Honjo

The Lost Honjo Masamune

There are seven missing world treasures: The Amber Room, Sappho’s Poems, the Florentine Diamond, Faberge Eggs, Crown Jewels of Ireland, Art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum…and the Honjo Masamune.

At the end of World War II, Japanese citizens were required to turn over weapons. Among them was one of the most famous swords ever made: the Honjo Masamune. The last owner, Tokugawa Iemasa, had the Honjo Masamune delivered to a Tokyo police station. After that, the legendary sword disappeared, and the fate of the Japanese national treasure remains unknown.

Art Professor Dov Markov is on sabbatical in Kyoto, Japan. He’s working on a book: Japonisme: The Influence of Japanese Woodcuts on French Artists. Two murders, and the museum heist of a painting by Japan’s foremost artist, Katsushika Hokusai, draw Professor Markov inextricably into a web of peril, theft, murder— and a search for the lost Honjo Masamune.