Shinto into Shinshinto - why?

[John A Stuart]

Rigor would not be a problem if done the same day, at least within 6-8 hours. Death and corpses were an abominable thing and I would think used and disposed of ASAP. Kubikiri shouldn't be too difficult and I suspect any problem would not be the sword's fault, but, hesitancy or lack of training on the part of the kaishaku. John

[Ken-Hawaii]

Okay, as the OP, I'll admit we've gone a tad off-topic now. Interesting for sure, but getting back to my question, Markus has come closest to getting the info I want:

 

Back to your initial question Ken, this date can be explained by the Japanese trend to stick to nengô eras. I.e. some date Suishinshi Masahide´s main artistic period around Tenmei (1781-1789), others around Kansei (1789-1801). In short and following this trend you can say that if Masahide was active around Tenmei and the founder of shinshinto, shinshinto - upon reversion - can be dated from about Tenmei (1781) onwards.

 

Taking that as a given, how did Masahide's efforts to revitalize the craft with a return to the Koto methods get spread around Japan? It's not as if they had instant messaging, & I would think that most smiths wouldn't be all that willing to share forging & yaki-ire information. Chris mentioned that he wrote at least one book - do we know anything about his writings? - but even with lots of students & a book, how did his ideas spread from Musashi Province to far-flung places like Osaka? From the blades I've seen, the old Koto techniques migrated a lot faster than I would think possible in that era. Do we have any info on the diaspora?

 

Ken

[cabowen]

As I mentioned Ken, Masahide became well known through his teachings and reputation. He attracted students from around Japan based on this reputation and word of mouth.. These students spread out across Japan and further spread the word. As an example, his top student, Naotane, is known to have traveled across Japan and forged swords in a wide variety of places. If you look at the lineages of his school, you will see that there are upwards of 50 or more students in his school, many of which had large schools themselves once they returned home.

[kusunokimasahige]

To answer Ken, I think that one should never underestimate the word of mouth in ancient societies.

 

Messengers were despatched on a regular basis, even in the ancient Roman world it often took no longer than a month to bring a message from Egypt to Hadrian's wall.

 

KM

[Eric H]

do we know anything about his writings?

 

According to Nagayama and Nakahara, the Shin-Shinto period started around the Meiwa Anei eras, ca. 1764 and lasted until Meiji 9 (1876 Nagayama) or Meiji 10 (1877 Nakahara, the year of the Satsuma Rebellion)

 

Masahide wrote two books:

 

Token Jitsuyo Ron (Theories on practical use of swords, a technical study of Koto of the Heian and Kamakura periods)

 

Kenko Hiden Shi (Secret techniques of sword production)

 

Eric

[Ken-Hawaii]

Eric, are you sure that Masahide wrote Token Jitsuyo Ron? I thought that Naotane wrote that study.

 

I'm not familiar with Kenko Hiden Shi, so thanks for that info. I'd love to get my hands on an English translation of that book!

 

I know Masahide's school had a ton of students, but had no idea that his techniques would/could spread so quickly. Word-of-mouth messages I can understand, but passing along forging & yaki-ire details are a little more than that. And the new availability of modern steels would have to come along at the same time, wouldn't it?

 

Ken

[Lance]

Besides attracting new students, If the lords of the different provinces became aware of this new and improved way of making swords (by looking to the past) I'd assume they would probably want to learn more about them and have the same production abilities themselves, sending some of their own experienced /talented smiths. Would they need to serve a full apprenticeship or only spend a year or two before returning home? Then, if they taught their own students the same principals at home it could increase exponentially, one sword smith could produce 5 others through teaching, maybe more?

 

Regards,

Lance

[cabowen]

Eric, are you sure that Masahide wrote Token Jitsuyo Ron? I thought that Naotane wrote that study.

 

I'm not familiar with Kenko Hiden Shi, so thanks for that info. I'd love to get my hands on an English translation of that book!

 

I know Masahide's school had a ton of students, but had no idea that his techniques would/could spread so quickly. Word-of-mouth messages I can understand, but passing along forging & yaki-ire details are a little more than that. And the new availability of modern steels would have to come along at the same time, wouldn't it?

 

Ken

 

No, that was written by Masahide....

 

Not sure what "modern steels" you are referring to....this was still the Edo period and Japan was closed up fairly tightly....there weren't any modern steels piling up on the docks in the late 1700's....

[kusunokimasahige]

If that is so, how do you explain the existence of many of Nanban Tetsu tsuba and swords ?

 

You cannot discount Deshima and its trade, however imperfect and small it was.

 

European steel was not as bad as people might think. Metallurgical research has shown

that even during the 16th and 17th century the steel was quite good.

[Toryu2020]

I think we are confusing Shinto with Shin-shinto if we are talking about modern steels,

Western imported steels were a fad at the beginning of the Edo period, and while some argue that the low carbon content made them ideal for heavily carved tsuba the steel was not very good for sword-making. Yasutsugu seems to have used it sparingly in his swords as a kind of novelty, it was never the bulk of the material used to make up a sword.

 

Rather than "new" methods of sword-maing Masahide was arguing for a return to the older methods and with more local flavor. Hence we see many of his students reviving long dormant schools upon returning to their homelands; Dotanuki and Enju to name two.

 

Fukko, a return to the righteous ways of the past, was a popular idea at the time in politics. In the art of sword-making Masahide was arguing for the same thing, in the highly literate Japanese society of the times his ideas would have spread where perhaps even his book and his students did not reach. The country was ripe for revolutions.

 

As for why these dates? Fukunaga gives 1772 to 1912 as the dates for the Shinshinto period, because it was in Taisho 3 nen that Hon'Ami Koson first made the distinction between the Shinto and Shinshinto eras in a publication. The argument was that it was Masahide's call to return to the sword-making of the past that caused the changes and so it should start roughly from the time he began making swords. An old timeline published by the NBTHK some 40 years ago gives Kyoho 3 (1803) as the date when Masahide made his clarion call...

-t

[cabowen]

If that is so, how do you explain the existence of many of Nanban Tetsu tsuba and swords ?

 

You cannot discount Deshima and its trade, however imperfect and small it was.

 

European steel was not as bad as people might think. Metallurgical research has shown

that even during the 16th and 17th century the steel was quite good.

 

Nanban steel wasn't "modern steel".....It was crucible steel made for centuries.

 

And it was a rare and precious commodity in Japan in the Edo era. Never used to make a complete blade.

[Rivkin]

Judging from metallographic data, namban-tetsu was just as diverse and vague definition as namban tsuba. There are billets of namban-tetsu that are clearly Indian/Sri-Lankan crucible steel with characteristic horrible quantities of phosphorus (very brittle) and carbon (probably also brittle, but too many opinions at this point).Yet, there are results from complete hagired swords that show very little phosphorus and carbon at just 0.8%. Taking in mind a number of earlier Japanese swords with 0.4% (and somewhat better ones from late Muromachi/Shinto with similar composition) it looks like just a decent quality western steel from XVII-XVIIIth centuries. Too much in terms of al oxides and other things you would not find in steel today. Never seen a shin-Shinto blade prepared and tested, but I would suspect it would in most cases go like contemporary western steel (already produced in quantities in Asia) rather than tamahagane. Which flavor - crucible (which by then regained popular in the West as the premier sword-knife steel, mostly in England) or something worse like puddling - that would be interesting indeed. But XIXth century western and western-like steels are tremendously diverse and one needs the test to be done by someone who actually knows and "feels" them.

 

Rivkin.

[Ken-Hawaii]

If I could afford one of these (http://lasersec-systems.com/laser-elemental-analyzer.html) at $36,000, it would be simple to do a detailed elemental analysis of both whole & broken blades. That would make it easy to figure out which steels were used when & where. Starting with samples of tamahagane & steels from various eras, building a database would answer a lot of questions.

 

Ken

[Eric H]

Never seen a shin-Shinto blade prepared and tested

Jokeishi Masaaki (1861-1864) a student of Hosokawa Masayoshi is known to have performed tameshigiri using deer horn.

 

Eric

[cabowen]

I think he is talking about a modern metallographic test.

[Rivkin]

If I could afford one of these (http://lasersec-systems.com/laser-elemental-analyzer.html) at $36,000, it would be simple to do a detailed elemental analysis of both whole & broken blades. That would make it easy to figure out which steels were used when & where. Starting with samples of tamahagane & steels from various eras, building a database would answer a lot of questions.

 

Laser tools as a rule will not give a good reading on carbon (and neither will do most tests), plus all of them are targeted towards modern scrap metal. Expect a lot of false positives - they are calibrated to look for modern metals like nickel or chrome, and often pullout materials like rare earth. Plus those elements used exclusively in nuclear plant operations and highly radioactive medical equipment are often given priority, so one expects them to show up as well.

Old steel is just plain carbon, iron,silica, phosphorus and sulfur (two problems that limit how good a sword can be) and slag, so one needs to calibrate exclusively towards those. Some will have trace elements of copper or Mb, which can then be tied to specific iron source.

 

Rivkin

[Ken-Hawaii]

Laser tools as a rule will not give a good reading on carbon

 

Sorry, but that is incorrect, Rivkin. I've used instruments like this - but not handheld until recently - for many years as an engineer. Carbon is simply one more element that can be measured & quantified. But evaluating the elemental components of a sword's cross-section over a period of, say, 500 years would yield some very interesting data.

 

Ken

[Rivkin]

I would strongly disagree. It is a very common thing that people take commercial tools to old blade and then publish 2% carbon, trace of uranium and other things. Unfortunately, even journals like Nature or Science often run such articles. When one actually analyzes the experiment it nearly always comes down to people just using a tool and believing the output.

 

Just my personal opinion and sorry if it contrasts yours. My experience would be that carbon and rare earth are most often measured with great imprecision.

 

The basic problem is that the best spectral line for carbon is located in >UV. Complicated detection, probably in vacuum and laser excitation has to be done with powerful expensive laser and multiple frequency converters - and in the end UV optics is very expensive and almost non-existent.

One is better off using sparks and other smith-level methods that will give 50% error bar.

 

The thing used by most true steel makers is blasting steel with very high voltage and then calculating how fast did the particles emanated by the sample traveled. Very precise, very expensive, absolutely destructive, gives you exact % of C, but it helps greatly if you know which elements you have in the sample to begin with. The most fool-proof method, but using a typical setup on antique steel will still give bizarro results with probably read huge % of Cr or Ni. Which is excellent if you want to file for grant money saying that Japanese were ingineous in producing Cr 2000 years before Europeans, but at the source is not knowing what the test really means.

 

Rivkin