The Claim
The most legendary samurai sword in existence has been missing since 1946
The Honjō Masamune is a sword created by Gorō Nyūdō Masamune who is widely known as the finest Japanese sword smith who ever lived. Who he created the Honjō Masamune sword for is unknown, but it represented the last feudal military Japanese government in the early 17th century and was passed down from one Shogun to another over the years.
Since no one knows exactly when the Masamune was alive its impossible to get an exact age on the sword, or even its original name. Its believed the name Honjō comes from General Honjō Shigenaga who won the sword after almost being killed by it during a battle in the 16th century.
General Shigenaga held onto the sword until he was sent to Fushimi castle somewhere between 1592 and 1595. He eventually sold the sword as he didn’t realise who made it and there were a number of chips present in the blade, so he let it go for 13 Mai, which is a large gold coin. The swords new owner got it valued by a genuine sword smith and was told it was worth around 1000 Mai.
It was sold a number of times again over the next few years until it finally settled into the hands of the Tokugawa family, with the last documented owner being Tokugawa Lemasa who owned the sword in 1945.
During the second world war Japan had a law that banned the production of swords such as this one, and so Lemasa took the sword and 14 others to the local police station to hand them in, as WW2 era Japanese military police were known to be harsh on any rule breakers and it wasn’t worth the risk keeping them.
The swords were handed in to Mejior police station in December of 1945. The next month the Lemasa found out the police had given all the swords away to someone called Sgt Coldy Bimore, who was apparently someone who worked for the Foreign Liquidations commission of western Pacific army forces.
After finding out his swords were simply given away, Lemasa had no choice but to let them go as it would be impossible to retrieve them from the military. A reported named Josh Gates made an episode where he tried to find out the location of the sword and travelled to the police station were they were once held. He found out that Sgt Bimore didn’t exist, there was no documentation of him or the swords anywhere to found.
The sword is considered one of the finest samurai swords in existence and would be worth many millions. It was once listed as a Japanese national treasure and the government would pay handsomely for any information leading to it. As for the actually location of the sword there’s various stories, with the most popular being that its sat in a room of extremely wealthy collector.
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