Dear Friends

I will be away in Africa for the next three weeks. Blogging will resume on my return.

What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 16

I let the sand flow through my fingers, one more time. A volcanic cone hung in the distance, and Enoshima floated offshore. The scene had been a popular ukiyo-e woodblock subject during the Edo period. Hiroshige and Hokusai had both included it in their 36 Views of Mount Fuji. There have been some changes. The palequins and fishermen and kimono clad women with umbrellas, sailboats and horses and low tide shellfish collecting have become microwave towers and power poles, but the mountains in the background are the same. 
“So whose bodies and swords were coming up through the sand all those years?” Robyn asked.
“Yoritomo’s inlaws.” I said. “In 1192, his Kamakura Bakufu ‘tent government,’ assumed military and political control of the country. Yoritomo was officially designated shogun by the Imperial Court and, without other any surviving clans to challenge his feudal hereditary dictatorship, appointed his vassals as provincial administrators, and his samurai clans as buke warrior nobility, the source of all real political power, and only nominally obedient to the court aristocracy. As Yoritomo’s authority depended on their strength, he went to great lengths to establish and define samurai privilege; no one could call himself a samurai without his permission. 
The sword came to have great significance in samurai culture. A man’s honor resided in his sword, and their craftsmanship, carefully hammered blades, gold and silver inlay, and sharkskin handgrips, became an art.
While the autonomy of the Kamakura Shogunate was destined to last 141 years, surpassing the technical capital of Japan politically, culturally and economically, Yorotomo’s rule would only last for six years. In 1198, at the age of 51, he died of a fall from his horse, and his Minimoto dynasty was to end almost as quickly and unexpectedly as it had started.
Shogun succession followed the rule of the first legitimate son. Yoritomo had two. The first, Yoriie, only 17 when his father died, became a puppet ruler under the regency of his maternal grandfather, Hōjō Tokimasa. It was the beginning of the Hōjō clan’s assumption of Kamakura power, and the annihilation of other competing related families, like the Hatakeyama, the Hiki, and the Wada. When Yoriie plotted to retake control, he was deported down to the Izu Peninsula, and his wife and 6 year-old son murdered.

What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 15

Such was the advance in swordmaking that Masamune brought to the samurai soul. In Japanese folklore, his swords are often contrasted with a later distinguished master, Muramasa. A mythical comparison of their blades, demonstrated how Masamune had achieved the pinnacle of his craft.

   ‘To test the swords, each sword was held into the current of a 
     stream. Muramasa's sword was said to have cut a leaf in half 
     that simply touched the blade from the current alone. But the 
     master Masamune's sword did not cut a thing, with the leaves 
     miraculously avoiding it at the last second, as if to show it 
     possessed a benevolent power that would not harm anything that 
     was innocent or undeserving - even a simple leaf...’

Masamune’s swords, considered deeply spiritual, pure and benevolent, had devolved into Muramasa's brutish evil steel violence. 
Part of what had caused this loss of Golden Age metallurgical skill was the fierce demand for ferocious utilitarian disposable weapons to be churned out quickly in the 100 year Sengoku civil war. During the later Muromachi period, more than 200,000 nihontō were shipped to Ming Dynasty China in an official trade attempt to soak up the production of Japanese weapons and make it harder for local pirates to weaponize; the other part was the arrival of the gun, in 1543, which turned swordsmiths into gunsmiths. Form follows function.
Once the country was united by Shogun Hideyoshi, the peasantry was disarmed, and in the 400 years of peace that followed, the gun was rejected and the sword of the samurai was elevated to a fine art, although never to the same level as those made by Masumune.
These more ceremonial blades were known as shinto ‘new swords,’ and often more ornate and decorative than practical. In 1876, when the Samurai were officially disbanded, all civilians were ordered to give up carrying weapons.

What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 14

The next advance, from shape to substance, came in the Golden Age of Samurai Sword History. The Kamakura period Robyn and I were standing on, brought forth a second legend, Masumune, who forged, in his Sōshū swordmaking tradition, some of the most beautifully crafted katana ever made. The few that survive are priceless national treasures. Masumune created blades with a unique hamon temper line of martensitic crystals embedded in a nie pearlite matrix, like ‘stars in the night sky.’
It all began with Kamakura iron sand, placed in a tatara clay tub furnace, 4 feet tall, 12 feet long, and 4 feet wide. The tub was dried and heated to a temperature of 1000 ºC, and the molten contents mixed with charcoal to provide hardness. The process continued for 36 to 72 hours, with iron sand added every 10 minutes, and the mixture turned. When the clay tub had cooled and been broken, what emerged was a raw bright silver cake of Japanese Tamahagane steel, the icing of which was where perfect blades had descended from heaven.
The next step, the forging of a kotō blade, took weeks to months, and was considered a sacred art. Several craftsmen were involved- a smith to forge the rough shape, a second apprentice to fold the metal, a specialist togi polisher, and the various artisans that would make the various koshirae fittings used to decorate the finished blade and saya sheath (including the tsuka hilt, fuchi collar, kashira pommel, and tsuba hand guard). Sharpening and polishing took as long as the forging of the blade itself. 
Two different kinds of steel were needed to form a perfect blade: a harder outer jacket wrapped around a softer inner core of steel, resulting in a unique hard, highly razor sharp cutting edge with the ability to absorb shocks in a way which reduced the likelihood of breaking or bending in combat.
The outer skin, the hadagane, was produced by hammering a heated a block of high quality raw tamahagane into a bar, cooling and breaking it up into smaller fragments, checking for impurities, and then reheating and rehammering and reassembling and reforging and repeating, resplitting and refolding the metal back upon itself many times, to weld a homogeneous complex structure of many thousands of layers. The precision of the process determined the distinctive jihada grain pattern of the blade, indicative of the period, place of manufacture and swordmaker.
The shingane inner core was hammered, folded and welded in a similar fashion, and inserted into the reheated ‘U’ shaped hadagane, like taco filling. The new composite steel billet was reheated and hammered until it approximated the final size and shape of the finished sword blade. A triangular section was cut off from the tip and shaped to create the kissaki point. 
At this point, the blank blade shape was rectangular, and referred to as a sunobe. Again reheated, section by section was carefully rehammmered to control the tendency to erratic curvature, skillfully producing the distinctive final three-dimensional characteristics of the blade. Clay mixtures, applied in various thicknesses to the rough surfaces, were allowed to dry, while the craftsman prepared the forge for the final yaki-ire heat treatment of the blade. 
The hardening of the cutting edge occurred where metallurgy turned to alchemy, in a darkened smithy, late at night, in order to judge by eye the colour and temperature of the sword, as it was passed repeatedly through the glowing charcoal. When the time was absolutely right (the colour of the moon in February and August, the two months that appear most commonly on dated inscriptions on the sword’s nakago hilt section) the blade was plunged edge down and point forward into a tank of water. The precise time taken to heat the sword, and the temperature of the blade and of the water into which it is plunged were specific to each smith, and closely guarded secrets. Legend told of a particular craftsman who cut off his apprentice’s hand for testing the temperature of the water he had used for the hardening process. 
The hard edge of martensite, was ground to razor-like sharpness. The slower cooling thickly-coated back retained the pearlite characteristics of softness and flexibility. The hamon separation line, where the shapes, colours and beauty of the steel in a Japanese sword were found, was the demarcation between durable sharpness, and resiliency. 
Once the blade was cool, and the mud scraped off, the blade was decorated, file markings cut into the later covered hilt, to show how well the blade steel ages, kanji dedications, and horimono engravings depicting gods or dragons, or other beings. Finally, the sword was tested on live condemned criminals. The best were known as ‘five-body blades,’ the number of torsos it could slide through effortlessly.

What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 13

The reason why the shape of the sword had to change was simple- cavalry had become the predominant fighting unit. The older straight chokutō were unsuitable for fighting from horseback. The curved sword was a far more efficient weapon when wielded by a riding warrior, because the curve of the blade added considerably to the downward force of a cutting action. An organized motion made by arms and wrist, this descending strike had its own specific technique, and name.
Ten-uchi. As the sword was swung downwards, the elbow joint drastically extended at the last instant, popping the sword into place, causing the swordsman's grip to twist slightly, like wringing a towel. The nihontō’s blade impacted its target with sharp force, breaking whatever existed in the way of initial resistance. From there, fluidly continuing along the motion wrought by ten-uchi, the arms followed through with the stroke, dragging the sword through its target. Because the nihontō sliced rather than chopped, the ‘dragging’ is what did the maximum damage, and the reason why it was incorporated into the cutting technique. Due to a combination of the motion and its curved shape at full speed, the swing appeared to be full stroke, the segments hardly visible, if at all. Ten-uchi broke the initial resistance of a target human torso supplied by shoulder muscles and the clavicle, and the follow-through continued the slicing motion through whatever else it encountered, until the blade inherently exited the body.
The great thirteenth century Mongol invasions, only narrowly averted by the Kamikaze Divine Winds, drove the next change in blade shape. Samurai, forced to abandon mounted archery for hand-to-hand combat, found their swords too delicate and prone to damage, when used against the thick leather armor of the invaders. Japanese swordsmiths, appearing all over the countryside, began to make blades with thicker backs, thinner and simpler temper lines, and bigger points, in adaptive response to the Mongol threat.

What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 12

    
                                        ‘Sow all the words you can
                                         For in a better age
                                         Men shall judge the harvest’
                                                  The Confessions of Lady Nijo

For Robyn and I, across the Yukiaibashi Meeting-each-other Bridge near our Enoden electric railway station, the beach was where Osama and Obama and Otama came together. Osama couldn’t make it. Two years earlier, Obama had taken credit for his assassination, half a world away, although it was rumored that he was in the other room when it had happened, half a world away. The beach town with the same name as the American president, Obama, on the north Honshu coast, and the scene of several little-known North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens in 1978, means ‘little beach’ in Japanese.
“He’s coming for a state visit while we’re here, you know.” I said.

                                                    ‘The chicken wants 
                                                      To say something-
                                                      Fidgeting its feet.’
                                                             Sixty Senryu

“I know.” Robyn said. “He’ll be leaving Tokyo the day we arrive.”
But the beach we were on wasn’t Obama, nor was it our own beach in New Zealand, Otama, also a place name in Japan, that Robyn and I spent our winters on. Here there were balancing seal surfers in wet suits, writhing on waves like the history we had landed on.
“Shichiragahama.” I said. “Shichiri means ‘a long ride.’ Like these boys.” I picked up some dark sand and let it run through my fingers.
“Shichirigahama was the Kamakura shogunate's execution ground and the scene of many battles. Even up to the Edo period, bones and rusty weapons were still coming up through this sand.” 
But the swords that came out of the sand had been made from the same sand that went into the swords. The iron weapons on the beach had come from the iron ore in the beach. Kamakura became the source of the soul of the samurai, and the unity of mind and body and sword. 
The original chokutō sword had evolved from the old Chinese straight, double-edged iron jian, but the mythical turning point of Japanese weapon history occurred around 700 AD, in the legend of the Father of the Samurai Sword.

   Amakuni Yasutsuna and his son, Amakura, were the head smiths 
   employed by the Emperor to make swords for his armies. One 
   day, returning from battle, the Emperor and his warriors passed 
   by Amakuni's forge doorway without speaking, instead of 
   greeting him warmly as they usually did. With great shame and 
   horror, Amakuni noticed that nearly half of the warrior’s swords 
   had been broken or badly damaged and that the failure was from 
   incorrect forging.  Tears filled Amakuni's eyes, and he said to 
   himself, "If they are going to use our swords for such slashing, I 
   shall make one that will not break." With this vow, Amakuni and 
   his son sealed themselves away in the forge, and prayed   
   feverishly to the Shinto gods for inspiration. On the seventh 
   night, the divine Kami came to them in a dream- a glowing image 
   of a single edged, slightly curved blade... As soon as the first rays 
   of the sun infiltrated the forge, each knowing without a word 
   exactly what they must do, they set about creating the sword 
   revealed to them. Amakuni refined the best iron sand ore he could 
   obtain into steel. Working without rest, the two emerged after 
   thirty-one days, gaunt and weary, with a single-edged curved 
   weapon. Other swordsmiths believed them insane, but Amakuni 
   and Amakura, undaunted, ground and polished the new sword. In 
   the following spring, there was another war. This time, as the 
   samurai returned, Amakuni saw that all of his swords had perfect, 
   intact blades. The Emperor came to him, with a smile "You are an 
   expert sword maker. None of the Swords you made failed in 
   battle." Legend has it that Amakuni later died a happy and 
   contended old man, having gained immortality from the large 
   amount of blood shed from the first single-edged curved bladed 
   tachi longsword he created.

What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 11

Just as there were three parts to The Tale of the Heike, there were also three themes. The first and central theme was that of the Buddhist law of impermanence, well captured in its eminent opening passage.

   ‘The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of 
     all things; the color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the 
     prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like 
     a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust 
     before the wind.’ 

The second theme was another Buddhist concept. Karma. The idea that every action has consequences that become apparent later in life helps us to deal with the problem of both moral and natural evil. Dishonourable acts will eventually bring inevitable suffering. This can be seen clearly in the cruelty of Kiyomori, repaid by the painful illness that kills him. Similarly, Yoshitsune's title, Hōgan, provided his legacy in the Japanese term Hōgan-biiki, ‘sympathy for a tragic hero,’ although too late to benefit him while he was alive.
The third and final theme is the ideal of the cultivated warrior. The term for warrior in the The Tale, uruwashii, was written with kanji that combined the characters for bun literary study and bu military arts. The pen and the sword in accord. The balance and harmony between exterior patterns, or beauty, and interior essences, or substance, came to symbolize the character of Taira and Minamoto samurai, who became models for the educated warriors of later generations, and the proper and mature form of the Japanese man of arms. By the Edo period, Japan had a higher literacy than central Europe. In The Tale of the Heike, the image of the Japanese warrior in literature came to its such full maturity that if warriors hadn’t aspired to or followed this ideal, there would have been no cohesion in future samurai armies. 
In the space of a few years Yoritomo went from being a fugitive, hiding from his enemies inside a tree trunk, to being the most powerful man in the land. In the end he had triumphed over his rival cousins, who had sought to steal clan control from him, and over the Taira. Yoritomo established the supremacy of the warrior samurai caste, and the first Bakufu, at Kamakura, beginning the feudal age in Japan that lasted until the mid-19th century. At the end of the Genpei War, in its form of government, in its behavioral ideals, and in its mythology and legends, in all three had the samurai prevailed.