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17th c. Japanese sword found in bombed out Berlin cellar
German archaeologists made an unexpected discovery in an excavation of Molkenmarkt, the oldest square in Berlin: a 17th century Japanese short sword. It was found in the winter of 2022 in the former cellar of a residential building destroyed in World War II. At that time, archaeologists thought it was a military parade sword, and only realized its far more exotic origins after conservation uncovered its details.
The cellar had been filled in with war rubble during the reconstruction of the street. When the Berlin State Office for Monuments archaeologists cleared the rubble and reached the cellar floor, they found all kinds of military gear — harnesses, bridles, stirrups — and one heavily corroded sword. The objects were sent to the Museum of Prehistory and Early History for conservation and analysis.
Restorers cleaned the surface of dirt, corrosion materials and char from World War II bombs, revealing that the “parade sword” was in fact a Wakizashi, a Japanese short sword. It had been severely damaged by heat, but remarkably, the wood grip, fragments of textile wrapping and ray skin still survived. The face of Daikoku, one of the seven gods of luck, was found engraved on the slender handle ferrule.
X-rays showed that the blade, now 10 inches long, had been shortened and the handle was likely added later. The imaging also showed two holes in the tang, but only one of them had a pin and was being used to attach the handle to the blade. This suggests the shortened blade is significantly older than the handle, perhaps even dating back to the 16th century.
How the Wakizashi, the possession of which was once reserved for dignitaries as a status-related weapon, ended up in a filled-up basement of a Berlin residential and commercial building can only be speculated at this point. Perhaps the sword was a gift from the Takenouchi Mission in 1862 or the Iwakura Mission of Japanese ambassadors who visited Europe and the rest of the Western world eleven years later to build relationships and gather impressions. The spatial proximity of the Molkenmarkt with its surrounding aristocratic palaces to the Berlin Palace suggests this. Wilhelm I received the Japanese embassy of the Takenochi Mission in the palace when he was still king, and in 1873 when he was emperor he received the embassy of the Iwakura Mission. However, the origin of the sword cannot be linked to the biographies of the then house owners of Stralauer Strasse at Molkenmarkt.
The sword went on display for the first time at Berlin’s Samurai Museum last night for a few hours as part of the Long Night of Museums, and will soon be exhibited at the PETRI Berlin archaeological museum.
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