Koshirae Taikan

With this publication the reader should be informed in which way Japanese swords were mounted over the time, where were the origins of the various forms, what changes did they undergo and it should also serve as reference material to classify extant specimen. In this sense the descriptions were embedded in an explanation of the historical context rather then listing them just by their interpretation or in an alphabetical order. As the main focus lies on koshirae as the title suggests, an explanation of the sword fittings – the tosogu – was omitted, because descriptions of them can be easily found elsewhere. Also the military mountings – the gunto-koshirae – were left out because there are excellent publications available which deal with them in great detail.