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Post by Drunk Merchant on Jun 16, 2022 19:39:40 GMT
We don't know how many antique katana weren't preserved. And European medieval is the time period when only ko-to were made in Japan. Dunno how many preserved ko-to exist compared to medieval swords. And Europe has seen more wars with more destruction and probably resmithing after the medieval era. We actually do have a good sense of how many nihonto were made, most losses happened during/after WW2 but about 4 million survive. Well over a million koto survived although most are sengoku. Still there are hundreds of thousands of excellently preserved pre onin and the only real shape compromise most had was that they were cut down to uchigatana/katana size. It’s not hard or particularly expensive to get a sword the age of The Black Prince, if you have a tolerance for it being cut down. www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/22165-how-many-vintage-swords-still-exist/Japan is lucky enough that china never considered them worth invading Yuan dynasty launching the biggest naval invasion till D-Day say hi. Asides from that China would seldom invade neighbors, they were not a militaristic society. Remember Confucius intentionally excluded soldiers from his four classes and denigrated them. So given Jin and other barbarians invading them they’d rather bribe them off than go all out. War against a stratocracy with fanatic and aggressive soldiers like Japan would probably be one of their least favorite things which is why they were happy to end the Imijin war after Toyotomi’s death. Also treeslicer commentary is genius. Pretty much take that as the proper answer.
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Yagoro
Member
Ikkyu in Kendo and Kenjutsu Practitioner
Posts: 1,584
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Post by Yagoro on Jun 16, 2022 20:07:30 GMT
We don't know how many antique katana weren't preserved. And European medieval is the time period when only ko-to were made in Japan. Dunno how many preserved ko-to exist compared to medieval swords. And Europe has seen more wars with more destruction and probably resmithing after the medieval era. We actually do have a good sense of how many nihonto were made, most losses happened during/after WW2 but about 4 million survive. Well over a million koto survived although most are sengoku. Still there are hundreds of thousands of excellently preserved pre onin and the only real shape compromise most had was that they were cut down to uchigatana/katana size. It’s not hard or particularly expensive to get a sword the age of The Black Prince, if you have a tolerance for it being cut down. www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/22165-how-many-vintage-swords-still-exist/Japan is lucky enough that china never considered them worth invading Yuan dynasty launching the biggest naval invasion till D-Day say hi. Asides from that China would seldom invade neighbors, they were not a militaristic society. Remember Confucius intentionally excluded soldiers from his four classes and denigrated them. So given Jin and other barbarians invading them they’d rather bribe them off than go all out. War against a stratocracy with fanatic and aggressive soldiers like Japan would probably be one of their least favorite things which is why they were happy to end the Imijin war after Toyotomi’s death. Also treeslicer commentary is genius. Pretty much take that as the proper answer. Lol I wouldnt really count the yuan dynasty as china in a traditional sense. Also the mongol invasions numbers were greatly inflated by the Kamakura shogunate, but still impressive nonetheless.
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Post by Drunk Merchant on Jun 16, 2022 20:17:03 GMT
Well the Yuan chronicles also boast of a hundred thousand men and that’s an oft cited number apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA502217:https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA502217.pdf//apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA502217.pdf I’m bet many were support and slaves to man the ships though. That said yeah, china would also probably tell you they aren’t a real Chinese govt. The other dynasties were much more concerned with importing specie to keep their economy running. Case in point their main interaction with Japan was importing silver from them which they were almost desperate for till they found the Spanish dollar and fell in love with it vacuuming a huge chunk of them up www.jstor.org/stable/2123972?seq=4In short old china was more interested in economic penetration than war.
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steveboy
Member
Measure twice, cut once.
Posts: 372
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Post by steveboy on Jun 16, 2022 20:39:59 GMT
Can I just say that this thread is a fantastic example of how constructive argument can be hugely informative? The original question is really interesting, and the ensuing discussion has been a treat.
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Post by durinnmcfurren on Jun 16, 2022 21:23:43 GMT
Yeah just to clarify, I am aware that proper polishing removes very little material, and the Japanese sword polishers have really mastered the art. BUT:
1. You still have to remove any corrosion. Which could be substantial.
2. You still remove a tiny bit of metal.
Which leads to how you eventually end up with 'tired' Japanese swords!
My main point is that whereas old European swords are usually left untouched, and thus with a patina or even corrosion, Japanese swords are generally polished, any corrosion removed, etc.
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Yagoro
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Ikkyu in Kendo and Kenjutsu Practitioner
Posts: 1,584
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Post by Yagoro on Jun 16, 2022 21:28:08 GMT
Yeah just to clarify, I am aware that proper polishing removes very little material, and the Japanese sword polishers have really mastered the art. BUT: 1. You still have to remove any corrosion. Which could be substantial. 2. You still remove a tiny bit of metal. Which leads to how you eventually end up with 'tired' Japanese swords! My main point is that whereas old European swords are usually left untouched, and thus with a patina or even corrosion, Japanese swords are generally polished, any corrosion removed, etc. You also left out that most euro swords are so corroded that there isn't much left worth saving
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Post by Drunk Merchant on Jun 16, 2022 21:35:40 GMT
Yeah just to clarify, I am aware that proper polishing removes very little material, and the Japanese sword polishers have really mastered the art. BUT: 1. You still have to remove any corrosion. Which could be substantial. 2. You still remove a tiny bit of metal. Which leads to how you eventually end up with 'tired' Japanese swords! My main point is that whereas old European swords are usually left untouched, and thus with a patina or even corrosion, Japanese swords are generally polished, any corrosion removed, etc. The corrosion is already lost and all metallurgical and metalographic properties you would want to admire have been converted to mineral nonsense. Not good. What’s far worse is that since the laws of our universe make unoxidized Fe metastable the corrosion will grow akin to mad cow and turn more healthy edge into mineral nonsense and within a century you have extensive surface damage that has compromised function and study. As I said, a slow march to extinction. In that case a one time rust removal is preferable as you’ve taken out the cancer. Probably the reason Japan used uchiko in the past (and first rate uchiko has a bacteria sized 2um corn so that shows you how small it is) was that it’s use could stamp out the cancer of nascent rust. Ditto for oil. ![4C0295F4-2281-4471-8337-B7B8977F29CE.jpeg](//storage.forums.net/1694914/thumbnailer/XARBUKCMYeppSkGWLODM.png) Usually, given the vast amount of non tiered swords this one the age of the black prince for instance, families did a reasonable job of caring for their prized blade, possibly because for some reason samurai had very little disposable income on average and so you wouldn’t be able to replace a high class sword with another easily. www.nihonto.com/samurai-income/ Whatever the reason those aggressive polishes are the exception and if you’ve let it get to “ it almost definitely had a pretty severe patina on it or some corrosion.” It’s an oh shi where you’ve compromised the sword (or dagger in my case) and so it becomes a 400$ 700 year old toy for me. By the way another corollary for why Japan tried it’s best to persevere koto swords (even if they did cut them down to katana size) was that they consider them better than later swords. A lot of the specialized steels koto swords had were lost, as were techniques like true utsuri. And so older swords are better lookers and according to Japan better cutters. That is another reason why a family if lucky enough to have a sword predating the onin would try to care for it since you can’t replace it with a new one.
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Post by durinnmcfurren on Jun 16, 2022 21:52:03 GMT
Interesting, so Japanese swords by and large have been kept polished on a regular basis since their production?
Also, how old are most of the Japanese swords in good condition? 17th century? 15th?
Beyond some very basic metallurgical stuff, I do not know a tremendous amount about Japanese swords or how they have been preserved. However, it makes sense that in a somewhat isolated culture, where tradition is very prized and where new designs for swords aren't common (or at least, they aren't that different from previous sword designs), that people would generally keep their swords in good condition for a long time.
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Post by Drunk Merchant on Jun 16, 2022 22:00:41 GMT
Interesting, so Japanese swords by and large have been kept polished on a regular basis since their production? Also, how old are most of the Japanese swords in good condition? 17th century? 15th? Beyond some very basic metallurgical stuff, I do not know a tremendous amount about Japanese swords or how they have been preserved. However, it makes sense that in a somewhat isolated culture, where tradition is very prized and where new designs for swords aren't common (or at least, they aren't that different from previous sword designs), that people would generally keep their swords in good condition for a long time. ![4DF814BD-3DBE-4E86-8CFF-DF0F2C02ABEC.jpeg](//storage.forums.net/1694914/thumbnailer/XgcFbdjHDshaTMHqEqPN.png) ca1300s This one 1300s, was a tachi for the Yamato Buddhist temples but after their defeat it ended up in the hands of a shimazu who cut it down and remounted uchigatana style. It’s a curse in that he significantly altered the shape to turn it to a foot sword but a boon in that it being the best he could get it was cared for almost religiously by his heirs… then the last one used it for martial arts and thankfully got bored and sold it to a dealer who sold to me Many such cases While swords like that are desirable they’re not unaffordable. Both respect for ancestors like tree said and the expense of new swords and the impression Japan had that koto had lost techniques (and so the only true replacement would be another archaic sword) meant they’d oil them all the time, wipe them and treat them as the main heirloom. I’ll try to find the Darcy post that goes over this. ![F6E8606B-C92B-43C3-993D-53C476F3C549.jpeg](//storage.forums.net/1694914/thumbnailer/fKpEnftpfvjryzGSbpzu.png) ![627639FA-071A-4D9F-BFFA-386FE4A7AE9A.jpeg](//storage.forums.net/1694914/thumbnailer/OlsIjXRcbCOHsgspAxfp.png) ![FFFDC97F-006B-4F7E-9875-1C0F8FB508B7.jpeg](//storage.forums.net/1694914/thumbnailer/BtfuRKgoWlIIFbMTwcrl.png) caearly1400s They are doing worse nowadays though, many ingrate kids will take their old sword like this one, early muromachi, pre war vintage and bubba them up with dremel carvings, cut wrecklessly and then sell for pocket change. That’s why I see no harm in westerners colecting, compared to people who no longer care we can do better. Admittedly if you are on a budget it is harder to get medieval era swords than newer ones and it’s a happy break when you can get those for under 2K but it’s not at all impossible to get excellently conserved apart from cut down cheap. The one area where I see them the least is gunto. Seen many gendai many Shinto many shinshinto but hardly any koto. Perhaps they knew on some level they and their swords wouldn’t make it back and so they left their finest hidden with their family? Idk, maybe I have selection bias since most of my gunto belonged to junior officers. If I collected flag officer swords that might not hold. Still it says a lot about preservation when their dudes were running around with near mint state 1600s swords. I see very little in the way of grain openings of signs of tiredness and that’s not so bad for a sword about the age of the mayflower ![5D75E3EF-2BCF-492C-85A8-60A48415C4A8.jpeg](//storage.forums.net/1694914/thumbnailer/wObcPhNwhelqnCmSsqbQ.png) ![CED15445-93C0-45F4-9436-74CACD17785F.jpeg](//storage.forums.net/1694914/thumbnailer/NSAcaouDLlcGehkTKLla.png) ca1600s And given how little I spent on that it can not possibly be rare. Cut down is the main detriment old swords have many are otherwise excellently conserved.
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Post by treeslicer on Jun 16, 2022 22:32:43 GMT
Interesting, so Japanese swords by and large have been kept polished on a regular basis since their production? Also, how old are most of the Japanese swords in good condition? 17th century? 15th? Beyond some very basic metallurgical stuff, I do not know a tremendous amount about Japanese swords or how they have been preserved. However, it makes sense that in a somewhat isolated culture, where tradition is very prized and where new designs for swords aren't common (or at least, they aren't that different from previous sword designs), that people would generally keep their swords in good condition for a long time. .....The one area where I see them the least is gunto. Seen many gendai many Shinto many shinshinto but hardly any koto. Perhaps they knew on some level they and their swords wouldn’t make it back and so they left their finest hidden with their family? Idk, maybe I have selection bias since most of my gunto belonged to junior officers. If I collected flag officer swords that might not hold...... Not necessarily, Isoroku Yamamoto carried a gendaito. www.nihontocraft.com/Yamamoto_NBTHK.html
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Post by Drunk Merchant on Jun 17, 2022 0:37:24 GMT
Thank you, that was a great read. I guess he had a lot more common sense than most of his peers. Taking a well made new sword instead of a treasure sword being another example.
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Post by adamko on Jun 19, 2024 15:10:20 GMT
We don't know how many antique katana weren't preserved. And European medieval is the time period when only ko-to were made in Japan. Dunno how many preserved ko-to exist compared to medieval swords. And Europe has seen more wars with more destruction and probably resmithing after the medieval era. Japan had an history of the veneration of the swords which included depositing them in shrines and temples. Many of the best preserved swords has been found in such places. In Japan they also polish the crap out of their swords. The finish you see on ancient japanese swords are not the original one but was done in the last 100 years or so. They also remove the grip when presented or replace the original with new one. On the other hand in Europe they tend to conserve ancient swords as they were found, they consider the original condition a value in itself. That said there are thousands of European kit that had been preserved in perfect condition in various armories. Like in the Palace armoury, Malta, Kremlin Armoury, or the Brittish Royal Armory. Pick up any of their swords put on a mirror polish and they will look as good as any japanese sword
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Post by bandeaurouge on Aug 5, 2024 1:57:21 GMT
ITs the environment of preservation that is different.
When you get into europe, the storage was essentially dust it off, and put it on a wall for 400-600 years. And once its hung up, no one does anything to it. Other then young kids touching it.
In japan it seems to have been "put the sword on display, clean it every now and then. Wear it for a festival, clean it, put it back on display".
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