Tonbogiri: Honda Tadakatsu's Prized Spear and the Lineage of the Three Great Spears

Honda Tadakatsu's prized spear 'Tonbogiri' (the 'Dragonfly-Cutter') is one of the best known of the famous-name weapons of the Sengoku period.

With Otegine (a possession of Yūki Hideyasu) and Nihongō (associated with Fukushima Masanori and Mori Tahei), it was praised as one of the 'Three Great Spears of the Realm.

' The designation itself is a literary evaluation that became fixed in the Edo period, but the fact that the Tonbogiri was recognized as a famous-name weapon in the warrior society of the time is corroborated in contemporary sources.

The name 'Tonbogiri' is derived from the tradition that a dragonfly that alighted on the blade was cut in two of itself by the blade's keenness.

The anecdote appears in Edo-period weapons books and military narratives and spread as a symbolic story of the extreme sharpness of an edged weapon.

The same form of expression is sometimes applied to other famous swords and spears as well, and is understood as a literary formula.

It is not physically possible that the simple alighting of a dragonfly would cut it, but as a metaphor for 'sharp to that degree,' the tradition has continued in Japanese weapons culture.

The smith of the Tonbogiri is taken to be Fujiwara Masazane (or Fujiwara Sanenobu, by tradition) of Mino Province — a smith active from the late Muromachi through the Sengoku period.

It is inferred that Tadakatsu acquired it in his middle years. In form it is a long-shafted spear; the head (blade portion) is around forty centimeters; the shaft was originally three ken (about 5.

5 meters), but there is a tradition that Tadakatsu shortened it in his late years.

The long-shafted spear is a weapon that exerts its power in group combat, and was suited to Tadakatsu's deployment on the field.

Contemporary records of the specific scenes in which Tadakatsu actually wielded the Tonbogiri on the battlefield are limited, but that Tadakatsu took the spear as his principal weapon is referenced in the Mikawa Monogatari and other sources.

The long-shafted spear was one of the principal weapons of the mounted warrior, and especially demonstrated shock power in group combat.

The Tonbogiri likely functioned as an important tool through Tadakatsu's small-force confrontation at Komaki-Nagakute, his combat at Anegawa, Nagashino, Sekigahara, and others.

The designation 'Three Great Spears of the Realm' is an Edo-period weapons evaluation that places three together — Tonbogiri, Otegine, and Nihongō.

Otegine is a long-shafted spear said to have been a possession of Yūki Hideyasu (Ieyasu's second son), reported to have burned during the Pacific War.

Nihongō was originally an imperial-family treasure, bestowed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi on Fukushima Masanori, then later won by the Kuroda retainer Mori Tahei in a drinking wager — a spear with a famous anecdote — and is now held by the Fukuoka City Museum.

The evaluation that arrays the three as the 'Three Great Spears' was fixed in the Edo period and is carried forward to the present.

After Tadakatsu's death, the Tonbogiri was transmitted through the Honda house through generations.

It was kept as the emblematic family treasure of the Honda house through the Edo period, and after the Meiji period passed through changes of ownership; today it is held by an individual or a museum.

There is also discussion that several spears have been transmitted as 'Tonbogiri,' and academic examination of the authenticity of surviving items continues.

In any case, the set of Tadakatsu and the Tonbogiri is fixed in Japanese weapons culture as a symbolic pairing.

Today, the Tonbogiri is widely known as a pronoun for Honda Tadakatsu in historical fiction, taiga drama, and games (the Tōken Ranbu series and others).

It is an interesting example in which interest in the figure of Honda Tadakatsu is reproduced into the present through the object of the Tonbogiri.

The very fact that the Tonbogiri, as cultural memory, has continued to be transmitted from the Edo period to the present — beyond the survival of the spear as physical object — shows the vitality of Sengoku weapons culture.