Welcome to SHIBUI SWORDS, my name is Elliott Long. I became involved with Antique Japanese Swords (Nihon-To) in 2004. There is an essence and a quality about 'Intellectualism' that renews and inspires. In any field of study, it is knowledge that serves to transmit among a single generation of students, as well as from one generation to the next, the values, insights, culture and aesthetics which surround that field. In a field as explicit and highly detailed as the Nippon-to, education is the means by which the art form under attention is preserved and protected.

Knowledge is essential and the obligation of every student of the Japanese sword. Education need not, for every student, be developed in published form, though such endeavors are more within every student's means than most would suspect. Education of care, open communication, curiosity, unselfish use of knowledge, and mutual support and respect, is required of everyone who would aspire to be a real student.

Japanese Fine Arts are not only functional but represent an art form made by people in the pursuit of perfection who did not accept limitations. This kind of desire to produce the best possible object is something I respect and admire. Every piece of art has something to teach; it is like a library, no matter how many books you read there is no substitute for art which displays what the books can only reference. Yet, on the other hand you may not understand a 'work of art' without reference material or the teaching of someone with knowledge of that piece. It makes learning the basics even more important in order to stay clear of the self-proclaimed "experts" who have an answer to everything and true knowledge of nothing.

It is with both pride and humility, my fond hope that this web-site may prove as stimulating to the viewer as it's production was to me, especially when I studied the multiform landscape of an ancient culture and the often tragic but brave attempts of its subjects to cope with the demands of a harsh reality. Confronted as we are today with social and political turbulence, living under the moment-to-moment threat of catastrophe, all studies of man's experience in the art of violent confrontation have acquired a particular relevancy. Almost everyone seems to agree that we must attempt to determine whether man will be forever trapped by his apparently constitutional inclination to employ any method, however lethal, to ensure his dominance over his fellow man, or whether he may be capable of ritualizing and then ultimately, transforming that pattern. In this endeavor, thoughtful studies of man's past, with all its pitfalls and bloody errors, may prove to be a necessary and valuable factor in the final equation.