Clarification on the quality of Nihonto blades

[Ninja]

Hello everyone,

I had a discussion with a person who stated that "Nihontos suck as swords", and more specifically:

 

Quote

That traditional Japanese swords made by traditional Japanese methods are brittle and lose their edge easily because they are created by a method designed to make sharp blades from some scarce iron ore.

He concludes by writing that probably a kitchen knife from a Chinese butcher (or any culture with access to decent iron ore) of the same period was sharper, held the edge better, and was less brittle than most Japanese swords

 

 

Would someone kindly be able to explain to me if there is any truth to these claims? Thank you

[Baba Yaga]

14 minutes ago, Ninja said:

Hello everyone,

I had a discussion with a person who stated that "Nihontos suck as swords", and more specifically:

 

 

Would someone kindly be able to explain to me if there is any truth to these claims? Thank you

 

Kitchen knifes don't need to be light and durable at the same time. IMO we should only measure greatness in ones own time. 

[Ninja]

Hi and thanks for Your reply,

Could You please elaborate more? Do you mean that Nihontos, being light swords, were more fragile because of this?

 

Are the current traditional Nihontos more solid?

[Baba Yaga]

I don't think fragile is the right word as they've last multiple battles and many polishes. There is always a give and take when a smith is manufacturing anything for lightness, speed, durability.  

[oneshot onekill]

 

[Matsunoki]

Hi Francesco

in a life or death battle, your friend can have the Chinese kitchen knife and I’ll have the katana. When chopping vegetables he is welcome to the kitchen knife. Absolutely pointless debate. How many 1000 year old Chinese kitchen knives has he seen?

[Ninja]

Hi Colin,

Yeah I agree, absolutely pointless. But I opened the discussion because I am not informed about the forging technique and materials of an ancient Nihonto, so I wanted an expert opinion

[Tensho]

Kind of a loaded question. Not all Nihonto are created the same. By this I mean not all smiths created excellent swords. If you take a sword by an excellent rated smith im sure it would compare to a excellently made modern Japanese blade of today. But they were also designed for a different environment compared to other cultures(armor, swordsmanship etc..)

 

Since your brought up knives, Japanese chefs knives are INDEED brittle on the edge. They are edge hardened(like nihonto) and can take wicked sharp edge but will chip easily whereas a western blade tends to fold instead of chip. 

[mas4t0]

This isn't as simple as it might seem. I can explain this metallurgically and from the perspective of engineering (materials and dynamics) if you'd like, but it'll be a very long post and quite technical. The Japanese sword is a unique solution to a unique set of constraints. It is different in construction, metallurgy, geometry and dynamics from all other swords and is optimised for a different usage case.

 

Having trained in JSA for many years I would certainly not select a Japanese sword for use in a duel. There are "superior" swords for any scenario (other than the draw cut).

[Ninja]

10 minutes ago, mas4t0 said:

This isn't as simple as it might seem. I can explain this metallurgically and from the perspective of engineering (materials and dynamics) if you'd like, but it'll be a very long post and quite technical. The Japanese sword is a unique solution to a unique set of constraints. It is different in construction, metallurgy, geometry and dynamics from all other swords and is optimised for a different usage case.

 

Having trained in JSA for many years I would certainly not select a Japanese sword for use in a duel. There are "superior" swords for any scenario (other than the draw cut).

 

Hi Mark,

The point is that It had started as a joke of mine about the question "what would you bring if you were in the Middle Ages?" and I replied "a Nihonto, so whoever disturbs me I can slice him up" (obviously written ironically)... The guy replied "Nihontos suck," and that's where the discussion started. But I really don't think they sucked so much that they couldn't kill a man 

[Rivkin]

They cut really well, and yes, they are the most brittle swords that ever existed in the world. You will not find non-Japanese blade with hagire and major chips also tend to be uncommon.  There is a reason visible nie is considered major fault in other cultures.

A great cutter with very low survivability.

[PNSSHOGUN]

These articles will be of interest:

 

• http://www.nihontocraft.com/Aratameshi_Nihonto.html
• http://www.nihontocraft.com/Suishinshi_Masahide.html

 

 

[mas4t0]

12 hours ago, Ninja said:

 

Hi Mark,

The point is that It had started as a joke of mine about the question "what would you bring if you were in the Middle Ages?" and I replied "a Nihonto, so whoever disturbs me I can slice him up" (obviously written ironically)... The guy replied "Nihontos suck," and that's where the discussion started. But I really don't think they sucked so much that they couldn't kill a man 

 

Yes, of course, a Japanese sword will work just fine to murder an unarmed man. It'll work just fine even if you have no training, so long as you draw the blade successfully.

 

That said though, a large shard of broken glass will work just fine for that purpose.

 

However, you'd very likely lose a duel against an (equally skilled) opponent using any of a large variety of European sword types; though it would serve you much, much better than the aforementioned meat cleaver.

 

The point being made here isn't on the basis of metallurgy, but on the basis of the different dynamics, handling characteristics, range, etc and the very different fighting styles which the swords lend themselves to.

 

The question raised at the start of the thread is a very high level question, which is to say that it can't be answered succinctly. The most appropriate response really is to provide a list of a few books which lay out the foundation for the discussion, but I'm guessing you're not sufficiently invested in this to read 1000+ pages?

 

On the point of quality, it depends how you define it. If quality (to your friend) means durability then he'll no doubt agree that overalls are higher quality than bespoke suits.

[Ninja]

4 hours ago, PNSSHOGUN said:

These articles will be of interest:

 

• http://www.nihontocraft.com/Aratameshi_Nihonto.html
• http://www.nihontocraft.com/Suishinshi_Masahide.html

 

 

 

Thanks

 

3 hours ago, mas4t0 said:

 

Yes, of course, a Japanese sword will work just fine to murder an unarmed man. It'll work just fine even if you have no training, so long as you draw the blade successfully.

 

That said though, a large shard of broken glass will work just fine for that purpose.

 

However, you'd very likely lose a duel against an (equally skilled) opponent using any of a large variety of European sword types; though it would serve you much, much better than the aforementioned meat cleaver.

 

The point being made here isn't on the basis of metallurgy, but on the basis of the different dynamics, handling characteristics, range, etc and the very different fighting styles which the swords lend themselves to.

 

The question raised at the start of the thread is a very high level question, which is to say that it can't be answered succinctly. The most appropriate response really is to provide a list of a few books which lay out the foundation for the discussion, but I'm guessing you're not sufficiently invested in this to read 1000+ pages?

 

On the point of quality, it depends how you define it. If quality (to your friend) means durability to then he'll no doubt agree that overalls are higher quality than bespoke suits.

 

Thank you for the explanation. You killed me with the last example 

[roger dundas]

As a point of fact and for your interest Francesco, Mark himself indeed came very close to losing his life when a shard of glass was buried in his chest.

He wrote about it in the Izakaya section last year. You might not have seen it ?

Roger 2

[Ninja]

10 minutes ago, roger dundas said:

As a point of fact and for your interest Francesco, Mark himself indeed came very close to losing his life when a shard of glass was buried in his chest.

He wrote about it in the Izakaya section last year. You might not have seen it ?

Roger 2

 

If we are talking about deadly objects, even a baseball bat or a stone thrown at the head can kill. Even if you drown yourself while eating you die....

I haven't seen it because I signed up yesterday

[Ken-Hawaii]

Until Tokugawa Iyeasu united Japan around 1600, swords were made to be used in battle. Blade made in Kamakura & Nanbokucho eras were often used in battles, day after day, & are considered to be the epitome of sword uality. Over the next few hundred years, most of the early superior construction techniques were lost because they were never written down, & hundreds of years of war resulted in many inferior swords. Look up kazu-uchimono.

 

But I have a katana that was made in 1302, that looks brand-new, & it's certainly in better shape than I am! I've trained in use of the sword for almost 4 decades, & this is the blade I would use, if CQC (close-quarter combat) was necessary. I suggest taking the "Nihontos suck as swords" as the BS it obviously is.

[mas4t0]

Given that what I said above is very qualitative and that you'd really need to handle some different swords to understand the difference, I'll add some diagrams.

 

Diagrams will be more useful than diving into physics and the associated technical terms; radius of Gyration, Mass at blade node, Hilt Inertia, Tip Rotational Inertia, etc. 

 

Here's the effective mass curves and agility diagrams of a few very different swords.

 

 

 

Below is the effective mass curve and agility diagram for a katana. There will of course be quite significant variation from one specific blade to another, but in my experience this quite well shows the handling characteristics of a katana as compared to the other sword types shown above.

 

 

As you can no doubt intuit from these diagrams, the katana will much more easily amputate arms or cut a man in two but is much less nimble.

 

Clearly it's not just about mass (how heavy the sword is). Imagine lifting a bar loaded with 80kg, now imagine if all 80kg were loaded on one side of the bar...

 

 

With the above in mind, the following videos should clarify the way the dynamics of the blade affect swordsmanship.

 

Katana:

 

 

 

Longsword:

 

 

 

Épée (770g  90cm blade):

 

 

Sabre (500g 88cm blade):

 

 

Shinai (~500g ~80cm):

 

 

[Baba Yaga]

I never seen that long sword sport before, most interesting. 

[O koumori]

There are many, many definitions of “quality.”

From a practical standpoint (that of protecting one’s life on the battlefield), the best definition is  “meeting the customer’s requirements.”

For the sword, the prime requirements are:

The sword must be sharp and able to cut well

The sword must be resilient and able to resist breaking

The sword must not bend during use

The Japanese sword has throughout its history proven its ability to meet these requirements.

While modern collectors’ definitions of quality might border on the purely aesthetic, the beauty prized by today’s connoisseurs is a by-product of meeting the above practical requirements; the  beauty of the grain resulting from the forge folding methods to ensure resiliency and bending resistance, and hamon structure from differential hardening to ensure sharpness in addition to the resiliency.

[Ninja]

@mas4t0 I think I will start approaching you as an encyclopedia. Thank you for the explanation, I will reserve the right to read with due concentration what you have written. It is not a speed-reading thing

[Gakusee]

3 hours ago, mas4t0 said:

Given that what I said above is very qualitative and that you'd really need to handle some different swords to understand the difference, I'll add some diagrams.

 

Diagrams will be more useful than diving into physics and the associated technical terms; radius of Gyration, Mass at blade node, Hilt Inertia, Tip Rotational Inertia, etc. 

 

Here's the effective mass curves and agility diagrams of a few very different swords.

 

 

 

Here is the effective mass curve and agility diagram for a katana. There will of course be quite significant variation from one specific blade to another, but in my experience this quite well shows the handling characteristics of a katana as compared to the other sword types shown above.

 

 

As you can no doubt intuit from these diagrams, the katana will much more easily amputate arms or cut a man in two but is much less nimble.

 

Clearly it's not just about mass (how heavy the sword is). Imagine lifting a bar loaded with 80kg, now imagine if all 80kg were loaded on one side of the bar...

 

 

With the above in mind, the following videos should clarify the way the dynamics of the blade affect swordsmanship.

 

Katana:

 

 

 

Longsword:

 

 

 

Épée (770g  90cm blade):

 

 

Sabre (500g 88cm blade):

 

 

Shinai (~500g ~80cm):

 

 

Hey, Mark - from which textbook / book are these technical diagrams? Very interesting…. Thanks 

[Franco D]

FYI, ...

[AntiquarianCat]

@Ninja
I have always found the “terrible steel” meme to be absurd. Not because it sounds crazy but because the people saying it are always guessing and a quick check of sources refutes them. Because a background in medical research I’m used to having to support every claim made with evidence so that makes guys guessing and assuming their guess is a fact seem wild.

 

I would advice a check through google scholar: there is no evidence to support the claim nihonto had bad steel, especially for their time. In fact if you look at Yaso’s studies in metallurgic journals you can see it actually holds up surprisingly well even by modern standards  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264439179_Study_of_strength_and_toughness_in_Japanese_sword_produced_from_Tamahagane_steel_by_Tatara_process

With all scientific sources contradicting the armchair I am forced to conclude he just made it up and thought it sounding plausible made it right. A guess is good enough to justify experiments. Not enough to guess a fact.

“He concludes by writing that probably a kitchen knife from a Chinese butcher (or any culture with access to decent iron ore) of the same period was sharper, held the edge better, and was less brittle than most Japanese swords”

One of the funnier ironies is that while HEMA reenactors without evidence have claimed medieval western swords were made of super steels, Sword and the Crucible, which referenced many studies found medieval and early modern western specimens were rife with slag inclusions, even in the edge which was something nihonto avoided. A devil’s advocate could with more credibility go “a kitchen knife from a Chinese butcher is sharper and less brittle than the medieval western specimens”.

I don’t really believe that. The samples they looked at were likely not representative and many traditions like Toledo were known for excellence. But as is, there is ironically much more evidence of European swords having brittle slag rife edges than there is in Japan. In all honesty comparisons seem rather silly and too often are just people guessing.

Now much more useful to me than armchairs guessing which sword is weaker than a Chinese butcher knife are studies that note parallels between Europe’s celebrated traditions and Nihonto. For instance Spain also used mild steel cores and harder edges. Perhaps convergent evolution lead to makers of working swords using that as a trick to improve toughness? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328748284_Welding_by_Hot_Forging_of_Two_Carbon_Steels_for_the_Manufacture_of_Spanish_and_Japanese_Weapons

 

[mas4t0]

Even if someone hasn't had the opportunity to handle a lot of swords, they'll likely have a decent intuitive grasp of dynamics from the use of racquets, bats, hammers, axes, etc. So let's imagine a continuum with a badminton racquet at the left and a hammer at the right.

 

Further left gives greater manoeuvrability, speed and agility due to lower tip inertia (inertia referring to an object's resistance to change in motion). The low inertia of the head of the badminton racquet and the shuttlecock (weighing ~5g) results in measured speeds of the shuttlecock (in competition) of just under 500 km/h.

 

Further right gives increased tip inertia so it'll cut more effectively but at the expense of manoeuvrability (as a direct consequence of the higher inertia).

 

Basically it'll tend to continue along the path it is following, even when acted on by an external force (whether that be from the opponent's flesh or force applied at the hilt), meaning that it requires more force to change it's motion i.e. that a given force will result in a lower rate of change of velocity (i.e. lower acceleration) due to the greater mass (Force = Mass * Acceleration).

 

You'd have just as little success driving a nail with a badminton racquet as you would playing badminton with a hammer.

 

On our continuum, the rapier is (quite significantly) to the left of the katana just as the épée and sabre are to the shinai. Note that the shinai is lighter than the épéé but that the higher tip inertia requires (facilitates) an entirely different style of swordsmanship.

 

The video below is perhaps of interest. It's worth keeping in mind though that a shinai is significantly lighter than a katana (so is faster, more manoeuvrable, etc) while the épéé is slightly heavier than the smallsword on which it's based (so the smallsword would be faster, more manoeuvrable, etc).

 

 

 

These are all trade-offs in the design of the sword and, with a sharp weapon, I'd generally prioritise agility.

 

Blunt force is very different. It's often a good strategy in boxing (for instance) to take two or more glancing blows in order to land one solid blow in return. Julio César Chávez vs. Meldrick Taylor (17 March 1990) is possibly the best example of this. Size and weight make a huge difference in blunt force, in fact one of best boxers of our generation recently lost in a big upset after moving up one too many weight classes and facing an opponent who was too big and strong for the difference in skill to carry the day.
 

Sharp and pointy things change that entirely, in the absence of armour you only need to touch the opponent to end his life. In a duel I'd rather have the agility to cut first than have the tip inertia to cut deeper.

 

All of that said, I'd always want a Japanese sword if duels, fights, etc were to begin with blades sheathed as opposed to blades drawn. A swordsman skilled in Iai will have killed his opponent with a draw cut before the opponent (armed with a smallsword for instance) has even begun to draw his blade.

 

11 hours ago, Gakusee said:

Hey, Mark - from which textbook / book are these technical diagrams? Very interesting…. Thanks 

 

Hi Michael,

 

Those are from an online tool called the Weapon Dynamics Computer.

 

There's not much documentation provided:

• Documenting Sword Dynamics
• Walkthrough

 

The tool facilitates quantifying the key variables for comparison of different swords.  It's especially useful when you already have a frame of reference and want to understand the dynamics of blades you can't handle in person.

 

This video gives a practical demonstration of the fundamental aspects of sword dynamics:

 

 

If you ever have some spare time on your hands and want to get to grips with dynamics more generally I'd suggest this course. Dynamics is a knowledge world in and of itself so it probably can't be understood much beyond what we've covered here without running though the underlying physics.

 

 

Sword dynamics is a quite simple application of dynamics, so I'm not sure if there exists any book specifically on the application to swords. If you watch this course though you'll be able to apply it to anything you want.

[Bruce Pennington]

This has been a great read!!!

 

Francesco - I think the original complaint from your discussion with another guy has been covered pretty well.  But it is a complaint of artificial construction. Sure, if someone had just said to him "there are no better swords than a Japanese nihonto" he might have some grounds to argue.  I wasn't there, so I don't know what or who he was arguing with.  But like mentioned above (I think), I don't think anyone who values Japanese swords would make such a claim.  We simply value them for what they are.

 

They were a tremendous improvement over the Chinese swords of the 8th and 9th centuries.  They got so good, that when Japan tried to switch to Western styled swords and Western sword manufacturing, and realized how poorly these 'new' tech swords performed in battle (cold Chinese weather), soldiers BEGGED for the old samurai type swords.

 

Ohmura made a concerted effort to argue that SMR Mantetsu blades were just the latest evolution of the ancient art (which I agree with), but in the testing results you can see that they were just equal, not better than, the good ancient blades.  But even this says the ancient nihonto were equal to the best 'modern' (1930s-1940s) technology could produce.

 

Long story to say - nihonto didn't come into existence to be better than swords made on the other side of the earth.  But, by and large, they are pretty darn great!

[Ninja]

@Bruce Pennington "This has been a great read!!!"

 

Definitely! I just saved an offline copy of the thread 

[Dave R]

 Something I found interesting some time ago.

In the 17th century the Dutch traders were in no doubt about the quality of Japanese blades and one comment was that they cut up a western blade as though it were a flag (a type of reed). They also bought, and traded or gave as gifts some of these blades to customers in the West!

 During the Crimean War the Royal Navy sent an expedition to the Eastern end of the Russian Empire,   and they used some Japanese ports as bases for resupply, there is an interesting account of this (Notes on the late expedition against the Russian settlements) . Again mention is made of the quality of Japanese blades, and unsuccessful efforts made to buy them. There is an anecdote in this about some good natured swordplay on one of the ships with a samurai, and the samurai's blade came off the worst! The writer comments that he would have liked to know if this was a particularly poor nihonto, or a particularly good naval sword. He does mention that the Western blade was an officers sword made by Wilkinson . 

 Japanese blades were made as they always had been, Western blades had moved on quite considerably!

[Bugyotsuji]

You can shave with a Wilkinson. 

[ROKUJURO]

Francesco,

to reply to your initial question

....That traditional Japanese swords made by traditional Japanese methods are brittle and lose their edge easily because they are created by a method designed to make sharp blades from some scarce iron ore.

He concludes by writing that probably a kitchen knife from a Chinese butcher (or any culture with access to decent iron ore) of the same period was sharper, held the edge better, and was less brittle than most Japanese swords....

I would like to mention that this text is contradictory in itself and shows some lack of understanding of metallurgy basics.

In the traditional TATARA (bloomery kiln) process, the quality of the iron ore used has not so much to do with the quality of the resulting iron. With the refining processes used in Japanese sword-forging, a very pure and homogeneous steel is the result.

In high carbon steels, brittleness can occur as a form of extreme hardness. Sharpness has nothing to do with it; you can even sharpen a simple soft iron blade to razor sharpness, but it will not keep its edge in use. The famous composite technology of Japanese swords allows to have a sharp while very hard edge combined with a resilient body of the blade. 

Looking at the purpose these Japanese swords were/are made for (= a slicing cut), there was - and is - no better techniques available with low-alloy carbon steels, and you will struggle to find a modern high-end steel with similar properties under these conditions.   

A butcher knife can never be compared to a Japanese sword as the uses are very different. You would not compare an axe (with good edge retention in use) to a sword, would you?