Nikkari Aoe
A legendary Japanese sword tied to one of the creepier ghost stories in samurai folklore. The tale goes that a samurai was staying at an inn when a woman and child materialized in front of him late at night, giggling in a way that definitely wasn't normal. He demanded answers, but they just kept approaching him, laughing in that unsettling way. Panicked, the samurai drew his blade and beheaded both figures on the spot.
When morning came, there was no bodies anywhere. Instead, he found two stone lanterns nearby—both with their tops cleanly cut off. He realized then that he hadn't killed living people at all; he'd sliced through a pair of ghosts or spirits that had taken the form of a woman and child to mess with him.
The sword earned the name "Nikkari" (meaning "glint" or "gleam") from that incident, forever marked by the night its wielder accidentally defeated something supernatural. The blade itself became one of Japan's most famous weapons, partly because of the ghost story and partly because fans of Japanese swords just love a good supernatural backstory.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
