Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Seger. Robert,
Speaker 1: you and I have played many a D and D game.
Speaker 1: We've talked about it on the show before. Many of
Speaker 1: the listeners are D and D fans, some are not.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious what weapon did you decide to go
Speaker 1: with your first time playing the first time you rolled
Speaker 1: up a character. Oh, I went with a katana of course,
Speaker 1: Samurai sword. Yeah. This is one of the beautiful things
Speaker 1: about D and D is that they meticulously researched weapons
Speaker 1: from throughout history so they could insert them into this
Speaker 1: game full of elves and goblins. But you learn about
Speaker 1: things like katanas and falcions and glaves and all these.
Speaker 1: I have all this weird, useless knowledge about melee weapons
Speaker 1: from throughout history. Uh. Yeah, katanas are fascinating. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was the sword to and uh. And and
Speaker 1: to your point that the fantasy world of Dungeon and
Speaker 1: Dragons especially is the it is an unreal history, that is, uh,
Speaker 1: that is forged out of out of many a detail
Speaker 1: from our actual history of taking on New Shape and
Speaker 1: New Form. Yeah, like you're halfling thief can have a
Speaker 1: katana and that's not like cultural appropriation or anything, which
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about episode yeah, or is it. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it might be well we'll have to get
Speaker 1: into that. Ye spoilers to the next episode. But be
Speaker 1: that as it may. Uh. Yes, the katana, the Samurai
Speaker 1: sword definitely a sexy, sexy weapon. Any any child, any
Speaker 1: adult can tell you that that this is a this
Speaker 1: is a really cool sword to look at, two wield
Speaker 1: and fantasy battle. And I mean it's all over our media, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, teenage Muntan, Ninja turtle. Yeah. I forget which
Speaker 1: one had the katana. Leonardo Leonardo did. Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: always the one you want to do Leonardo does. Swords
Speaker 1: is the riff. Yeah. Oh, and then of course the
Speaker 1: Highlander movies, Connor McCloud with this ivory, hilted katana even
Speaker 1: though he's the Scottish maybe alien immortal. Well but see
Speaker 1: he got that sword from an ancient Scottish Egyptian played
Speaker 1: by with the Spanish name, played by Sean Connery, So
Speaker 1: it's like it's a little complicated with immortals. But but
Speaker 1: clearly like the stik of the sword was was was
Speaker 1: presented in that film. Yeah, I've been really interested in
Speaker 1: just samurai fiction in general lately, and so the Katana
Speaker 1: has been on my mind, which is why I asked
Speaker 1: you if we could do an episode on this. I'm
Speaker 1: working on a project that is going to incorporate elements
Speaker 1: of samurai, you know, lore like armor and clothing and
Speaker 1: weapons of course, and and their ethos. So I've been
Speaker 1: catching up on all the samurai fiction and reading a
Speaker 1: ton of Lone Wolf and Cub You know that manga.
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with it. I've never read it though. It's
Speaker 1: about this father and son. The son's like three years
Speaker 1: old as a journey through historical Japan, and he's this
Speaker 1: exiled runan. It's pretty fascinating. And then, of course I
Speaker 1: watched a ton of Cia Kurasawas movies, the big ones
Speaker 1: being Seven Samurai, Thrown of Blood and you know Jimbo.
Speaker 1: Those are all starring Toshiro Mufune as the title samurai
Speaker 1: usually in most of those cases. Uh. And then of
Speaker 1: course there's Jim Jarmish's Ghost Dog The Way of the Samurai.
Speaker 1: You remember that movie from the nineties. I never saw it,
Speaker 1: but it's the Forest Whittaker Samurai movie. Yeah. And and then, uh,
Speaker 1: the other one that I've seen recently that I like
Speaker 1: a lot surprising was that takash miche uh movie Thirteen Assassins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. I I haven't watched any of his
Speaker 1: films recently. I'm not usually a big fan of his work,
Speaker 1: but this is a great samurai movie. And it definitely
Speaker 1: shows the power of the katana. There's lots of limbs
Speaker 1: flying around and and I assume it's suitably weird. H Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's definitely, like especially like when you think of like
Speaker 1: seven Samurai and thirteen Assassins like next to one another,
Speaker 1: and like there's probably fifty years in between the two
Speaker 1: of them, it is significantly weirder. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't think I've really enjoyed any samurai fiction recently, unless you,
Speaker 1: of course, count the American Samurai and Samurai Cop starring
Speaker 1: Robert Sadar. Yeah. I mean his katana must have been
Speaker 1: made in the Ancient Tree, right, I remember that movie vaguely.
Speaker 1: That isn't that tied in with another series of movies?
Speaker 1: Is that the American Ninja movies. I don't know that
Speaker 1: it's directly tied in with those, but it's in the same,
Speaker 1: the same spirit, the same uh you know, culturally slightly insensitive,
Speaker 1: but but I do. I also remember reading James Clavel's
Speaker 1: Showgun back in middle school. There is a ve novel
Speaker 1: about intrigued between between samurai and you had this this
Speaker 1: Western character in the midst of it, you know, this outsider.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this. It is a really long novel. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The main thing I remember about it, aside from various
Speaker 1: details of swordplay and uh and and a few elements
Speaker 1: that were perhaps a little too mature for for me
Speaker 1: as a middle school reader, I do remember that it
Speaker 1: was it was so thick, and I brought it to
Speaker 1: scout camp with me, and then it got damp because
Speaker 1: it rained, and so the spine remained the same size,
Speaker 1: but the bulk of the paperback swelled up to like
Speaker 1: three times the size of the spine. Totally remember that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's funny. Now. When I got older, I did get
Speaker 1: into Crosawa films for a while, and I think I
Speaker 1: just mainlined a bunch of Corosawa films and today the
Speaker 1: really the only one that stands out to me. It
Speaker 1: is Throwing of Blood. Yeah, it's great. Throwing of Blood
Speaker 1: is the their version of Macbeth basically right and take
Speaker 1: brilliant black and white. Yeah. Yeah, it's creepy too, like
Speaker 1: the way the witches are done and everything. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a great film. Yeah, one of my favorite McBeth adaptations
Speaker 1: and probably the best death by Aero scene ever. Spoiler
Speaker 1: from adst. So, yeah, we've got plenty of samurai fiction
Speaker 1: to go around, and we're not even like going through
Speaker 1: and listing like there's I mean, if you look at
Speaker 1: samurai fiction list on Google, there's just like hundreds of
Speaker 1: movies that have been made. And uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: think I mentioned this on the show before I grew
Speaker 1: up in Singapore and so I ended up watching a
Speaker 1: lot of Wosa movies growing up too, And they weren't
Speaker 1: necessarily using katanas in all of those movies, but like
Speaker 1: that same kind of uh Asian sword play mysticism, it
Speaker 1: worked its way into those films in the same way
Speaker 1: that they do sort of in Curse Awa. But Curse
Speaker 1: I was not necessarily other than like throwing a blood,
Speaker 1: there'sn't like magic um. But yeah, so it's just always
Speaker 1: been something that's on my mind. And then I started
Speaker 1: looking into this and I found out, holy cow, these
Speaker 1: swords are apparently like a marvel of engineering even by
Speaker 1: today's standards, and they're they're relatively complex in terms of
Speaker 1: how they were made and incredibly expensive. Oh kill Bill Uh.
Speaker 1: We've seen that. Obviously, that's probably the film that most
Speaker 1: people would know Katanas from, because there's a whole long
Speaker 1: scene where the katanas being made for her, but like
Speaker 1: specific accomplished sword smith. Uh. And that was the one
Speaker 1: that really brought to my mind, like, oh, there is
Speaker 1: there's an art to this, right, It's not like they're
Speaker 1: just like cranking these things out of forge. Now, one
Speaker 1: other point about the Samurai before we get in want
Speaker 1: into more detail here. I think it's also worth pointing
Speaker 1: out that even if you're not dealing with actual Samurai
Speaker 1: lacquered armor and uh Samurai swords, the spirit of the
Speaker 1: Samurai castle long shadow over the history and the pop
Speaker 1: culture of Japan. So even in things like uh, you know,
Speaker 1: various science fiction and anime UH franchises, and and even
Speaker 1: in for instance New Japan Pro Wrestling, of which I
Speaker 1: am I'm a fan, you see the Bushido code, the
Speaker 1: way of the samurai reflected in the way some of
Speaker 1: these characters are presented to Yeah, there is like a
Speaker 1: very strong association with that. I don't know if lifestyle
Speaker 1: is even the right word, but like quality of character. Uh.
Speaker 1: And these weapons actually because I can say a distinctive
Speaker 1: warrior ethos. Yeah, yeah, very much. So. That's one of
Speaker 1: the things that I love about Lone Wolf and Cub
Speaker 1: is that it's meticulously researched, and the lead character obviously
Speaker 1: follows that ethos very closely and constantly talks about it
Speaker 1: as you do in Mango, like he's always telling his opponents,
Speaker 1: you know, beforehand, like this is why I'm about to
Speaker 1: cut you in half because my specific code of honor,
Speaker 1: uh makes it so I have to do this because
Speaker 1: you're a dishonorable cur Well. I think that the great
Speaker 1: thing about the katana is that it is a perfect
Speaker 1: extension of the samurai and and the cultural qualities that
Speaker 1: go into that. Yeah. So uh, I guess we should
Speaker 1: go ahead and get into it a little bit. I
Speaker 1: feel like everyone knows on some level what the samurai were,
Speaker 1: but we probably need to just unwrap it a bit
Speaker 1: as well here, right, so, as I was mentioning earlier,
Speaker 1: these are not just like your everyday warriors, right, It's
Speaker 1: not like every warrior in Japan was a samurai. They
Speaker 1: were expected to have personal characteristics and attitudes that were
Speaker 1: different from those of the ordinary soldier. And that's why
Speaker 1: they were given the responsibility of wielding these specific weapons,
Speaker 1: because they were considered honorable and trustworthy, just like the
Speaker 1: sword was because it was so meticulously made. And so
Speaker 1: then you get this, uh, what's referred to as the
Speaker 1: lifestyle of kendo. We're not going to go away into
Speaker 1: this in this episode, but that's basically what's referred to
Speaker 1: as the way of the sword, and that subsequently developed
Speaker 1: around these weapons. It was a culture essentially based on
Speaker 1: how amazing these weapons were, not just in combat, but
Speaker 1: just as like artistic artifacts. So the katana itself, it
Speaker 1: was invented a millennium ago. That's crazy to think about,
Speaker 1: and it is basically if you've never seen one before,
Speaker 1: it it's it's this famous curved sword that samurai wielded.
Speaker 1: It's still today marveled for its aesthetic construction and skillful engineering.
Speaker 1: In fact, we were just talking about this before we
Speaker 1: went live on the mic that if you go to
Speaker 1: most comic book conventions or like the local pop culture
Speaker 1: convention for us as Dragon Con, on the floor, there
Speaker 1: is usually a weapons dealer. Uh, and you can buy katanas. Uh.
Speaker 1: They have lots of them. I mean they usually have
Speaker 1: like swords that are like such and such person's sword
Speaker 1: from such and such a movie, right, like Ari Norns
Speaker 1: sword or Protos sword or something like that. Um, But
Speaker 1: you can just buy katanas too, and they're like a
Speaker 1: couple hundred bucks. I think. I have to say I
Speaker 1: always enjoy looking at displays for that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: to see what what is the most ridunculous blade that
Speaker 1: is that is available for purchase, you know, the like
Speaker 1: the least realistic, um, you know, most ridiculously designed weapon, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing too, is like I'm not entirely
Speaker 1: sure unless you're like a really big fan of the
Speaker 1: aesthetics and ethos of samurai lifestyle, Uh, why you buy
Speaker 1: a katana and like put it on the wall in
Speaker 1: your living room. Although, like I've heard of people who
Speaker 1: have those like actually using them in self defense, like
Speaker 1: if somebody breaks into their house. But again, I don't
Speaker 1: think those swords are made for fighting. Like, I think
Speaker 1: they're their metals probably gonna break because they're not made
Speaker 1: in the fashion that these katanas were made in. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: I do want to drive a couple of facts home
Speaker 1: for here for everybody. So when we're talking about the
Speaker 1: invention of the katana sword and the development of katana sword,
Speaker 1: there's no joke katana that invented the blade. No, Like,
Speaker 1: this is a this is an evolution of a tool,
Speaker 1: a tool that was that was that was created to
Speaker 1: to fulfill a particular purpose, but then takes on additional
Speaker 1: sort of cultural resonance as well. Yeah, it's kind of amazing.
Speaker 1: I can't think of a single artifact in our modern
Speaker 1: culture that has this much reverence attached to it, right,
Speaker 1: and that like it's a thing that took like I mean,
Speaker 1: we'll go through this, but it took like something like
Speaker 1: sixteen people to make over the course of like months,
Speaker 1: and uh then you you you know, give it to
Speaker 1: this one person to wield and they're buried with it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of personal attachment to it. I can't
Speaker 1: think of anything. I mean, like everything we have is
Speaker 1: pretty much disposable, right, like your car, your phone, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. It's not like it's made to last for
Speaker 1: your entire lifetime and be made of like the best
Speaker 1: metals that are possibly available. Yeah, this was this was
Speaker 1: a finely crafted item that was that was that was
Speaker 1: built to last. Now, at the same time, I do
Speaker 1: want to stress that there was nothing magical, like there
Speaker 1: wasn't anything truly magical about the Samurai s or these
Speaker 1: were tools and Katona's plus two there's no magical bonus. No,
Speaker 1: no that for horriple that that's even even rare. But
Speaker 1: but as tools, they were items that were they were
Speaker 1: made uh with with various physical restraints in place, and
Speaker 1: it was certain compromises in play. So these were these
Speaker 1: were blades that that could be dull, that could be
Speaker 1: uh damaged or destroyed. Uh you know, generally the blade
Speaker 1: itself would last longer than the hilt to hilt might
Speaker 1: be replaced, etcetera. But it is as phenomenal as these were,
Speaker 1: we don't want to fall into the trap of of
Speaker 1: of thinking them as something um supernatural, you know, yeah, definitely, um.
Speaker 1: But I think that where that sort of supernatural idea
Speaker 1: comes from is that historical adherence to the idea of
Speaker 1: it being so important in particular lifestyle, so the sword
Speaker 1: itself was actually considered a crucial part of a samuraized life.
Speaker 1: In fact, when they were born, a sword was brought
Speaker 1: into the bed chamber during delivery, and when they died,
Speaker 1: their sword was placed by their side. The sword was
Speaker 1: basically said to be akin to their soul, so they
Speaker 1: really thought of it in in that higher regard. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't think you would say today like my
Speaker 1: cell phone is my soul, or my my my toyota
Speaker 1: is my soul. Well, both of your kia soul. I
Speaker 1: think one might not say those things, but I feel
Speaker 1: like some people might have. I think that those statements
Speaker 1: are true for some in it that's true. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a certain amount of marketing around that. Just before I
Speaker 1: came in here, I was reviewing one of our YouTube
Speaker 1: videos and the commercial that played before it was for
Speaker 1: Dodge Cars, and it was Vin Diesel driving a Dodge
Speaker 1: car around and basically being like, if you drive one
Speaker 1: of these, you will be as cool as my characters
Speaker 1: and fast and the furious, uh, and you will belong
Speaker 1: to my muscle family. Oh god, did I saw a
Speaker 1: trailer for one of those films and he referred to
Speaker 1: it as like the order of the muscle. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Is it? Or that's the commercial that's the commercial I
Speaker 1: just saw. Yeah, it's like it's a sacred uh um.
Speaker 1: You know, society templary drop something close to twenty dollars
Speaker 1: on a challenger. Yeah, and you joined the family. Uh.
Speaker 1: But the samurai you couldn't just buy your way into.
Speaker 1: So they wielded two swords and together these were referred
Speaker 1: to as the die show. Die means large and represented
Speaker 1: the single edged katana, and it's small companion was the wakazashi,
Speaker 1: and these were used in close combat, usually for beheading.
Speaker 1: Uh usually like if you had an honored opponent and
Speaker 1: you you had killed them already and you wanted to
Speaker 1: take their head, or for disemboweling yourself during the act
Speaker 1: of seppuku. Uh So sometimes they use ritual daggers instead,
Speaker 1: but this was really what the wakazashi was for, and
Speaker 1: another samurai would usually stand by to behead the victims
Speaker 1: so their death would be quick. This is something that
Speaker 1: Takashi mik Is fascinated within that Thirteen Assassins movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was the sep the the ritualized honorable suicide, right
Speaker 1: and Uh, yeah, I remember that being a major feature
Speaker 1: in James Clavel's Showgun as well. Right, yeah, there is
Speaker 1: a certain Western fascination, right. The katana itself was usually
Speaker 1: thirty to thirty three inches long, while the wakazashi was
Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty inches long. Now here's the thing. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go real deep into the metallurgy of this in
Speaker 1: a second, but just to sort of briefly tell you
Speaker 1: about this, the katana had to be forged so that
Speaker 1: it had both a sharp edge and it would not
Speaker 1: break during a duel. So if it was too hard,
Speaker 1: the sword itself would be brittle, but if it was
Speaker 1: too soft, the sword wouldn't take on the keen edge
Speaker 1: that it had. So, for instance, like if you hit
Speaker 1: something with it and a crack was introduced to the blade,
Speaker 1: as would inevitably happen in battle when you're you know,
Speaker 1: hitting other swords, armor, all kinds of things, it would
Speaker 1: run all the way through the blade. But instead of
Speaker 1: the way that they constructed these, it just stopped at
Speaker 1: the core and they could sort of repair the crack
Speaker 1: around the core. Now, windshields today are actually made with
Speaker 1: a similar principle. They've got these two layers to them,
Speaker 1: so that the first layer cracks when like a rock
Speaker 1: hits your your windshield on the highway, but then it's
Speaker 1: stopped by the plastic interior. That's why you see that
Speaker 1: sort of spider web. Yes, all right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break and we come back. We're gonna roll
Speaker 1: through the metallurgical details of the Samurai sword. All right,
Speaker 1: we returned. So the katanas had to be made of
Speaker 1: this really really well put together steel. It was the
Speaker 1: purest of steels, and it was called tamahagana or jewel
Speaker 1: steel by the Japanese. Now, the methodology for putting this
Speaker 1: together was basically, you had to make the swords core
Speaker 1: with the soft metal that I was speaking of earlier
Speaker 1: that wouldn't break. Then you would cover it with harder metals.
Speaker 1: But these were repeatedly folded and hammered over and over
Speaker 1: again until they were literally millions of these layers laminated together.
Speaker 1: Constructing a sword took three days and three nights. When
Speaker 1: they say that, they're just referring to the metal part,
Speaker 1: not not the other aspects, and we'll we'll walk through
Speaker 1: that shortly. But smelters, basically to put together a sword.
Speaker 1: They would shovel twenty five tons of iron bearing river
Speaker 1: sand and charcoal into a rectangular clay furnace that was
Speaker 1: called the tatara. And the charcoal was important in this
Speaker 1: process because it fueled the furnace up to two thousand
Speaker 1: five degrees fahrenheit. And this was important because it reduced
Speaker 1: that iron ore down to steal and would eventually yield
Speaker 1: that jewel steel that we were talking about. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: do you remember Princess Mononoke? Yes, of course, So I
Speaker 1: had forgotten this, but apparently the plot of Princess Mononoke
Speaker 1: is that the humans are cutting down the trees in
Speaker 1: the forest. The whole reason why is because they're fueling
Speaker 1: these furnaces specifically so they can make more weapons. So
Speaker 1: this was like a major plot point of that film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a while since I've seen that one all
Speaker 1: the way through, because the the Boy is not yet
Speaker 1: ready for the more dramatic Commuzaki films. Yeah, that's definitely
Speaker 1: one of the more intense ones. So this steel, while
Speaker 1: it's inside the oven, it was never allowed to reach
Speaker 1: a molten state, and the reason why was so that
Speaker 1: the carbon that was mixed into the steel would vary
Speaker 1: throughout it somewhere between point five percent and one point
Speaker 1: five percent of its property. These the higher the carbon,
Speaker 1: the harder the steel, so they had to mix the
Speaker 1: two types. You've got the high carbon for this hard
Speaker 1: razor edge and you've got the low carbon for the
Speaker 1: shock absorbent core. Now, on the third night, they would
Speaker 1: actually break open the clay furnace and they'd expose this steel.
Speaker 1: The pieces that broke apart the easiest helped them to
Speaker 1: discern what the carbon content was. Right, they didn't have
Speaker 1: like microscopes to sit there and look at the ore
Speaker 1: and figure out, you know, how much carbon was in
Speaker 1: each one. They literally had to do it by well,
Speaker 1: not by hand, but they use tongs and stuff. Then
Speaker 1: the swordsmith would take this and they would heat it
Speaker 1: and hammer and fold it repeatedly over and over again.
Speaker 1: And the reason why was this would combine the iron
Speaker 1: and the carbon while drawing out any of the undissolved impurities.
Speaker 1: And these referred to as as slag, which I like,
Speaker 1: I think slag is like a good like this sounds
Speaker 1: like a good like like dirty name to call somebody's slag.
Speaker 1: Um If other elements besides iron and carbon remained though,
Speaker 1: that this would weaken the metal, so you had to
Speaker 1: get that slag out of there. The smiths would judge
Speaker 1: how much carbon they had left over in this by
Speaker 1: how much it yielded to them pounding on it over
Speaker 1: and over again with their hammers. So uh. And in fact,
Speaker 1: one of the ways they if they if they found
Speaker 1: that it was too low in carbon, they would actually
Speaker 1: add it back into the mix by exposing the metal
Speaker 1: to ash from rice straw. So it's really interesting, like
Speaker 1: can imagined the like years and years of smith ng
Speaker 1: and learning all of these little techniques, and they weren't
Speaker 1: thinking in terms of chemistry. They weren't thinking like, okay,
Speaker 1: so the molecular bonds of carbon and iron are going
Speaker 1: to produce such in such effect right there, just like
Speaker 1: I know that if I hit it this many times,
Speaker 1: it will get rid of this stuff, and if I
Speaker 1: add rice straw, it'll put it back in. And so
Speaker 1: the doubling of these layers actually increased every time the
Speaker 1: metal was folded, right, and so you go too, and
Speaker 1: then you multiply that, then you it four and so
Speaker 1: on and so on until it results in a final
Speaker 1: count of four million layers. Can you imagine these guys
Speaker 1: just sitting here and hammering this stuff over and over again.
Speaker 1: So you you start to see like the value of
Speaker 1: these swords because they're just really being worked on in
Speaker 1: this artisanal fashion for days. Now. Once the slag is removed,
Speaker 1: the smith would heat the high carbon steel that was
Speaker 1: left into a U shaped channel. Then they would hammer
Speaker 1: the low carbon steel that was left, and they fit
Speaker 1: that snugly into the channel, so the hard steel formed
Speaker 1: that outer shell while the tough steel served the core.
Speaker 1: The smith would then coat the sword in this thick
Speaker 1: insulating mixture of clay and charcoal powder. And what they
Speaker 1: would do is they would they would put different consistencies
Speaker 1: of this clay around the sword, so for instance, the
Speaker 1: front edge would be lightly coated while the rest would
Speaker 1: be covered, and this would protect the blade during further
Speaker 1: heating and give it that kind of signature wavy design
Speaker 1: that you see in the metal, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: the way it reflects now. After coding, the blade was
Speaker 1: heated just below fIF hundred degrees fahrenheit and they forgot
Speaker 1: any hotter. Well that was bad too, because it would
Speaker 1: actually make it crack afterwards. So swordsmiths they were so
Speaker 1: concerned with the quality of these artifacts that they were
Speaker 1: worried about even their sweat touching the metal, so they
Speaker 1: would not touch it with their hands. Like even obviously
Speaker 1: you wouldn't touch like a super hot burning sword coming
Speaker 1: out of a fire. But but like at the very
Speaker 1: stages in between, they didn't use their hands at all.
Speaker 1: They made sure that I mean, they're standing over a
Speaker 1: hot fire for days at a time, they're making sure
Speaker 1: that no sweat is dropping down on this because they
Speaker 1: didn't want it to somehow interfere with this, you know,
Speaker 1: unknown chemical concoction they were working with. Okay, so then
Speaker 1: you get to this stage where the smith pulls this
Speaker 1: out of the fire and plunges it into water for
Speaker 1: this really the rapid cooling process that's called quenching. This
Speaker 1: made me think of Highlander as well. It sounds very
Speaker 1: cinematic moment. You see this in a lot of sword movies. Totally. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: because of the distribution of carbon, there's a difference in
Speaker 1: the degree and speed at which the steel along the
Speaker 1: blade contracts when it's cooled, and this causes it to bend,
Speaker 1: which creates that distinctive curve of the katana. Now, as
Speaker 1: many as one in three of the swords that they're
Speaker 1: constructing were lost during this stage. So we always see
Speaker 1: this in movies. Right, they put it in the water, steam,
Speaker 1: looks super cool. They pull it out, it's the best
Speaker 1: sword ever, right, ready to go. But like one in
Speaker 1: three times they pull it out in the sword with
Speaker 1: like crack and fall apart or something like that. After
Speaker 1: days of hammering this thing millions of times. So the
Speaker 1: quenching actually allowed the clay coating on the cutting blade
Speaker 1: to cool quickly. In this formed something that's called Martin site,
Speaker 1: which is a type of iron that has assumed a
Speaker 1: fretic crystalline structure with enclosed carbon atoms. Now, these atoms
Speaker 1: are what gives that material it's hard quality, so that
Speaker 1: the keen edge that has its hard quality as the
Speaker 1: Martin site. The slower cooling time of the core actually
Speaker 1: created a chorus grain structure that was both soft and flexible.
Speaker 1: So this is why these curved swords. Actually they were
Speaker 1: lowered horizontally into the water. They weren't just like you
Speaker 1: see it sometimes in the films, like they hold it
Speaker 1: by the hilt as if the hilt is already on it, right,
Speaker 1: and they'll just like dip it into the water, and
Speaker 1: that's not how they did at all. They would lower
Speaker 1: them down horizontally, so certain parts were cooled down first,
Speaker 1: which would you know, obviously change the composition of the metal.
Speaker 1: All right, then you've got this blade. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It's made of this amazing composition of different densities of metal.
Speaker 1: Then you polish it for two weeks by grinding and
Speaker 1: polishing it with these stones that are called water stones,
Speaker 1: and they were typically composed of a hard silicate bunch
Speaker 1: of particles that were suspended in clay. The clay as
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're you're rubbing it on these blades,
Speaker 1: wears down over time and that reveals even more silicate particles.
Speaker 1: So this essentially makes the stones polishing quality improve through
Speaker 1: its life as the finer silicate particles come out and
Speaker 1: they make they basically make it so that there's less
Speaker 1: steel removed while you're polishing it. So the stones themselves,
Speaker 1: like we're not even talking about the sword yet. These
Speaker 1: little stones were worth more than a thousand dollars each
Speaker 1: and we're passed down through generations of families, so there's
Speaker 1: just you know, like all these aspects of the sword
Speaker 1: making really had this um, this high quality reverence to them. Now,
Speaker 1: other methods of polishing the swords included fine stone powder
Speaker 1: or powdered steel or something called forge cinder, and they
Speaker 1: would also use wet stones like the way we're used
Speaker 1: to seeing like medieval swords made or sharpened. But it
Speaker 1: was preferred to polish the swords in the winter actually
Speaker 1: instead of the summer. And the reason why was because
Speaker 1: they thought summer was generally more wet and would subsequently
Speaker 1: bring rust to the blade. Now, I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's actually any chemical logic to that, you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of like how they're making these swords, but so
Speaker 1: you would find that most of these katanas would be
Speaker 1: made in the wintertime. Yeah, it seems as you're developing
Speaker 1: your your sword making technique, you know, over over generations,
Speaker 1: like you're gonna have some uh some some essentially some
Speaker 1: science is gonna work its way in there. But then
Speaker 1: you also, uh, there's the potential for just sort of
Speaker 1: superstition to become wrapped up in it as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I imagine that there's probably like an entire culture of
Speaker 1: superstitious mysticism that has maybe been lost to history. Actually right,
Speaker 1: because most of the research that I was looking at
Speaker 1: for this was putting it in present day tense of
Speaker 1: here's how we under dan chemistry, here's how these things
Speaker 1: were made. They weren't looking at it from the perspective
Speaker 1: of the sword smiths. So the final stage is when
Speaker 1: the metal workers add a decorated guard of iron or
Speaker 1: other metals at the sword's hilt. This is, you know,
Speaker 1: the guard for if your sword basically comes in contact
Speaker 1: with another one. It's kind of a what's his name,
Speaker 1: Kylo Wren, he's got his, he's got his lightsaber guard, right,
Speaker 1: So it's this this little circular iron thing that goes
Speaker 1: at the hilt end there, and the carpenters would fit
Speaker 1: the entire sword with a lacquered wooden scabbard and that
Speaker 1: was decorated with adornments, and then the handle would be
Speaker 1: fashioned out of gold, exotic leather and stones. The swordsmith
Speaker 1: then would get the blade returned to him after the
Speaker 1: carpenters did this work, and he would review his work.
Speaker 1: And it actually took fifteen people nearly six months to
Speaker 1: create a single sword. Now I don't imagine they were
Speaker 1: working for six months straight. Obviously, like there were there's
Speaker 1: sort of an assembly line fashions, right, but um, it
Speaker 1: just goes to show you, like how much went into
Speaker 1: the construction of these devices. So it's a finely crafted item.
Speaker 1: I mean in a way you'd be you'd be privileged
Speaker 1: to die, right, It makes me kind Yeah, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: mind that. Uh. So they were worth hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars, especially nowadays, they're worth that much to modern
Speaker 1: art collectors. Sometimes the smiths would put their names on
Speaker 1: this metal, but others actually had like kind of a
Speaker 1: policy where they were like, oh, I'm not gonna put
Speaker 1: my name on there. Anybody who actually understands swords is
Speaker 1: going to recognize just by looking at it that this
Speaker 1: is my work, that the quality here comes from my
Speaker 1: particular style of smith ing. Now, all kinds of other
Speaker 1: things were written on these swords. They would put poems
Speaker 1: on them, sayings, the owner's names, anything you can think of.
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of things that should be noted
Speaker 1: about the blades in terms of quality. First of all,
Speaker 1: the more strongly the whitish color of the hardened blade
Speaker 1: is the more strongly that contrasts with the blue tinge
Speaker 1: of the rest of the blade, the better the metal
Speaker 1: and it's forging were considered, so you could kind of
Speaker 1: look at it same way, sort of like a jeweler
Speaker 1: looks at that stuff today, right. I I imagine they
Speaker 1: had like something kind of like a loop maybe for
Speaker 1: for a magnifying glass that they would look at this
Speaker 1: metal with. There's also another thing that's a sign of
Speaker 1: poor forging, and that was if there was a weak
Speaker 1: glimmer that ran parallel to the hardened edge inside the
Speaker 1: darker metal. So this is the kind of thing that like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you and I would have no idea of,
Speaker 1: but like if you're next time you're at your old
Speaker 1: convention there and there's somebody selling these katanas asked to
Speaker 1: look and say, well, look that glimmer doesn't run right
Speaker 1: the hardened edge. I'm not going to pay for this. Sorry, Deadpool,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Yeah. What kind of katan is Deadpool? Wheel? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I I wish I had to remember him earlier. That's
Speaker 1: what I think. That's most of the katanas that decisi Well, actually,
Speaker 1: and you know, um, this is this is not funny,
Speaker 1: But there was a recent incident in Phoenix at a
Speaker 1: comic book convention in which a guy showed up with
Speaker 1: a bunch of guns, uh, in order to shoot police officers.
Speaker 1: And luckily he was somebody saw him posting about this
Speaker 1: on Facebook ahead of time, and so the security was
Speaker 1: able to arrest him. Since then, at least the conventions
Speaker 1: that I've attended, like I just set up and tabled
Speaker 1: at one two weeks ago. Uh, there's police presence now
Speaker 1: on the floor. And when you go through, the police
Speaker 1: check all of the costplay weapons and they put like
Speaker 1: a little they sometimes they call it peace bonding, but
Speaker 1: it's like a little tag basically that goes around your
Speaker 1: sword or your your toy gun or whatever that indicates
Speaker 1: like this isn't real, You're not gonna hurt anybody. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Deadpools, all the Deadpools I saw, I had these
Speaker 1: little tags. Yeah. So let everybody slastic sword. Yeah yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: in terms of who made the swords where they were
Speaker 1: essentially referred to as words smith's. But the most famous
Speaker 1: of which of these was a guy named and I
Speaker 1: hope I'm getting this right, Massi Moune I believe is
Speaker 1: his name. Uh. And this is this is a name
Speaker 1: that's like sort of legendary in samurai fiction now too,
Speaker 1: like they were. They've I've actually heard like Massa moun
Speaker 1: a sword used before in comics and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: is like this was forged by the greatest of sword
Speaker 1: smith's and so you know it's it's a vorpable blade. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's you mentioned the Highlander sword in the Highlander lore.
Speaker 1: It is supposed to have been forged Massimne in five BC.
Speaker 1: Oh perfect, Okay, I didn't know that. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: So he just made all these swords that all these
Speaker 1: you know, essentially superheroes now wield. BC. Is the Highlander
Speaker 1: date though, don't you don't let that get trapped in here.
Speaker 1: And that's the the actual well that's actually interesting because
Speaker 1: it's not actually known when this guy lives. Um. So
Speaker 1: he reached this sort of legendary status in swords smith
Speaker 1: in lore, but nobody can actually pin down the date
Speaker 1: that he lived in and he was constructing these supposed
Speaker 1: swords um. And you know, basically the way that they
Speaker 1: would make them. The swordsmiths, like I said, this wasn't
Speaker 1: just like a blacksmithing job. This was cultural and so
Speaker 1: they would pray, they would fast, and they would even
Speaker 1: purify themselves in cold water. First before they would start
Speaker 1: the smithic. I wonder, actually I didn't see this in
Speaker 1: the notes, but I wonder if the purification and cold
Speaker 1: water had to do the sweat thing. Maybe like you
Speaker 1: douse yourself in cold water, uh to sort of try
Speaker 1: to keep yourself from sweating for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, And I wonder too about the
Speaker 1: Shinto connections. Here. You're you're making this, You're forging this
Speaker 1: blade out of the elements of the natural world, and
Speaker 1: they're all these uh in every substance has its own
Speaker 1: sort of spiritual energy exactly. You're manipulating those energies to
Speaker 1: create this, this holy weapon. And I would imagine that this, uh,
Speaker 1: this sword in particular would have a lot of spiritual energy.
Speaker 1: But then, so you get these things, you make it,
Speaker 1: it takes six months. How do you then test it? Right,
Speaker 1: It's not like you just hand over this untested blade
Speaker 1: to a samurai. Here you go bet your life on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's real interesting stories, you know, sort of folk
Speaker 1: tales about massa munai and other swords and the sort
Speaker 1: of battling over who had the best swords, and they
Speaker 1: would do stuff like dip their sword into a river
Speaker 1: and like a fish would swim through it and get
Speaker 1: cut in half. And then massa Munai swords didn't cut
Speaker 1: the fish in half because like it was a it
Speaker 1: wasn't an evil sword. It had like peaceful intentions, and
Speaker 1: so the fish would swim around it like stuff like that, right,
Speaker 1: may maybe hold it up and you you speak across it,
Speaker 1: and they only the words, yeah, Well, we were gonna
Speaker 1: get into ways to test a Samurai sword in the
Speaker 1: traditional way of testing samur so at Samurai sword right
Speaker 1: after this break. Alright, we're back. So so yeah, how
Speaker 1: do you how do you test drive a katana? Well,
Speaker 1: so I would imagine that you know, you have to
Speaker 1: make sure that it cuts through flesh. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: just like bang it against iron. Although some of the
Speaker 1: things that I read were that they would essentially like
Speaker 1: to show the quality of it, they would see how
Speaker 1: deep it would go into certain kinds of metals, usually brass.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I ran across a few of those
Speaker 1: those tests as well, But those are kind of dangerous
Speaker 1: because you run the risk of damaging the blade. And
Speaker 1: ultimately it is an item designed uh and and homed
Speaker 1: to cut through human tissue. So they what they like,
Speaker 1: go chase squirrels around. It's a little grizzlier than that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I looked at a few different sources on this.
Speaker 1: The first one I I ran across was one by
Speaker 1: one Benjamin smith Lyman. This was from the Journal of
Speaker 1: the Franklin Institute in eight titled Metallurgical and Other Features
Speaker 1: of Japanese Swords. Given the date on this, given the
Speaker 1: Western author, I was a little skeptical at first, but
Speaker 1: this is what he said. The usual Japanese test of
Speaker 1: a sword or on the human body on corpses of
Speaker 1: beheaded convicts, or in the beheading, or by ruffians on
Speaker 1: beggars and peaceable wayfares, or even a dog. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: read the same article and when I hit the dog
Speaker 1: part weirdly, I was like, yeah, ruffians fine, but the dog.
Speaker 1: Come on. There's actually this kind of infamous Lone Wolf
Speaker 1: and Cubs story about the abuse of a dog by
Speaker 1: um people testing up bow bows. I think they're like
Speaker 1: trying to make sure that their bows are gauged the
Speaker 1: right way. So they tie a dog to like a maple,
Speaker 1: and it runs around in a circle and they have
Speaker 1: to try to shoot it, and it's it's awful, you know,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, supposed to be historically accurate. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, when I first started encountering this material about
Speaker 1: the testing of the blade, you know, as as a
Speaker 1: Westerner especially, you know, as one who comes across the
Speaker 1: Western accounts of the sort of thing pretty frequently, you know,
Speaker 1: I was naturally a little bit skeptical because it sounds
Speaker 1: like a bit of classic Go Orientalism, right, doesn't it,
Speaker 1: and an exotic and barbaric practice of the people from
Speaker 1: a distant And so I was I was inclined to think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe that's that's not quite what's going on. But the
Speaker 1: act did exist, and the act was known as tamishi geary,
Speaker 1: and that literally means to test the cutting ability of
Speaker 1: a blade, and in modern martial art jargon, the term
Speaker 1: often refers to a training method in which the users
Speaker 1: slashes conventional mediums, you know, like a dumby or a
Speaker 1: piece of ballistic ji. Yeah, or I guess one of
Speaker 1: those it's like MythBusters. Yeah, I guess you could also
Speaker 1: slash one of those, like karate dudes. You know, they
Speaker 1: always have that same face, the big reperkarate dudes. I
Speaker 1: never practiced karate. What are you talking about? These are like, Oh,
Speaker 1: you go to a dojo and they all have the
Speaker 1: same weird face and they're made out of pink plastic
Speaker 1: or something none never, so you do, but you're trying
Speaker 1: the sword out on this plastic. Well, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you probably wouldn't want to actually slash one of
Speaker 1: those dojo guys because they look expensive. They're mainly for punch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they probably cost worth than a dog. But you would
Speaker 1: use this nowadays you would use a stand in for
Speaker 1: a human body, But at that at the time, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would use an actual cadaver. And uh, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's worth taking a step back and saying this
Speaker 1: is quite practical, right, because you're crafting a precision weapon
Speaker 1: with an express purpose in mind the slashing and dismemberment
Speaker 1: of human bodies. So why wouldn't you test these on
Speaker 1: the thing itself? Because you're a guy is going to
Speaker 1: go into battle with this thing, and uh, and his
Speaker 1: life is going to be on the line and he
Speaker 1: needs to effectively in the lives or at least injure
Speaker 1: other individuals in order to carry out his job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this I think to probably shows you how that culture
Speaker 1: was hierarchical and elitist in a way, and that like
Speaker 1: the people who wielded these weapons literally thought that they
Speaker 1: were better than other people, and so their lives were
Speaker 1: subsequently worth more. But just the the the idea of
Speaker 1: using a cadaver as a test, I mean, we can
Speaker 1: look to examples in our own culture where things of
Speaker 1: this nature carried out. Forensic scientists today will study the
Speaker 1: effects of the decompos issue on actual corpses. The US
Speaker 1: automotive industry has even depended on the use of cadavers
Speaker 1: to make our cars safer, and the U S Military
Speaker 1: has used cadavers to test everything from land mines and
Speaker 1: sniper rifles to body armor. So it's it's not just this,
Speaker 1: you know, archaic curio from the past. Killing people is
Speaker 1: a serious business, and and in order to to effectively
Speaker 1: carry out that business, uh, we've often turned to the
Speaker 1: use of cadavers. Yeah. Luckily, we've I guess graduated morally
Speaker 1: to the point where we're not putting like death Row
Speaker 1: inmates in cars and then driving them into walls. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so far so right. We haven't hit the running
Speaker 1: Man yet and his kazu hero Sakai points out in
Speaker 1: his two thousand tin paper in which he u He
Speaker 1: looks at skeletal remains that show signs of Tammi shigiri
Speaker 1: uh He says that the uh Tokugawa Shogunate had several
Speaker 1: execut Usian methods. So there was decapitation with the sword,
Speaker 1: there was crucifixion that was burning, and there was also
Speaker 1: sawing or a cubo, and then there was also tamishi
Speaker 1: gary which was also like written into the uh into
Speaker 1: the laws of the day, and this was carried out
Speaker 1: as part of chase execution. This was reserved for male
Speaker 1: felons who are not protected by either samurai or a
Speaker 1: clergical status, and the prep practice survived till the beginning
Speaker 1: of the Meiji period. In that's intense. Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: way this would take places, you had the already decapitated
Speaker 1: corpse and it was placed on elevated soil with its
Speaker 1: limbs held extended for testing by another individual. Then the
Speaker 1: performer of the tamishi geary would cut at fixed points
Speaker 1: on the body, and sometimes you'd have two or more
Speaker 1: bodies piled on elevated soil so as to mark how
Speaker 1: many bodies could be cut through with a single blow
Speaker 1: of the sword. Now, depending on the blade, the number
Speaker 1: might range between two and even six bodies. Holy cow,
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine a scenario. I just watched that
Speaker 1: dumb new Transformers movie an optimist Prime beheads like five
Speaker 1: robots at the same time. But other than that, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine a scenario where you're gonna be cutting six
Speaker 1: people simultaneously. So I guess it's not as much about
Speaker 1: the the practical battlefield application of this, so you wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily be cutting through to samurai enemy samurai at once.
Speaker 1: But it's a testament to the blade's ability. It's like
Speaker 1: bragging rights basically, because you could say, like this, you
Speaker 1: can put a little six on the blade that can
Speaker 1: cut through six. That's exactly what happened. So the blade
Speaker 1: sharpness rating was recorded in the sodomy, which is which
Speaker 1: was inscribed on the tang of the blade. The tang
Speaker 1: is the portion of the blade itself that's fixed in
Speaker 1: the hilt, so that's where most of the writing would be,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't actually see it if the hilt was attached. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this made me think about underwear a lot,
Speaker 1: because this is very much like the tag of the
Speaker 1: underwear that is tucked away. Uh. So that you know,
Speaker 1: I guess if you're just walking around in your underwear,
Speaker 1: nobody can see the tag, but it's there and uh
Speaker 1: and it's also kind of like the inspected by tag
Speaker 1: that you encounter with garments, right Meundy is in Mack
Speaker 1: Weldon should incorporate that into their underwear. So you've got
Speaker 1: like how many bodies this underwear can cut through? Tag? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So this would be chiseled or engraved in gold, and
Speaker 1: it featured the name of the tester, the cutting positions
Speaker 1: of the bodies, and the number of bodies that it
Speaker 1: could that could be cut simultaneously. Um. Yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: very much like a bloody version of the inspected by
Speaker 1: tag and a pair of underwear. It's very d and
Speaker 1: d that like system categorization of the weapons. So, and
Speaker 1: the the other thing about this is there there is
Speaker 1: evidence to support all of this. The aforementioned Sakai paper
Speaker 1: examines Edo era skeletal remains and he identified the unique
Speaker 1: wounds associated with the Tamishi geary practice, and interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: he also explains a couple of vertebra cuts. Uh, they
Speaker 1: are there that possibly occurred during the extraction of the kidney. Uh.
Speaker 1: He says that the Amata family quote who monopolized Tamishi
Speaker 1: geary business during the eighteenth century, also made a medicine
Speaker 1: called jim Ton from corpse kidneys. So, okay, so you
Speaker 1: get your corpse, well presumably it gets its head cut
Speaker 1: off in an execution, then you remove its kidney, and
Speaker 1: then you put it out for this this cutting practice, right,
Speaker 1: and then afterwards I'm assuming they're not buried. They must
Speaker 1: just like throw them to the wolves or something like.
Speaker 1: They they've treated this corpse so poorly at this point,
Speaker 1: I doubt they're gonna like put a headstone over it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a testament to um to the the the
Speaker 1: societal barriers that were in place at the time, because again,
Speaker 1: this was not not everybody was going to end up
Speaker 1: being used to test samurai swords. Only particular uh, male
Speaker 1: of felons, of of the correct class. Right, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about like if I had to be executed, if I
Speaker 1: would want to be executed this way, and like I said,
Speaker 1: well you would, don't. It's not so much the execution
Speaker 1: this was this is just just what's done to your body.
Speaker 1: So It's really not that different from say, you know,
Speaker 1: you die, you die by natural causes than your body
Speaker 1: is used to test landlines for the U. S. Military. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in a way you can think, hey, you've got
Speaker 1: to be a part of the of the creation of
Speaker 1: this fine blade, the rating of this blade exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's maybe it's not a bad way. Couldn't have
Speaker 1: been made without me and my meat. So everyone out
Speaker 1: there might be wondering, well, is this is this legit?
Speaker 1: Could blades really cut through this much human meat? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, we we have the sudden
Speaker 1: may information on the blades themselves to to go by.
Speaker 1: We have skeletal remains to to look to to know
Speaker 1: this was actually a thing. Uh. The individuals who performed
Speaker 1: these tests were masters licensed by the government, so it
Speaker 1: couldn't be performed by just anyone and a career. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and it was this was also very much
Speaker 1: a value added thing. I was reading the Connoisseurs Book
Speaker 1: of Japanese Swords by Cocaan Nakayama, and uh, and he
Speaker 1: said the following, there is no doubt that that tamish
Speaker 1: she may attracted customers and could raise the price of
Speaker 1: a sword in much the same way that a title
Speaker 1: could even during a time of lasting peace and low
Speaker 1: demands for swords, right because you're getting into the artistic
Speaker 1: value of yeah yeah, but it's uh, it's not really
Speaker 1: the sort of thing we can really test for in
Speaker 1: modern times with an old blade. Right now, various professional
Speaker 1: and when we shall we say less than professional swordsmen
Speaker 1: have taken katanas to to pig carcasses and other carcasses
Speaker 1: off and on YouTube, and the results are pretty convincing.
Speaker 1: You must know about this that one of Joe and
Speaker 1: my favorite things on the internet, I believe that's The
Speaker 1: company is called Blue Steel, and they produce replicas of
Speaker 1: various historical weapons, and their YouTube video yos are literally
Speaker 1: these it's these office looking guys with these weapons hacking
Speaker 1: away at like giant pieces of beef hanging from a book,
Speaker 1: or like a like a full pig. They'll hang like
Speaker 1: a full pig corps and they'll come at it with
Speaker 1: like a battle axe or something like that. And it
Speaker 1: is the craziest thing like to to watch because they
Speaker 1: play like this generic metal music over and and just
Speaker 1: showing these guys like just going to town on these
Speaker 1: animal corpses, but basically to be like, look at how
Speaker 1: cool our axes are. Yeah, I think I may have
Speaker 1: seen I've seen videos of this nature. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was Blue Steel because one of the groups
Speaker 1: that conducts these kind of tests is Association for Renaissance
Speaker 1: Martial Arts or ARMOR, and I saw I was looking
Speaker 1: at a straight dope article, uh, from the last few
Speaker 1: years where they spoke to Armor director John Clements, and
Speaker 1: he states that there have been there have been plenty
Speaker 1: of such experiments, you know, animal carcasses to prove that,
Speaker 1: to prove that, yeah, these these weapons were effective at
Speaker 1: body hacking, and that even fairly blunt blades can get
Speaker 1: the job done as long as the weapon has quote
Speaker 1: a hard and well honed edge, hitting forcefully with the
Speaker 1: correct geometry and energy. Yeah. So this actually gets into
Speaker 1: like a good point that I'll bring up shortly about
Speaker 1: like the composition of the sword geometrically in terms of
Speaker 1: how much cutting power it has. Yeah, and then it
Speaker 1: also gets into the fact that you had to know
Speaker 1: how to use it because even a finely tuned item
Speaker 1: like this, it's not it's not a sentient dungeons and
Speaker 1: dragon sword. It's not going to go out there and
Speaker 1: hack for you, you have to be able to wield it.
Speaker 1: But but one thing that to keep in mind, and
Speaker 1: this is something that John Clements pointed out, is that, yes,
Speaker 1: the average samurai was skilled with their blade, but only
Speaker 1: five per cent of samurais were probably masters, which sounds appropriate,
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't. I mean, mastery means you have a
Speaker 1: degree of skill with an item or practice that is
Speaker 1: beyond that of most practitioners. Yeah, I mean I would
Speaker 1: think about it the same way, probably, jeez. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to insult anybody who's in the military, but
Speaker 1: I imagine that, like there are certain uh people who
Speaker 1: are really good shots, right, like who are like the
Speaker 1: five percent top tier of being able to hit something,
Speaker 1: maybe usually snipers, right. Uh, So it's probably similar, I
Speaker 1: would guess, so. Yeah. And and then of course in
Speaker 1: the modern military terms, of course, is important to realize
Speaker 1: that you're going to have specialists and then you also
Speaker 1: you also need a lot of generalists and specialist in
Speaker 1: other areas to carry out the overall goals of the combat. Yeah, exactly. Now,
Speaker 1: Clements makes some other solid points about the katana here
Speaker 1: that I want to share. He says that a curve
Speaker 1: blade is mechanically superior to a straight one at delivering
Speaker 1: edge blows to produce injury, and due to its hardness
Speaker 1: a single curving edge, the katana is very good at
Speaker 1: penetrating even hard materials with straight on strikes. So that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that's interesting is the curvature is
Speaker 1: actually an effect of the engineering, but it's also really
Speaker 1: useful in terms of the application of the weapon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he also points out that you could thrust. You
Speaker 1: can thrust with the katana, but it is really a
Speaker 1: dedicated slicer, so you had to put it in Dungeons
Speaker 1: and Dragons terms. You can go for that piercing damage,
Speaker 1: but you really want that slashing damage. And uh. And
Speaker 1: he also had a note to hear about the durability
Speaker 1: of the katana versus the Western long sword. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: read a long article that I didn't include in our
Speaker 1: notes that was comparing the two and which one was better.
Speaker 1: That was that was from Arma, that was by climates.
Speaker 1: He did one comparing the long sword to the katana
Speaker 1: and another comparing the katana to the rapier, and he
Speaker 1: said he makes a solid point. He says, no sword
Speaker 1: is indestructible. They're all produced as perishable tools with a
Speaker 1: certain expected working lifetime. And there's also evidence of both
Speaker 1: the sword styles via a katana or long sword were
Speaker 1: made inversions intended for armored combat and versions intended for
Speaker 1: unarmored combat. Yeah. Yeah, I think that you can see
Speaker 1: that with the katana construction obviously, because there were certain
Speaker 1: unarmored reasons why they would fight with them. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: this is in this last point is probably it might
Speaker 1: be an overstatement of the obvious, but the Samurai sword
Speaker 1: was not the the only method of combat for the Samurai.
Speaker 1: They depended on range weapons such as long bows and
Speaker 1: and and later the Japanese matchlock gun. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they had poll weapons, so it was all part of
Speaker 1: a well, it was a singularly important weapon and certainly
Speaker 1: had extreme cultural importance. It was not the only tool
Speaker 1: of battle, right. Yeah. My understanding actually from the research
Speaker 1: I didn't include this in the notes, was that historically
Speaker 1: Samurai actually started off as archers, as as horse mounted archers,
Speaker 1: and they would specialize in that, and then I think
Speaker 1: when the engine hearing of the katana came into play,
Speaker 1: that's when they sort of graduated into that proficiency, and
Speaker 1: then like you say, when a gunpowder and the engineering
Speaker 1: of matchlock. Probably not pistols. I don't know what those
Speaker 1: how big those guns were, but it was it was
Speaker 1: like a match It was like a long rifle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then they started using those. So before we cut out here,
Speaker 1: I have to include this one study that I found.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of fun. It is a nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six study that was commissioned by the U. S. Army.
Speaker 1: I don't know where they got this sword from, but
Speaker 1: essentially this general sent this group of scientists a katana
Speaker 1: that they had and they wanted it to have a
Speaker 1: metallurgical examination. I think the results are pretty fascinating in
Speaker 1: lieu of what we've talked about today in terms of
Speaker 1: how they're put together. Essentially, they wanted to understand its
Speaker 1: metallurgical properties and how the variations in the sword fabrication
Speaker 1: from different eras produced different style blades. Now, this particular
Speaker 1: blade that they looked at, I'm immediately because of the date,
Speaker 1: thinking that this must have come from somebody in World
Speaker 1: War two, right, like either somebody who's stationed in Southeast
Speaker 1: Asia or like, um, I'm reading it right now, and
Speaker 1: there's like the one of the character's father like brings
Speaker 1: back a katana with him from like a Japanese soldier
Speaker 1: he killed in combat or something like that. Like I'm
Speaker 1: thinking it's some scenario like that, but I'm sure it
Speaker 1: could have totally been a peaceful method of acquiring this
Speaker 1: sword too, you know. Yeah, I um, and I actually
Speaker 1: grew up with a Samurai sword in the house because
Speaker 1: it was it was a family member on my dad's
Speaker 1: side had had acquired the item after the war, and
Speaker 1: I think I think he bought it um in Japan,
Speaker 1: if I'm remembering the story correctly, but I would. I
Speaker 1: would often like take it was an interesting weapon to
Speaker 1: take out and hold as a child because you could,
Speaker 1: I was, I didn't wave it around, like I knew
Speaker 1: that this was a very dangerous item because you could.
Speaker 1: I don't know how sharp it actually was in comparison
Speaker 1: to like a well maintained weapon, but you could. You
Speaker 1: could look at it and you could imagine the damage
Speaker 1: that could be done with it, and even imagine the
Speaker 1: damage that might have been done with it in the past. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this sword that they looked at in particular my theory,
Speaker 1: and I'll see, let's see what you think afterwards is
Speaker 1: that this was probably produced to sell to people it
Speaker 1: or whether they were tourists or Japanese soldiers who just
Speaker 1: wanted like a representation to bring with them into battle.
Speaker 1: This doesn't sound like it was something that was meant
Speaker 1: to be used in combat. They found that this sword
Speaker 1: was made from extremely poor quality steel, and so this
Speaker 1: gives you a hint. It had one point oh five
Speaker 1: percent carbon, so earlier we said it was between point
Speaker 1: five and one point five percent carbon was kind of
Speaker 1: your your limited range. So it sounds like this is
Speaker 1: right in the middle and it's considered poor. So they
Speaker 1: examined it both microscopically and macroscopically, and in addition, they
Speaker 1: performed tension tests on the core. It found that the
Speaker 1: core of this sword had a tensile strength of a
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety thousand p s. I Now, the sword
Speaker 1: they examined it had a cutting angle of twenty two
Speaker 1: to forty degrees, which I'm imagining is far more curved
Speaker 1: than what we usually think of as a katana. And
Speaker 1: they actually say that this gave it less cutting power
Speaker 1: than the reference literature that was available in nineteen Because
Speaker 1: traditional katanas were supposed to have a fourteen degree angle
Speaker 1: for the cutting edge. They also found that the steel
Speaker 1: that was in this it had high sulfur and phosphorus content,
Speaker 1: which was indicative of a poor melting practice. So we
Speaker 1: go back to what we talked about earlier. This is
Speaker 1: the slag. They didn't work the slag out of this
Speaker 1: metal and it was still in there. The hardness values
Speaker 1: of it. It actually indicated to them that the sword
Speaker 1: was air cooled instead of water cooled or quenched. Uh
Speaker 1: and this also contributed to its poor quality. So all
Speaker 1: these things, I mean, you can make a katana right
Speaker 1: like through mass production, but they're not necessarily going to
Speaker 1: be these these artistic artifacts that we've been discussing today.
Speaker 1: Now today, if you purchase the steel that that jewel Tomahagan,
Speaker 1: a steel I referred to earlier, it can cost fifty
Speaker 1: times more than ordinary steel, even when we're talking about
Speaker 1: like modern smith and cons Now I'm gonna throw this down.
Speaker 1: This is a little bit of like Marxist theory here.
Speaker 1: But the Samurai sword is this great example of Marx's
Speaker 1: uh capitalist mode of production. That theory that is put
Speaker 1: to work basically because you've got this object that's used
Speaker 1: to be produced over a long period of time by experts,
Speaker 1: but now it's produced on a mass scale, right, for
Speaker 1: less cost and less quality. You can buy these katanas
Speaker 1: everywhere now. There's no way they're engineered to be as
Speaker 1: precise as the originals were. Only these swordsmiths knew how
Speaker 1: to precisely build an object for the requirements that were necessary.
Speaker 1: We can reproduce them using industrial techniques, but they don't
Speaker 1: have that artistic beauty to them. I think in a
Speaker 1: previous episode you and I were talking about the idea
Speaker 1: of like an artistic object having an aura, right, and
Speaker 1: this seems to be sort of the same thing here
Speaker 1: is that, Uh, these katanas that were really refined in
Speaker 1: the method that we talked about earlier had an aura
Speaker 1: to them that the mass produced ones don't. Well, and
Speaker 1: they're kind of it seems like it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the modern samurai sword. Samurai sword produced today is kind
Speaker 1: of like a well bred dog, you know, like it
Speaker 1: has it may look great, it it may it may
Speaker 1: you know, you can check off all the criteria, but
Speaker 1: it has no purpose. It's not just as the you know,
Speaker 1: whatever the small legged dog is is not actually being
Speaker 1: used to hunt rats in a warehouse. The samurai sword,
Speaker 1: if it is not being used as as a weapon
Speaker 1: of an instrument of death and dismemberment, then is it
Speaker 1: truly a Samurai sword anymore? Right, of course, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a complicated question when you consider all the cultural
Speaker 1: value that's placed on the item. But still at the heart,
Speaker 1: you strip away all those layers of culture. You have
Speaker 1: a tool, and that tool has a purpose and it
Speaker 1: it does not fulfill that purpose anymore. Well, in the
Speaker 1: last three hundred years, it seems that the Japanese themselves
Speaker 1: understood this because they would recognize not all Japanese, but
Speaker 1: obviously people who had a smithing background. They would recognize
Speaker 1: when European medal was used instead of Japanese steel, and
Speaker 1: they referred to that, and they would actually market and
Speaker 1: the marker would say Southern barbarians. Um. Now, the emperor
Speaker 1: banned samurai from wearing their swords in public in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six, so that was essentially the beginning of the
Speaker 1: end of that warrior culture. So subsequently we're now here
Speaker 1: almost a hundred and a few years later. You know,
Speaker 1: katanas are basically trinkets that are bought at you know,
Speaker 1: conventions or I don't know, I suppose you get them
Speaker 1: at like certain thrift stores, but you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like like oddity shops. Yeah, I mean, well, there was
Speaker 1: the whole scene in Pull Fiction, right and I take
Speaker 1: place in essentially a pawn shop, and Bruce Willis's character
Speaker 1: has kind of run awhile with the katana. At the
Speaker 1: end of it, they have that. The TV show Atlanta
Speaker 1: has a scene like that as well, where they're in
Speaker 1: a pawn shop and guys like, guys like you should
Speaker 1: totally buy the sword. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's interesting
Speaker 1: it In many cases the swords kind of become trinkets
Speaker 1: or in the higher levels, they become you know, very
Speaker 1: important collectible items, museum pieces. And still the the idea
Speaker 1: of the samurai continues to fascinate, it can you continues
Speaker 1: to cast this long shadow across Japanese culture, as you know,
Speaker 1: as well as as various other fandoms, like the the
Speaker 1: idea that the archetype of the samurai is um you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty powerful, definitely, and I imagine that there
Speaker 1: are people out there listening who know a lot more
Speaker 1: about this than we do, and I'd be curious to
Speaker 1: hear from you, like did we did we miss anything?
Speaker 1: I hope not. We did a lot of research for
Speaker 1: this episode, but is there something about these newer katanas
Speaker 1: that we don't know uh in terms of like the
Speaker 1: smithing process and why they're they're subsequently worthless or made
Speaker 1: by Southern barbarians. Well, and of course we we we
Speaker 1: didn't have time to go into much in the way
Speaker 1: of the martial art of using these swords, and there's
Speaker 1: a there's a tremendous amount of information out there on that.
Speaker 1: And if you are a connoisseur of such martial arts,
Speaker 1: so we'd love to hear from you because perhaps that
Speaker 1: you have some some favorite details that you would like
Speaker 1: to share. Yeah, So if you want to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us about that, tell us your sword stories.
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