

But surprise came along again as the young sword connoisseur of the Honami family was mesmerized by Tsurumaru’s beauty and took him against his will from the shrine back to his clan. The meeting of fate called upon them again as Onimaru was waiting for him yet again in the Honami family, he had been rejected from the collection of the Tokugawa Clan, even having been called the “Sword of Misfortune” for the coincidental death of the prince when he was presented to the Imperial House. They spent decades together in the Honami house, maybe reminiscent of the days long past back in the Hojo Clan, until Tsurumaru was bought over by the Date Family.

Times changed yet again after the Meiji Restoration, as Tsurumaru was presented by the Date Family to the Meiji Emperor, he recognized the familiar silhouette yet again in the Imperial Collection. For a thousand years Tsurumaru and Onimaru brushed past each other as the ravages of time tore them apart and yet they always found they way back to each other, and for three hundred years they were together within the glass doors in peace as blood of the previous feuds were left behind.