The iron or was excavated in 1968 at the Inariyama Kofun, a megalithic tomb located in

Saitama Prefecture is a Landlocked country, landlocked Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Saitama Prefecture has a population of 7,338,536 (January 1, 2020) and has a geographic area of 3,797 Square kilometre, km2 ( ...

. In 1978,

X-ray An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...

analysis revealed a gold- inlaid inscription that comprises at least 115

Chinese characters Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...

. This sword was described as the discovery of the century for the study of ancient Japanese history. The sword is designated a national treasure of Japan and is on display in the

Saitama Prefectural Museum of the Sakitama Ancient Burial Mounds The is a museum in Gyōda, Saitama, Japan. The building is inside of Sakitama Kofun Park. It is one of Japan's many museums which are supported by a prefecture. The museum was originally established as in 1969 as part of the construction of , ...

Creation

Japanese research suggests that the metal used in the sword was smelted from

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

-bearing

magnetite Magnetite is a mineral and one of the main iron ores, with the chemical formula . It is one of the iron oxide, oxides of iron, and is ferrimagnetism, ferrimagnetic; it is attracted to a magnet and can be magnetization, magnetized to become a ...

originating in the

Jiangnan Jiangnan is a geographic area in China referring to lands immediately to the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, including the southern part of its delta. The region encompasses the city of Shanghai, the southern part of Jiangsu ...

region of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

, later brought to Japan, and then used to

forge A forge is a type of hearth used for heating metals, or the workplace (smithy) where such a hearth is located. The forge is used by the smith to heat a piece of metal to a temperature at which it becomes easier to shape by forging, or to the ...

the sword.

Inscription

The inscription is in

classical Chinese Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...

, but includes several Japanese proper names written using Chinese characters as syllabograms. The original inscription and translation (by Murayama Shichirō and

Roy Andrew Miller Roy Andrew Miller (September 5, 1924 – August 22, 2014) was an American linguist best known as the author of several books on Japanese language and linguistics, and for his advocacy of Korean and Japanese as members of the proposed Alta ...

) is as follows. ;Front : ;Reverse :

Interpretation

The year is denoted as "''xin-hai''" (that is "Year of the Metal Pig") according to the Chinese

sexagenary cycle The sexagenary cycle, also known as the gānzhī (干支) or stems-and-branches, is a cycle of sixty terms, each corresponding to one year, thus amounting to a total of sixty years every cycle, historically used for recording time in China and t ...

, in which the name of the year is recycled every 60 years. It is generally regarded in Japan to correspond to 471 AD, but Seeley suggests that 531 is a more likely date. The person buried in the tomb, named Wowake, was an influential warrior in the region. King Waka Takiru in the transcription is thought to be the same person as Ōhatsuse-wakatakeru-no-mikoto as mentioned in the ''

Nihon Shoki The or , sometimes translated as ''The Chronicles of Japan'', is the second-oldest book of classical Japanese history. It is more elaborate and detailed than the , the oldest, and has proven to be an important tool for historians and archaeol ...

'', an alias of Emperor Yūryaku. The name Waka Takiru is also apparently mentioned on another inscribed sword, the

Eta Funayama Sword Eta Funayama Kofun () is a ''kofun'', or Tumulus, burial mound, located in Nagomi, Kumamoto in Japan. The mound was designated a Monuments of Japan, National Historic Site of Japan in 1951. The designation includes and . Several artifacts exc ...

. The remote ancestor mentioned in the engraving, Öpö piko, is thought to refer to ,Takehiko Yoshimura (吉村武彦)『シリーズ日本古代史2 ヤマト王権』（岩波新書）p.82。 the eldest son of the legendary emperor Emperor Kōgen.

Notes

Works cited

* *

External links

Picture of the sword
{{Authority control Kofun period Old Japanese texts National Treasures of Japan Individual Japanese swords Japanese literature in Classical Chinese