Departments
Intermediate Japanese - Free Online Course
KATANA
刀
sword
The sword had multiple layers for the samurai of Japan’s feudal period. On one hand, the swords were a symbol of the samurai’s rank, as only the samurai were permitted to wear them in public. And since the samurai were warriors by trade, they also regarded their swords as occupational tools.
Famous Samurai Writings on Swordsmanship
The samurai studied swordsmanship with deadly seriousness, and some teachers of the art of fighting with a sword became famous. One of the most celebrated was Miyamoto Musashi, author of The Book of Five Rings. This book, published in 1643, was a primer on swordsmanship. In more recent years, businesspersons in Japan and other countries have begun reading it for its metaphorical value.
Yagyu Munenori (1571-1646) was a high-ranking samurai who also wrote about and taught the art of swordsmanship. He distinguished between the “life-giving sword” and the “killing sword.” A sword could be “life-giving” if it killed an evil man, because the villain’s future victims would then live. The “killing sword,” of course, was a blade that struck down the innocent along with the wicked.
The Craft of Sword-making
Skilled sword-makers were also highly respected, and their work was performed under Shinto conditions of ritual purity. For a samurai, a sword was a considerable investment, and blades were often passed down through successive generations from father to son. Each sword smith tried to create a “brand image” of sorts; and marked his finished blades in a distinctive manner.
Swords were first imported to Japan from China and Korea during the third century. The unique curved Japanese-style blade emerged around 900. Japanese sword smiths produced other innovations as well. By combining hard and soft metals in a blade, they were able to create swords that were razor-sharp, yet sturdy enough to slice through armor and bone. A well crafted samurai sword could slice a man completely in half with a single stroke.
Japanese sword-making reached its peak around 1200; and blades made in Japan were in great demand in China and Korea. By the middle of the 1400s, tens of thousands of Japanese swords were exported to the Asian mainland each year.
