Perhaps this will be conclusive evidence to where the Japanese swords originated, are made, and so on ...
Swords are critical in most feudal societies, and Japan was no exception. In the sixth century BC the legendary emperor Jimmu Tenno conquered much of Japan. At the same time, the Japanese took inspiration for swords from the Chinese. Early swords were merely duplicates of Chinese swords, straight and double-edged, but the warring stability of the Asuka period promoted the advancement of weaponry.
The first recorded production of the curved, one-edged 'Japanese-style' sword (as opposed to 'Chinese-style') is around AD 900, but they had been in use for a significant time before that. According to legend, the Japanese sword was invented by a smith named 'Amakuni' in AD 700, along with the folded steel process. It is at this time that the term samurai came into being.
By the twelfth century, civil war erupted after a long period of decadence. For five centuries, Japan had its own dark ages, marked by continuous, brutal wars. The War of Onin (1467-1477) revolutionized Japanese armour, and weapons hit a plateau of quality considered to be superior to those made even today.
During the Muromachi period, bloody wars were the norm, but the indolent shogunates also put a high value on art and culture, so the islands did not descend into barbarism. In fact, the swords from the middle of this era are considered the peak of swordcraft. However, as time progressed, the craft decayed under the withering pressure of guns, which rendered swords obsolete.
Swordmaking continued to decline in the early part of the Edo period, since there were fewer wars; however, art leapt forward, leading to beautiful engravings and decorations for weapons. Then, under the isolationist Tokugawa Shogunate, guns and gunpowder were increasingly restricted and removed from circulation. By the middle of the eighteenth century, most young Japanese had never seen a gun, let alone actually seen one fired.
The power of the samurai (and the quality of swordmaking) had nearly disintegrated under the power of guns, but they came out of the struggle with a fierce devotion to their ancient ways and an eye for the past. Samurai were strong during the Edo period, and the almost-lost art of sword-smithing revived, slowly but surely. Nearing the end of this period, swords had recovered enough quality that they were no longer referred to as 'shinto', but the more respectful 'shin-shinto'.
Japan remained in stasis until Matthew Perry's arrival in 1853 and the subsequent Convention of Kanagawa forcibly reintroduced Japan to the outside world; the rapid modernization of the Meiji Restoration soon followed.
The Haitorei edict in 1876 all but banned swords and guns, crippling the samurai class. However, an uprising against this edict and the military rulership resulted in an explosion of nationalism and support for an emperor who had previously been mostly a figurehead.
By World War I, Japan was on par with global powers in its military might. However, this also marked the beginning of the end for samurai in general, for guns had returned. It also marked a time of decline in sword manufacture, as katana were replaced by gunto: cheap sabers for navy officers.
Under the United States occupation at the end of World War II the samurai class was disbanded completely and swords banned; . The only swords which were allowed to remain were artistic treasures, which could not leave the museum or temple.
Due to this disarmament, as of 1958 there were more Japanese swords in America than in Japan: American soldiers would return from the Orient with piles of swords, often as many as they could carry. The vast majority of these 100,000 or more swords were gunto, but there were still a sizable number of shin-shinto.
This symbolized the final blow to the power of the samurai in the recent centuries. However, swordcraft has since resumed, although as a cultural phenomenon rather than a war-based one.
The forging of a Japanese blade typically took hours or days, and was considered a sacred art. As with many complex endeavors, rather than a single craftsman, several artists were involved. There was a smith to forge the rough shape, often a second smith (apprentice) to fold the metal, a specialist polisher, and even a specialist for the edge itself. Often, there were sheath, hilt, and tsuba (handguard) specialists as well.
The most famous part of the manufacturing process was the folding of the steel. Steel was commonly 'folded', or bent over itself and hammered flat, as many as thirty times. This did several things:
* It eliminated any bubbles in the metal.
* It evened out the metal, spreading the elements (such as carbon) evenly throughout.
* It created layers, which give the swords their unique grain. The layered structure (see Bulat steel) provides enhanced mechanical properties of the steel.
* Lastly, it strengthened the metal (perhaps by more evenly distributing the imperfections).
Generally, swords were created with the grain of the blade (called 'hada') running down the blade like the grain on a plank of wood. Straight grains were called 'masame-hada', whereas wavy grains were called 'ayasugi-hada'. Certain schools of construction had the grain running directly into the blade, resulting in a blotchy, ringed pattern. Although this weakened the blade, some samurai found it quite beautiful. If it resembled knotted wood, it was called 'itame-hada'; if it was splotched and burled, it was called 'mokume-hada'.
One of the core philosophies of the Japanese sword is that it has a single edge. This means that the rear of the sword can be used to reinforce the edge, and the Japanese took full advantage of this fact. When finished, the steel is not quenched or tempered in the conventional European fashion. Steel’s exact flex and strength vary dramatically with heat variation, and depending on how hot it gets and how fast it cools, the steel has vastly different properties. If steel cools quickly, from a hot temperature, it becomes martensite, which is very hard but brittle. Slower, from a lower temperature, and it becomes pearlite, which has significantly more flex but doesn’t hold an edge. To control the cooling, the sword is heated and painted with layers of sticky mud. A thin layer on the edge of the sword ensures quick cooling, but not so fast as to crack the sword steel (this makes the actual edge of the sword extremely hard martensite). A thicker layer of mud on the rest of the blade causes slower cooling, and softer steel, giving the blade the flex it needs (this makes the rear and inside of the sword into pearlite). When the application is finished, the sword is quenched and hardens correctly.
Then things got complicated as the Japanese began experimenting with using multiple metals (all steel, but different carbon contents) in their swords at various points. You can see examples of these below:
The vast majority of 'good' katana and wakazashi are of 'wariba-gitae' type, but the more complex models allow for parrying without fear of damaging the side of the blade. The last generally accepted model, the 'shiho-zume-gitae', is quite rare, but added a rear support.
The way they did the 'makuri-gitae' method was by using two steels, one folded more times than the other, or of a lesser carbon content. When both sections have been folded adequately, they are bent into a 'U' shape and the softer piece is inserted into the harder piece, at which point they are hammered out into a long blade shape. By the end of the process, the two pieces of steel are functionally the same piece, but with different rigidities. If the smith is performing han-sanmai-awase-gitae or shiho-zume-gitae, then pieces of hard steel are added to the outside of the blade in a similar fashion.
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Distinguishing characteristicsOkay, so now we've got a long iron stick. What makes it a katana?
This is the form of a katana:
Each blade has a unique profile, depending on the smith, the construction method, and a bit of luck. The most prominent is the middle ridge, or 'shinogi'. In the earlier picture, the examples were flat to the shinogi, then tapering to the blade. However, swords could narrow down to the shinogi, then narrow further to the blade, or even expand outward towards the shinogi then shrink to the blade (producing a trapezoidal shape). A flat or narrowing shinogi is called 'shinogi-hikushi', whereas a 'fat' blade is called a 'shinogi-takushi'.
The shinogi can be placed near the back of the blade for a longer, sharper, more fragile tip or a more moderate shinogi near the center of the blade.
The sword also has an exact tip shape, which is considered an extremely important characteristic: the tip can be long (o-kissaki), short (ko-kissaki), medium (chu-kissaki), or even hooked backwards (ikuri-o-kissaki). In addition, whether the front edge of the tip is curved (fukura-tsuku) or straight (fukura-kareru) is also important.
A hole is drilled into the tang, called a mekugi-ana. This hole is to anchor the hilt, and some of the older blades have more than one due to the length of the blade.
PolishingWhen the rough blade was completed, the blacksmith would turn the blade over to a polisher, whose job it was to polish the steel of the blade to a glittering shine and sharpen the edge for battle. This takes hours for every inch of blade, and is painstaking work with different kinds of very fine stone. Early polishers used three types of stone, whereas a modern polisher generally uses seven. It almost always takes longer than actually crafting the blade does, and a good polishing makes a blade look better, while a bad polishing makes the best of blades look like gunto.
One of the ways which blades can be judged is by what this polishing reveals: the crystal-like qualities of the blade become quite visible, and the hamon (known in English as the temper line, where the sharp edge fades into the normal steel of the blade) shows the unique nature of the sword. Each blade is distinct in its hamon and the grain (hada) of its steel. The hamon, which is determined primarily by how the mud is applied, is often used as a kind of signature of the smith, above and beyond his own signature, and each tradition of swordsmiths often has a particular style of hamon it prefers over all others. Hamon vary from straight to wavy to shaped like crabs or zigzags, and in their wandering they reveal important facts about the blade itself. A good polishing reveals what speed the edge was cooled at, from what temperature, and what the carbon content of the steel is. This is because it displays either nioi, which is a mix of extremely fine martensite with troostite (another type of tempered steel), or the more crystalline and obvious nie, which contains a lot of less fine martensite.
FurnishingsThe work on the blade doesn't end here, though. From here it is passed on to a hilt-maker. Hilts vary in their exact nature depending on the era, but generally consist of the same general idea, with the variation being in the components used and in the wrapping style. The obvious part of the hilt consists of a metal or wooden grip called a tsuka, which can also be used to refer to the entire hilt. The cross guard, or tsuba, on Japanese swords (except for certain twentieth century sabers which emulate Western navies') is small and round, made of metal, and often very ornate.
There is a pommel at the base known as a kashira, and there is often a decoration under the criss-crossed wrappings called a menuki. A bamboo peg is slipped through the tsuka and through the tang of the blade, using the hole drilled in it. This anchors the blade securely into the hilt. To anchor the blade securely into the sheath it will soon have, the blade acquires a collar, or habaki, which extends an inch or so past the cross guard and keeps the blade from rattling.
The sheaths themselves are not an easy task. There are two types of sheaths, both of which require the same exacting work. One is the saya, which is generally made of wood and considered the 'resting' sheath, used in place of a more fragile and expensive sheath. The other sheath is the more decorative or battle-worthy sheath which is usually called either a jindachi-zukuri or a buke-zukuri, depending on whether it was supposed to be suspended from the belt by straps or thrust through a sash, respectively. Other types of mounting include the kyu-gunto, shin-gunto, and kai-gunto types for the twentieth-century military, but these swords were generally mass-produced and highly inferior, and few true Japanese swords are mounted in these styles.
While some people believe that katana and wakizashi were constructed alike, this could not be further from the truth. They were often forged with different profiles, different blade thicknesses, and varying amounts of niku. Wakizashi were also not simply a 'scaled down' katana, they were often forged in hira-zukuri or other such forms, which were very rare on katana. Katana were more like an eastern equivalent of rapiers, one wouldn't often use a katana on an open battlefield (yari, naginata, yumi, and other such implements were preferred), and in battles, they served as a secondary weapon.
While blades folded hundreds, thousands, or even millions of times are encountered in amateur fiction, there is no record of real blades being folded more than around thirty times. Note that with each fold made by the maker, every internal layer is also folded, and so the total number of layers in a sword blade is two to the power of the number of folds made; since the thickness of a katana blade is less than 230 iron atoms, going beyond thirty folds no longer adds meaningfully to the number of layers in the blade.
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