I wouldn’t go that far. The whole Way of the Sword and all that really kicked off when Miyamoto Musashi was around and that was the 16th century. He was a famed dualist with a sword and wrote The Book of the Five Rings, which is all about swordplay and techniques/styles/skills.
What the hell were the thieves doing with the tools? They had 15,000 of them, were they going to open a Home Depot? Was this a crew of a few dozen people? How were they making money of they had 15,000 tools in like 12 storage units? Even if this was some shady eBay marketplace operation they must have been having serious trouble finding buyers for these tools or something.