Historic Replicas

Some of the more colorful and dramatic replica swords on our site originated in  Japan, one of the oldest surviving civilizations in human history.  The Japanese islands have been occupied since 30,000 BC, and the feudal society that we dominated Japan’s medieval history began to emerge as early as 300 BC.  Japanese swords, archery and advanced weaponry was most used at war, but at times at home as well.  Slavery had been around in Japan almost as long as human beings themselves, though Japan was isolated from other civilizations for long periods of its history and as a result, most of the slaves were Japanese themselves, born in bondage or captured in wars between feuding kingdoms.  Slaves in Japan, then, were not unlike those in other periods and places; they worked both in the fields and in the home, and were subject to their masters’ every whim and desire. One story, though, is particularly compelling. 

When most Americans think of slavery, they probably think of Africans, since almost every slave in American history was captured and exported from that vast continent.  The Japanese reacted a bit differently.  Popular sentiment had turned against slavery by the Sengoku period (1467-1615), when Catholic missionaries presented a black slave to Shogun Oda Nobunaga.  He freed the slave, named him Yasuke, and made him a samurai.  It was an incredible honor in Japanese society and one rarely bestowed on slaves, and it remains a remarkably curious occurrence in the history of an institution dominated by racial prejudice.