Nagoya Touken World Sword Museum

Nagoya Touken World Sword Museum displays 150–200 Japanese swords, including national treasures, along with armor, ukiyo-e prints, and matchlock guns.

Planning your visit

The Japanese sword is treated as art rather than weaponry, and Nagoya Touken World displays 150 to 200 blades including designated national treasures and important cultural properties.

Understanding what to look at is the challenge and what the museum addresses: the hamon, the wavy temper line produced by differential clay coating during quenching; the hada, the grain pattern of the folded steel; the curvature and the tang signature. Each blade is a record of a specific smith's technique, and lighting is arranged to make these features visible, which ordinary display fails to do.

Armour, ukiyo-e prints of warriors, and matchlock firearms from the sixteenth century fill out the collection.

Nagoya sits in a region historically central to sword production and to the samurai era — Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, the three unifiers of Japan, all came from this area.

Allow ninety minutes. The main booking is an admission ticket. Current availability is listed below.