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| Nakagawa Taizoh Sensei at his forge circa 1997 photo copyright Peter Boylan 1997 |
My dear friend and mentor, Nakagawa
Taizoh passed away on November 16, 2017. He was 85. Nakagawa Sensei
was an artist and teacher of the first rank. He was a swordsmith who
made swords that were exceptionally beautiful, and exceptionally
functional. He was also one of the most knowledgeable people I have
ever met regarding Japanese art and culture. I want to share my memory of this wonderful man.
I met Nakagawa Sensei in the spring of
1992 while working on the Jet
Program in Japan. My sister and I were riding our bikes home
after getting haircuts in Yokaichi, Shiga, Japan, where I was
living,when I noticed someone sharpening something on a huge, old
fashioned grinding wheel It was the biggest grindstone I’d ever
seen. We stopped and stared at the grinding wheel for a while when it
occurred to me to look at what was being sharpened. It looked like a
sword. Of course that couldn’t be, because guns and swords were
illegal in Japan, weren’t they? As all of this was going through my
head, the guy doing the grinding looked up and noticed us. He waved
for us to wait for him.
He finished what he was doing shortly
after that, and introduced himself as “Nakagawa”. Then he invited
us upstairs for tea. He lived on the second floor of the two story
metal building behind the workshop where he’d been working; up a
steep set of metal stairs on the outside of the building.. Inside was
a small room filled with books and antiques and yumi (Japanese
bows) and posters for sword exhibitions and cats - and swords. Mostly
it was filled with swords. He had a pile of unfinished blades in one
corner of the room that quickly convinced me that swords must
actually be legal in Japan.
Nakagawa san made some tea for us and
we started to talk. He took out a finished sword and started pointing
out some of the features. Other than the fact that this sword was
amazingly beautiful, I couldn’t appreciate it because I didn’t
know what I was looking at. Remember that, up until a few minutes
before, I’d thought swords were illegal. He showed us a couple of
other blades and pointed out the pile of blades that were his
experiments as the cats walked across the unfinished swords and
flicked their tails against the finished ones.
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| Nakagawa Sensei cleaning one of his swords photo copyright Peter Boylan 2018 |
I don’t remember nearly enough of
that first meeting, partly because I’d only been in Japan for a
little over a year, and conversations were still difficult for me. I
was still looking up a lot of vocabulary in my cool, new, electronic
dictionary (a godsend after hauling around a paper dictionary all the
time). I do remember that he gave me one of his business cards,
which helped my understanding and gave me his first name, “Taizoh”.
It also confirmed for me that he was a swordsmith! I was still quite
green at figuring out Japanese etiquette on the fly, but I decided
that a guy who was licensed to make swords deserved more respect than
to just be called “Nakagawa San”, so I upgraded the honorific I
was using to “Nakagawa Sensei”, which seemed more fitting. When
we left he invited us to come back any time (at least that’s what I
understood). As a parting gift, he gave us a pair of antique soba
cups from the Edo period.
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| Nakagawa Sensei's business card |
After that, I started visiting Sensei
whenever I could. I was teaching English in the local junior high
schools, so I’d visit after work and on the weekends. Sensei’s
patience with my poor Japanese amazes me to this day. If he was
working in his forge, he was happy to let me watch, and I was
thrilled to be able to. I got to see a lot of incredible swords
through Sensei. People would often bring him swords to look at and
appraise. Sensei was friends with many sword collectors in the area
and sometimes we would visit them together. I wanted to understand
more about all the beautiful swords I was seeing and handling I found
a copy of Leon Kapp and Yoshindo Yoshihara's The
Craft Of the Japanese Sword and started reading. Our
conversations about swords quickly become much more interesting and
complex as I added to my sword-related vocabulary, but Sensei was
still very patient with me as I looked up words in every other
subject we discussed.
I had been training in Judo since 1985,
but Sensei introduced me to the world of koryu budo as a result of
our discussions; and the opportunity to handle so many fine blades
made me want to understand them even more. I eventually decided that
to fully appreciate these swords, I would have to understand how they
were used.
Nakagawa Sensei was always happy to
meet people and share his love for Nihonto. I introduced him to
administrators at the local extension campus for Michigan
universities (JCMU). The students
were very interested in meeting Sensei, and learning about his art,
and he was completely open to the idea. We arranged for a group of
the university students to visit Sensei’s workshop to see him work
and learn about swords, and Sensei arranged a side trip to see the
collection of a great sword collector in the area. He happily shared
an amazing experience with them that very few people anywhere can
have.
Sensei shared his knowledge and passion
for Nihonto with anyone who was interested and respectful. He also
freely shared his swords. Shortly after starting iaido with Takada
Sensei, I mentioned to Nakagawa Sensei that I was thinking about
grinding a blade to use in trying tameshigiri. Nakagawa Sensei was
dismissive of the idea. Instead he got up from where we were sitting
on the floor of his front room and disappeared for a minute. When he
came back he had a long, purple cloth bag in his hand. He handed it
to me and said “If you want to do tameshigiri, use this.”
I opened the bag and took out a heavy
sword in a shirasaya. As I drew the blade from the saya, Sensei told
me “I made this but I won’t sell it. I think the steel is a
little too soft. It’s good for you to do tameshigiri with though.”
I protested that I couldn’t possibly use the beautiful blade I was
holding for tameshigiri, but Sensei assured me repeatedly that it was
fine for me to cut with this sword. I let Sensei convince me that it
was ok.
At the next practice, I talked with
Takada Sensei about doing tameshigiri and explained that I had a
sword we could use without fear because it didn’t matter if I
damaged it. Takada Sensei was excited by the idea and we started
planning. A couple of weeks later we had everything we needed put
together: sword, tatami omote rolled and soaked, some bamboo stalks,
and stands to hold everything. Oh - and Nakagawa Sensei.
Nakagawa Sensei offered to come to
keiko on the night we did the cutting. He picked me up in his car and
drove to gym where we trained. Just in case there were any problems,
Sensei brought along a couple special tools he had for straightening
bent blades. Takada Sensei had a stand in which we could stack
rolled mats horizontally. We set up the stand and stacked mats
three-high on it. Takada Sensei went first, swung a big kiriorishi
and cut through the top two mats with ease. Then it was my turn. I
had only been doing iai for a few months. I raised the sword up and
took a huge, muscular swing into the mats and managed to cut through
two of them. I also managed to put a rather extreme bend in the
blade. Fortunately, Nakagawa Sensei told the truth when he said it
was ok for me to cut with the sword. He just smiled, took the sword
from me and started straightening it out with tools he had brought.
Then he handed it back to me and we did some more cutting.
Nakagawa Sensei had very high standards
for what made a sword good enough to leave his forge. The sword we
had used for tameshigiri, for all its beauty, strength and
flexibility, did not live up to his expectations. He felt the steel
in the blade was a little too soft for a proper sword, so even though
he went to the expense to have it polished and mounted, he would
never consider selling it. The sword wasn’t quite good enough.
As I got to know Nakagawa Sensei, he
began to let me help around the forge. I did all sorts of little
things like cutting charcoal to size (I never dreamed that charcoal
has to be the proper size for various operations in the forge to go
well. I still have a scar on my index finger where I managed to cut
myself instead of the charcoal once.) Even though he had a power
hammer that was mechanically precise, he would have me swing the big
hammer for him from time to time, as much for me to experience doing
it as for the pleasure of working as a team, I think. The big hammer
differs from a western sledge hammer in that the haft is offset in
the head. Instead of coming into the middle of the hammer so the head
is balanced on the end of the haft, it comes in on one end of the
head. This makes the hammer unbalanced and more difficult to control,
but the offset head almost swings itself, making the strikes stronger
with less effort. I wasn’t very good, but Sensei never seemed to
mind my lack of skill, and I did get better over time.
In 1998 Nakagawa Sensei established a
forge in Ihara-cho in Okayama prefecture. I was beyond honored when
he asked me to help out with the dedication ceremony. The ceremony
was to include a Shugendo priest and anoffering of traditional dance
by a young boy. In addition, offerings would be made to the deity of
the forge. Sensei would also ritually smelt and work the first piece
of steel assisted by a group of deshi swinging the big hammers.
Sensei asked me to be one of a pair of deshi swinging the hammers for
him. No power tools would be used for the ceremony.
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| The new forge decorated and fired up during the dedication ceremony. Photo Copyright 1998 |
In the days before the ceremony, we
prepared the new forge by sweeping it repeatedly and hauling up
chairs for people to sit on. Ihara-cho is on top of mountain in
rural Okayama Prefecture, and the forge was difficult to get to - up
a steep slope that defeated some cars. We set up a platform for the
altar with offerings, including kagami mochi (rice cakes),
fruit and sake. We also hung traditional rice paper
and erected standing green bamboo around the forge.
The shugendo priest blessed the forge
and we hammered away at a fresh piece of ore. It’s difficult
working the hammer by yourself but working in a man team also
requires cooperation and coordination so only the hot ore is hammered
and not anything else. Sensei directed the deshi where to strike and
in what rythm by tapping with his hammer. After we had worked the ore
into steel by hammering and folding it a number of times, Sensei
quenched it in some water and we placed it on the altar as an
offering. Then the young boy performed a traditional dance for the
gods. The ceremony finished with us cutting up the kagami mochi
and opening the sake for everyone to share.
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| Working the first steel in the new forge with Nakagawa Sensei Photo Copyright 1998 Peter Boylan |
Sensei loved to discuss art and
politics and culture and history. Because of my passion for martial
arts as well as for swords, we spent a lot of time talking about the
relationships among traditional arts in Japan, budo and
swords. Being surrounded by swords while talking with a master
swordsmith who also practiced classical Heki Ryu kyudo and was
also very familiar with many of the classical sword arts and much of
their internal politics didn’t leave much room for me to hang onto
illusions about the world of swords and martial arts. I traded my
myths about unbreakable swords that could cut through anything for
the fascinating truth of swords carefully crafted by smiths, polished
so finely that the grain of the steel becomes visible, and wielded by
people who may be masters of the art of swordsmanship but are still
quite human.
What else can I say about a man who was
a talented sculptor and a university professor before he became an
incredibly skilled swordsmith? As a skilled practitioner of Heki Ryu
kyudo, Nakagawa Sensei had participated in some extended endurance
shoots. Though he never tried the 24 hour shoot, he successfully
completed some of the shorter ones. He owned a Ming Dynasty bowl
while living with three cats. The bowl got broken. The cats were
excused and forgiven.
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| Nakagawa Sensei in his living room, the pile of swords in front of him, and his Ming bowl on the bookshelf. The cats were hiding. Photo Copyright Peter Boylan 2018 |
He enjoyed Japanese green tea and soba
noodles. He worked in a charcoal dust covered forge and got
absolutely covered in charcoal dust himself when working.
Nonetheless, when he cleaned up to go out, he was one of the most
stylish people I have seen, with a personal sense of elegance that
was wonderful to the eye. We would visit art museums in Kyoto and the
Tokugawa Museum in Nagoya to see the paintings and sculpture as much
as to see the beautiful swords they often had on display.
Nakagawa Sensei was a great smith. I
once watched him turn down a commission for five swords because it
was a boring commission. The buyer wanted five matching swords, and
the idea of making five nearly identical swords didn’t interest
Sensei at all. On the other hand, he made a beautiful omamori
tanto and gave it to my wife and me to commemorate our wedding.
He could tell you the carbon content of a piece of ore by looking at
it (really! I challenged him on this once and he fired up his
grinder, handed me a book with spark patterns for steel and proceeded
to accurately identify every piece that he sparked on the grinder).
One of the things he allowed me to help
him with was gathering old steel to use in making swords. When old
temples and shrines were being renovated we would go and gather up
the old nails and iron fittings with a huge magnet. Then we would go
through and sort the pieces into traditional Japan-made steel and
western-made steel. With a little study, you can tell the difference
between the two easily. I spent many pleasant hours collecting and
sorting steel while Sensei did things that took far more skill than I
ever acquired.
I will always treasure my memories of
helping Sensei in the forge and sitting with him in his living room
surrounded by swords and cats and yet more swords, talking about
everything under the sun.
I miss you Sensei.
