Neo-Army Sword (Shin gunto), by Zayda Jocelinne Michel Martinez

A sword used by Japanese Officers during World War II. The swords were often mass produced and given by the Japanese government to soldiers.  A neo-army  (Shin-Gunto) sword can be recognized by the cherry blossom flowers engraved on the handle and the mechanism linking the sword and the sheath.  This sword cannot be called a Samurai Sword because the manufacture and the methods of forging are different from the ones used in the past. This means that Japan was ready to modernize and this sword shows us the new Japan. They stayed with the arms and the history that the samurai represented but did it with modern practices. One of the things that swords were used for in World War II was the committing of  war crimes; this sword was used by a military officer, who most of the time makes the hard decisions. We can theorize that this sword may have been used to kill war prisoners or maybe it was used to commit Seppuku (Japanese suicide). After the surrender of Japan, most of the swords and battle articles were taken from the battlefields to the United States as war trophies.