What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 12

    
                                        ‘Sow all the words you can
                                         For in a better age
                                         Men shall judge the harvest’
                                                  The Confessions of Lady Nijo

For Robyn and I, across the Yukiaibashi Meeting-each-other Bridge near our Enoden electric railway station, the beach was where Osama and Obama and Otama came together. Osama couldn’t make it. Two years earlier, Obama had taken credit for his assassination, half a world away, although it was rumored that he was in the other room when it had happened, half a world away. The beach town with the same name as the American president, Obama, on the north Honshu coast, and the scene of several little-known North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens in 1978, means ‘little beach’ in Japanese.
“He’s coming for a state visit while we’re here, you know.” I said.

                                                    ‘The chicken wants 
                                                      To say something-
                                                      Fidgeting its feet.’
                                                             Sixty Senryu

“I know.” Robyn said. “He’ll be leaving Tokyo the day we arrive.”
But the beach we were on wasn’t Obama, nor was it our own beach in New Zealand, Otama, also a place name in Japan, that Robyn and I spent our winters on. Here there were balancing seal surfers in wet suits, writhing on waves like the history we had landed on.
“Shichiragahama.” I said. “Shichiri means ‘a long ride.’ Like these boys.” I picked up some dark sand and let it run through my fingers.
“Shichirigahama was the Kamakura shogunate's execution ground and the scene of many battles. Even up to the Edo period, bones and rusty weapons were still coming up through this sand.” 
But the swords that came out of the sand had been made from the same sand that went into the swords. The iron weapons on the beach had come from the iron ore in the beach. Kamakura became the source of the soul of the samurai, and the unity of mind and body and sword. 
The original chokutō sword had evolved from the old Chinese straight, double-edged iron jian, but the mythical turning point of Japanese weapon history occurred around 700 AD, in the legend of the Father of the Samurai Sword.

   Amakuni Yasutsuna and his son, Amakura, were the head smiths 
   employed by the Emperor to make swords for his armies. One 
   day, returning from battle, the Emperor and his warriors passed 
   by Amakuni's forge doorway without speaking, instead of 
   greeting him warmly as they usually did. With great shame and 
   horror, Amakuni noticed that nearly half of the warrior’s swords 
   had been broken or badly damaged and that the failure was from 
   incorrect forging.  Tears filled Amakuni's eyes, and he said to 
   himself, "If they are going to use our swords for such slashing, I 
   shall make one that will not break." With this vow, Amakuni and 
   his son sealed themselves away in the forge, and prayed   
   feverishly to the Shinto gods for inspiration. On the seventh 
   night, the divine Kami came to them in a dream- a glowing image 
   of a single edged, slightly curved blade... As soon as the first rays 
   of the sun infiltrated the forge, each knowing without a word 
   exactly what they must do, they set about creating the sword 
   revealed to them. Amakuni refined the best iron sand ore he could 
   obtain into steel. Working without rest, the two emerged after 
   thirty-one days, gaunt and weary, with a single-edged curved 
   weapon. Other swordsmiths believed them insane, but Amakuni 
   and Amakura, undaunted, ground and polished the new sword. In 
   the following spring, there was another war. This time, as the 
   samurai returned, Amakuni saw that all of his swords had perfect, 
   intact blades. The Emperor came to him, with a smile "You are an 
   expert sword maker. None of the Swords you made failed in 
   battle." Legend has it that Amakuni later died a happy and 
   contended old man, having gained immortality from the large 
   amount of blood shed from the first single-edged curved bladed 
   tachi longsword he created.