Japanese geta ice skates are indeed a very unusual item!  Wooden Japanese geta shoes mounted with western-style ice skates!  The first time I saw a pair of these I thought the skates a practical joke, until I showed the skates to my Japanese father-in-law (early 70s) who told me the interesting story of geta ice skates.  It seems that before Japan became the prosperous economic world power that it is today, luxury items such as ice skates were simply too expensive for most Japanese to afford.  When ice skating became popular in this country during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some clever person decided to try mounting western-style skate blades to the bottom of Japanese geta shoes.  The resulting geta ice skates appear to have worked well and the idea caught on and spread throughout the areas of Japan where snow is seen in winter.

Geta shoes naturally fit very snug, so they seem to be well suited to securing the feet firmly to the top of the skates.  I've shown similar skates to several other older Japanese who have filled in more interesting details of the story.  My Japanese language teacher (who is also a Japanese historian) told me that at the height of the early ice skating fade, people in Japan would use their skates not just on frozen bodies of water but on frozen streets, open ground or anywhere else ice might form.  I was also told that some people who could not afford the skate blades would fashion blades from large knives or even samurai swords!  This may be the equivalent of an early urban myth, but it's intriguing to wonder at the sight of some Japanese person in kimono racing along a frozen avenue on sword blade geta ice skates!

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