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Forging perfection (HANNA KITE, 3/16/03, The Japan Times)

Yoshindo Yoshihara is not looking forward to his trip to the United States this month. Ever since Sept. 11, Yoshihara, a master swordsmith, has had difficulty checking his baggage through U.S. airports. For security reasons, United Airlines has insisted that his chest of four swords, each one worth about 3.5 million yen, remain unlocked.

"I am afraid they will be stolen in transit," says Yoshihara, "but I obviously cannot take them on board." Sixty-year-old Yoshihara is reluctant to switch airlines because he has accumulated too many rewards with his frequent-flier program.

Such are the concerns of a modern-day swordsmith. While Yoshihara's techniques date back to 12th-century Japan, his workshop in Katsushika Ward, northern Tokyo, is hardly in a feudal rut. Yoshihara's fleece-clad son, age 36, like to have the radio blaring as he works, while one of Yoshihara's three disciples enlivens his corner of the studio with a Takanohana poster. Then there's the wall of Yoshihara's living room filled with his grandchildren's crayon drawings.

Yoshihara is a 10th-generation swordsmith. His grandfather produced katana (long swords) for the Showa emperor, and his brother, Shoji, plays a swordsmith in Tom Cruise's upcoming movie "The Last Samurai."

By law, Yoshihara is only allowed to forge two katana, or three shorter swords, per month. The shorter swords include the tanto, which is shorter than 30 cm, and the wakizashi, which spans from 30 to 60 cm. In the Momoyama and Edo periods, samurai wore both a wakizashi and katana at their waist. The longer katana is defined as a blade over 60 cm in length. [...]

Yoshihara says the most difficult part of making a sword is reworking and tempering the special steel he buys that is made in a tatara (Japanese-style smelter). Steel, an alloy, is formed in the smelter by heating iron-oxide sand, or iron ore, so that it naturally combines with the carbon released from burning charcoal.

About 2 to 3 kg of steel at a time are heated at 1,300 degrees and hammered into flat sheets 0.5 cm thick. The sheets are then laid on top of each other and hammered together over the fire. Once the steel is malleable enough, the metal is folded over onto itself several dozen times.

After the hard steel form of the sword has been made in this way, a soft inner layer of steel is sandwiched in between and the blade is then shaped into the length of the final sword. Japanese blades are so outstanding because they combine two types of steel, a soft but flexible low-carbon inner layer, and a hard, high-carbon outer layer that forms the cutting edge.

Crafting a strong and flexible blade from naturally nonhomogeneous iron ore is an art that is slowly learned over time. "I wish I could take a pill and automatically have that sense," says Yoshihara's disciple, Hiroshi Yamashita.

"You have to know what a good sword is," explains Yoshihara. "But then you have to be able to produce that with your hands."

After the inner and outer layers are hammered into a sword, two types of insulating clay are painted on. A thick clay is added to the cutting edge, while a thinner clay is spread along the smooth edge.

The blade is then heated and quenched in water. The layers of clay affect the cooling rate of the metal, thus adding another dimension of hard and soft metal to the sword. The pattern left by the clay is called the hamon (temper pattern), whose beauty is one measure of the swordsmith's art.

At this point the sword is passed onto a polisher. Depending on the sword, the polisher usually spends about eight days on one blade. With a new one, the time is evenly split between relatively rough polishing, using stones slightly larger than a video cassette, and the final polishing, which includes the use of paper-thin stones glued onto a special kind of washi paper.

Yoshihiko Usuki, a Japanese sword polisher who works with Yoshihara out of his shitamachi studio in Tokyo, compares sword polishing to fixing someone's makeup. "Every sword is different; you have to figure out how to polish each individual sword."

Usuki tries to remove the least amount of metal possible. "You can only take away from a sword," he explains, "you cannot add to it."

Usuki likens sword blades to manju (stuffed dumplings), with the soft inner layer being the anko red-bean paste and the outer layer the steamed bread. "You cannot polish away so much of the outer surface, otherwise the anko starts to show."

Sword polishing does not run in Usuki's family: He was a disciple for 10 years before opening his workshop in 1985. As a parting gift, his teacher gave him a lifetime supply of the washi paper used in the last steps of the polishing process. "The craftsman that made the paper is no longer around," says Usuki, now aged 46.

The highlight of Usuki's career was a Kamakura Period blade he encountered last year. A collector who has known Usuki for many years asked him to repolish the sword. Even though steel naturally tarnishes over time, this blade was in perfect condition. Usuki was amazed by the thought of how many people had to be involved in preserving the blade for the past 800 years.

Don't want to show too much anko. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 16, 2003 7:39 AM