Shinshu sickles

Furuma and Kashiwara are the clearest place anchors for Shinshu kama in northern Nagano. In these Shinano-machi settlements, sickle forging developed as side work during the long winter, tying farm households, forge fires, and grass-cutting tools to the season when field labor slowed. The present Shinshu struck-blade cooperative is also based in Shinano-machi, and its member list connects workshops, sickle makers, and wholesalers with settlements such as Funadake-kami, Fukino, Minami-nakamachi, Kamimachi, Suwanohara, and Kashiwara.

Shinshu kama refers to a locally developed single-bevel, thin-bladed sickle for cutting grass. The blade body is wide, the cutting edge is made very thin, and the back keeps more thickness; after forging, sickles and knives are hammered out into strong blades. The design is built for use in grass rather than display. Even when the handle is held level, the blade stands diagonally, and the cut grass moves back toward the user’s hand through the combined effect of shibatsuke and tsuri.

Shibatsuke and tsuri name small adjustments with a direct effect on the body at work. Shibatsuke changes the way the blade meets grass, so cut stems gather inward instead of scattering away from the user. Tsuri sets the blade’s curve and angle, allowing the blade body to stand diagonally while the handle stays horizontal. The angle chosen at the forge becomes a field motion: wrist, handle, thin edge, and cut grass moving in one sequence.

The beginning of Shinshu kama is often told through the late sixteenth century, when village people are said to have learned smithing from blade makers who repaired weapons and swords around the Kawanakajima battles. By the first half of the nineteenth century, shibatsuke and tsuri had been devised, and double-edged sickles were improved into single-bevel thin blades. That timeline joins battlefield blade repair, village farm-tool making, and the practical shape of a grass sickle in the same northern Nagano setting.

In Furuma and Kashiwara, sickle forging reached notable scale by the late Meiji period, with annual production reported at about 800,000 sickles and distribution across Japan. The trade later contracted as farming households declined, farm tools became mechanized, and lower-priced foreign-made sickles entered the market. Furuma maker Kosaka Shigeo described making each sickle while thinking about user satisfaction and improving tools through comments from wholesalers and users; as both groups became fewer, the path for hand-forged farm tools narrowed.

The Shinshu struck-blade cooperative was established in 1981 to support Shinshu kama and related hand-forged blades, and it now brings together ten workshop and wholesaler members. Its timeline includes kajiya-san experience activities from 1983, the Takumi no Sato model workshop in 1988, and school social-learning visits. When children enter a local forge, the craft appears through concrete things: heat, steel, hammering, blade angle, and a grass-cutting tool made for northern Nagano fields.