The Honami Collection Katana Museum About the
Collector
A lifelong devotion to craftsmanship,
lineage, and the preservation of purpose.
Collector and custodian, dedicated to the study and preservation of Japanese blades as works of art, discipline, and memory. Through careful research and thoughtful curation, he shares the stories and significance of each piece — bridging past and present for future generations.
The long way to Tokyo.
Graeme Somerville-RyanTrained as an anthropologist before he ever worked a day in shipping — then two decades inside the industry's marketing and business development back offices, from Wellington to Singapore, long before a posting finally put him in Tokyo. The degree waited a long time to be useful. Living in Japan is where it was.
Why these swords.
In his own wordsThis is Graeme's section to write, not ours — the first blade, the dealer or teacher who mattered, what stopped him. Nothing placed here yet is his story; it's a hold for it.
Registered, not just admired.
Folio IVEyesea exists because pollution without data is just an opinion — the whole project is a discipline of documentation, photograph by photograph, built to withstand scrutiny. The Isle of Man Ship Registry runs on the same instinct at a larger scale: a vessel's worth, on paper, is only ever as good as its provenance.
This collection is catalogued the same way. Every koshirae here carries its attribution, its polish record, its papers where they exist and a named gap where they don't. A collector who has spent a career registering ships does not lower the bar for swords.
The Koshirae Line