Muramasa Swords
PLACE OF ORIGIN:
KUWANA, JAPAN
CREATED BY:
SENGO MURAMASA
AGE:
∼500 YEARS
CURRENT WHEREABOUTS:
MUSEUMS AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS THROUGHOUT JAPAN
Cursed weapons have a big advantage over other cursed objects: they can do the dirty work of the curse themselves rather than waiting for something else to harm the curse victim — say, a bus or cancer or an iceberg. And it’s inarguable by even the most immovable skeptic of the paranormal that anybody at the bad end of a weapon is, if not cursed, at the very least unlucky.
Perhaps the most famous examples of cursed weapons — that is, ones not appearing in a fantasy book or video game — are the swords of Sengo Muramasa, a man whose story is so wrapped in legend that it’s difficult to parse what parts are true and what parts are lore.
Muramasa was an infamous sixteenth-century Japanese swordsmith. Japan had always taken its swords seriously, but Muramasa elevated the art of crafting these lethal weapons. The quality of his blades was higher, the metal stronger, the edges sharper. The swords seemed deadlier than most — so deadly that people couldn’t believe that they were the products of mere heating and hammering, folding and sharpening like every other sword stabbing the scabbards of Japan’s warriors. People needed a better explanation. A supernatural one.
So stories circulated that Muramasa was a violent madman who transferred his insanity and rage right into his metal blades. Or that he made an infernal pact with dark forces to create those superhuman pointy things. However it happened, the katana and wakizashi forged by Muramasa demanded blood, and once they were unsheathed, they would not return to their scabbards until they were shiny and slick with it, sending their wielders into a frothy mania of violence. If the warrior could find nobody to slice open and satisfy the bloodlust of the sword, he would have to impale himself on his own blade. Basically, Muramasa’s swords were lethal both to their victims and to those who wielded them. Deadly at both ends, you could say.
It is said that at one point Muramasa tested one of his swords against that of Japan’s most famous swordsmith, Masamune. Both men stuck their blades into a fast-moving stream. Masamune’s blade split every leaf that the current pushed its way while sparing the fish; Muramasa’s blade sliced both plants and fish, proving its lack of discrimination when it came to violence. If the story sounds more like a parable than a historical event, that’s because it is. Masamune lived hundreds of years before Muramasa.
What truly cemented Muramasa swords as cursed in the imagination of the general public of Japan, though, is a different story. According to this one, the blades were banned by Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa because he came to believe that they were a curse on his family. Ieyasu was the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, a hereditary military dictatorship that ruled Japan for a good 250 years beginning in the early seventeenth century. Although we don’t know exactly when Muramasa started making swords, we do know that his blades were still around in seventeenth-century Japan. In fact, the master swordsmith had passed down his technique to apprentices and founded a school dedicated to sword-making that lasted for two centuries, extending his deadly reach as a maniac sword maker through time.
So why did Ieyasu believe that the demented swordsmith’s blades were cursed? Because numerous members of his family were killed by them. Ieyasu’s grandfather was cut in two by one wielded by his retainer, Ieyasu’s father was killed by one (possibly also wielded by a retainer), and, to round out the generational bad luck, Ieyasu’s son was beheaded by one as part of seppuku, a ritual suicide. Ieyasu himself had been harmed by one of the swords as a child. According to the lore, Ieyasu outlawed Muramasa swords, and any person found with one was sentenced to death. Legend has it that a magistrate of Nagasaki, Takanak Ume, was found to have twenty-four of these blades in his collection. Seppuku for him.
However, it’s more likely that Ieyasu appreciated Muramasa swords. He used them. His samurai were equipped with them. Given that he was surrounded by them, it makes sense that he knew a lot of victims of these weapons. But the myth of his family’s curse, plus other references to Muramasa blades as evil or demonic, persisted in transmogrifying these terrifying killing tools into…much more terrifying killing tools.
And although the story of Ieyasu’s ban is probably not true, it did become meaningful. Over the centuries, the curse story transformed into a political parable that Muramasa swords were cursed against the shogunate system. This idea was promoted by anti-Tokugawa activists who actively sought out Muramasa blades to use as symbols against the shogunate they were looking to unseat. Apparently it worked; the Tokugawa shogunate established by Ieyasu was Japan’s last.
Today, more than half a millennium later, Muramasa swords are still around and are still, presumably, lethal. Many are held in private collections. Some are displayed at museums, including the Tokyo National Museum and the Japanese Sword Museum, also in the capital. Every once in a while, they travel the world as part of exhibitions. In 2017, Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe gave a Muramasa dagger to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
These days, it can be difficult to tell a real Muramasa from a fake, despite the distinctness of their features. Authentic Muramasas have a recognizable wave-shaped pattern (called the hamon) that is mirrored on both sides of the blade. The part of the blade embedded in the hilt (the tang) is uniquely formed in what’s been termed a “fish belly” shape. However, the swords were in such demand by anti-shogunate activists that many fakes were made. In addition, some say that even real Muramasa blades were altered to disguise them during Ieyasu’s supposed ban.
The best way to tell whether a sword is a Muramasa product or not, is, of course, to unsheathe one and see if it demands blood.
The Unlucky Mummy
PLACE OF ORIGIN:
DAYR EL BAHREE, EGYPT
YEAR OF DISCOVERY:
1868
AGE:
3,000 YEARS
PURPOSE:
COFFIN LID OF A PRIESTESS OF AMEN-RA
CURRENT LOCATION:
BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON, ENGLAND
We know that an iceberg took out the Titanic. We know that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria kicked off World War I. But what if I told you that both of these horrible hash marks of human history were caused by a single cursed object? One looted from an Egyptian tomb? One that predates the discovery of King Tut’s tomb by decades and, in fact, provided a template for the curse stories that swirl around that famous boy king’s grave to this day (see this page)?