This elegant Japanese dagger (‘tanto’) is signed by Fujiwara Masahiro, a smith who worked in the Keicho period (1596-1614) in Yamashiro province (modern-day Kyoto Prefecture). It has a small iron guard (‘tsuba’) and other iron fittings inlaid with silver and gold as well as fittings of horn and patinated copper. The metal cap on the end of the dagger is decorated with sprays of paulownia - the plant associated with the ruling Tokugawa shoguns of the Edo period (1600-1868). The hilt is wrapped with rayskin with silk braid bindings. The scabbard has been subtly lacquered in dark red and black. As fashions and styles of fighting changed, so good early blades could be shortened and remounted in more contemporary styles. This blade was probably remounted between 1800 and 1860.

Daggers were worn both by samurai and by non-samurai, including, increasingly, the merchant classes. Merchants tended towards gaudier mountings for their blades so the restrained decoration of this tanto, together with the paulownia reference, would indicate that it was remounted for a samurai, perhaps an elderly gentleman. After 1876, when the samurai were abolished as a class and the wearing of swords was prohibited, there was little further demand for swords and sword fittings. Many craftsworkers turned their hands to the newly arrived market of foreigners who avidly collected anything Japanese.