SAMURAI IN HUDDERSFIELD

When I was young teenager I adored the Samurai.

One of my favourite books was one I borrowed from Preston library called Japanese Arms and Armour by H. Russell Robinson.

I so wanted to own it but it had to go back to the librarian.

It featured huge colour pictures [or plates as they were called] of Samuari arrowheads called Yanone and I particularly loved the sheer beauty of the Y-shaped Karimata or cord-cutter.

For a couple of years in the early 70's I attempted to make every old Japanese and Chinese weapon I could from fancy goods and garden tools.

I used them in my old Powis Road Dojo and wrote about them in Kung Fu Capers in 2015.

I made stacks of arrowheads back then but never conquered the cord-cutter.

Skip forward 44 years and my teenage dream to own Japanese Arms and Armour came true, when I purchased a copy from the estate of the late John 'the OX' Entwistle, bassist with The Who no less!

You can see it stood here at the back of some of my other martial arts tomes. Its open on the Yanone page and you can just make out the Y-shaped arrowhead.

Well, yesterday in a double-take of remembered shed-raiding and frantic tool-bashing back in those Samurai 70's, I saw the perfect DIY part for making the elusive cord-cutter Karimata head.

It was lying on a pile of tools on Huddersfield Market!

It's a garden shed tool hanger!

If only I'd seen one in my Dad's old Cash and Carry warehouse when I raided it for parts in 1972!

Talk about the ripples of time.

Or as Basho said:

The old pond,

A frog jumps in:.

Plop!

Did you like the Samurai readers?