I nearly died last weekend

On Sunday A and I attended the Hounen Matsuri festival at the Tagata Jinja shrine. It's a raucous and slightly naughty fertility festival popularized for the two and a half meter wooden phallus that gets paraded around. While I'll certainly fill you in on that in a later post, prior to the main event a sword demonstration was taking place in the courtyard in front of the shrine. Quite a crowd had gathered, pressing observers in close to the action.

The individuals putting on the demonstration looked like they were part of a hobby martial arts team, sharing a few swords between a large group. Each member would take their turn slicing through a piece of bamboo or rolled tatami mat, going through the full routine of drawing, cutting, and sheathing. And then someone decided to get fancy. You've seen a samurai movie where a character makes a cut straight out of the sheath; instead of pulling out the sword, taking a ready stance, and then swinging, the execute sort of a 'quick-draw' attack and swing the sword as it's pulled from the sheath in one motion. It's not just movie silliness, it's an authentic technique, but one which I imagine requires considerably more skill - skill that this team wasn't demonstrating.

In the photos above, the demonstrator has just executed his cut using this method of attack... sort of... If you examine the photo on the left, you can see the handle of the sword behind his hand - as in, he's not holding it any more. In the right photo, you can see the tip of the razor sharp sword spiraling away behind him, but it happened so quickly none of the audience members have even reacted yet. The flying sword clattered to the ground without striking anything (or anyone) but holy crap did that seem like a close call. If he'd held on a little longer, it could have been flying right towards A and I!

Oddly enough, the demonstration continued on as if nothing had happened, although several of the spectators who witnessed the event got behind someone else in the crowd, or left the area entirely.