Pawn Stars: TOP BLADES OF ALL TIME

I'll always cringe when watching Pawn Stars, but at least they have (the highly respectable) Mike Yamasaki as their Japanese sword expert. So even though they clearly drastically edit down whatever full explanation he gave in person, generally we're still left with something accurate.

Today he helped partially solve a personal mystery of mine – the "hanagatana" (flower sword) starting at 1:03:00. I've only seen photos of like three of these in the last ~20 years, each with similarly odd horimono, and they stumped me every time. I had guessed they were a sort of doctor's sword or farmer's sword, both of which are distinct genres. Very glad to finally know they are ikebana swords. Though I still don't understand the significance of the horimono…

/r/SWORDS Thread Link - youtube.com