At Osaka, I lived opposite to one Kusano Yoshiaki, a swordsmith, a most intelligent and amiable gentleman, who was famous throughout his neighbourhood for his good and charitable deeds.  His idea was that, having been bred up to a calling which trades in life and death, he was bound, so far as in him lay, to atone for this by seeking to alleviate the suffering which is in the world; and he carried out his principle to the extent of impoverishing himself.  No neighbour ever appealed to him in vain for help in tending the sick or burying the dead.  No beggar or lazar was ever turned from his door without receiving some mark of his bounty, whether in money or in kind.  Nor was his scrupulous honesty less remarkable than his charity.  While other smiths are in the habit of earning large sums of money by counterfeiting the marks of the famous makers of old, he was able to boast that he had never turned out a weapon which bore any other mark than his own.  From his father and his forefathers he inherited his trade, which, in his turn, he will hand over to his son—­a hard-working, honest, and sturdy man, the clank of whose hammer and anvil may be heard from daybreak to sundown.

[Illustration:  FORGING THE SWORD.]

The trenchant edge of the Japanese sword is notorious.  It is said that the best blades will in the hands of an expert swordsman cut through the dead bodies of three men, laid one upon the other, at a blow.  The swords of the Shogun used to be tried upon the corpses of executed criminals; the public headsman was entrusted with the duty, and for a “nose medicine,” or bribe of two bus (about three shillings), would substitute the weapon of a private individual for that of his Lord.  Dogs and beggars, lying helpless by the roadside, not unfrequently serve to test a ruffian’s sword; but the executioner earns many a fee from those who wish to see how their blades will cut off a head.

The statesman who shall enact a law forbidding the carrying of this deadly weapon will indeed have deserved well of his country; but it will be a difficult task to undertake, and a dangerous one.  I would not give much for that man’s life.  The hand of every swashbuckler in the empire would be against him.  One day as we were talking over this and other kindred subjects, a friend of mine, a man of advanced and liberal views, wrote down his opinion, more Japonico, in a verse of poetry which ran as follows:—­“I would that all the swords and dirks in the country might be collected in one place and molten down, and that, from the metal so produced, one huge sword might be forged, which, being the only blade left, should be the girded sword of Great Japan.”

The following history is in more senses than one a “Tale of a Sword.”

About two hundred and fifty years ago Ikeda Kunaishoyu was Lord of the Province of Inaba.  Among his retainers were two gentlemen, named Watanabe Yukiye and Kawai Matazayemon, who were bound together by strong ties of friendship, and were in the habit of frequently visiting at one another’s houses.  One day Yukiye was sitting conversing with Matazayemon in the house of the latter, when, on a sudden, a sword that was lying in the raised part of the room caught his eye.  As he saw it, he started and said—­