Isonokami Jingu Shrine

This guide to Isonokami Jingu Shrine in Nara opens in 1873, when a priest running his hand along a corroded blade in the shrine's storehouse feels grooves that turn out to be gold-inlaid writing, unread for over a thousand years. That sword, the Seven-Branched Sword, is inscribed with the account of a Korean kingdom's gift to a Yamato king around the year 370, sent for reasons that had little to do with generosity. The gift passed to the Mononobe clan, who ran this shrine as the imperial court's armory, controlling every blade the state stockpiled and growing rich on that monopoly for two centuries.