Tosa Uchihamono

Free forging

Orders once came to Tosa from all over Japan for blades of every shape and weight, so its smiths learned to forge a blade from nothing more than an order sheet showing its actual size and shape. This is called Tosa free forging, and it lets them make many kinds in small runs: axes, fire hooks, saws, sickles, kitchen knives, nata hatchets and hoes. It is made in Kochi, Aki, Nankoku, Susaki, Tosashimizu, Kami and other places in Kochi.

By hammer and chisel

• Steel and iron are heated in the forge and hammered out into shape.
• The edge is then ground.
• Axes and tobi fire hooks are made by nuki-bitsu: the hole for the handle is punched through the iron with a chisel.
• In koshiki tanzo, old-style forging, a master and a front striker work as a pair with charcoal, bellows and a 4 kg sledgehammer.

Forests and fields

Kochi is warm and very rainy, with fine timber, so blades for forestry were made here from early times. A land survey of Tosa in 1590 recorded 399 smithies. The real rise came with the Tosa domain's Genna reform of 1621, whose policies to secure forests and open new rice fields raised demand for farm and forestry blades. A local saying puts the training at eleven years: three cutting charcoal, five as front striker and three more forging by feel.