Japanese Officer's Sword. by Nathan Hayes

This object is a Japanese officer’s sword, forged during World War II. The symbology of the sword, as a tool of honorable violence, can be contrasted with the fact that we do not know if it was used as a weapon. Japanese swords were used to commit war crimes throughout the second world war, such as at Nanking. But the cultural exchange embodied in this object also says quite a bit about the relationship between American and Japanese cultures, especially after the Second World War. It was saved from destruction during the occupation of Japan by an  American soldier named Edmund D. Poston, and it may have made its way to America when he returned from Japan. The sword would be donated to the Illinois State Museum after his death, where it morphed from a tool for war to an art piece to be displayed.