Long-handled sword

The shape of the blade of this sword calls to mind Japanese sword blades, but its details, including the prominent water pattern, indicate that it is not Japanese made. The guard, decorated with a diagonal trellis pattern with overlaid flowers also resembles Japanese sword guards (tsuba), but again, the manufacture is not Japanese.

Japanese traders and adventurers were active in Siam by the late 1500s. In 1606 Shogun Ieyasu wrote to the Siamese king asking for firearms and a kind of fragrant wood, and in return offering "as a token of my sincere regard, three suits of Japanese armor, each consisting of three pieces, and ten long swords." In 1688 the French missionary Nicholas Gervaise reported that the Siamese king had warehouses "filled with fine Japanese swords, which are so well tempered that with a single blow they can easily cut through a large iron bar."

With Japanese swords known and sought after, it is not surprising that local artisans would try to copy them. Though there is no documentary evidence of this practice in the Ayutthaya period, much later, in 1861, King Mongkut included among his state gifts to the American president what he described in English as "a sword manufactured in Siam after the Japanese model." The patterns on the scabbard and handle fittings of this sword resemble those on decorative objects from King Mongkut's period (1851–1868). These components of the sword, and perhaps all its others, may have been made then.