Rome vs Japan

[tlclark]

WARNING:

Big post-modern art history rant ahead!! Turn back now! You have been warned.

Ok.

I would agree with everything David says except this:

Japanese sword making was amazing and I think superior to all others.

I would say that Japanese sword is as good as it can possibly be given the limitations of pattern welding. Make no mistake. It is a remarkable achievement, but it was not superior to what Europeans could do. The reason we think so is an accident of history.

Allow me to elucidate. Sword-making is military technology. Military technology is held close to the vest, for important reasons. Should knowledge of you trade expand it undercuts your market and puts your nation at risk to others. Feudal societies reinforce this trend, since empires diseminate military knowledge for the sake of the empire more easily that feudal societies.

There are, therefore, very few medieval sources (eastern or western) on military technology (or even martial arts)

There is a however, a general and pervasive belief that japanese sword-making is superior. Why? Simple. Japan preserved its traditional ways well into the 19th C. There are still sword makers today in japan, still making fabulous swords, in the traditional manner. We can evaluate japanese swords, ancient and modern, in light of this knowledge and skill base. We can greatly appreciate the skill of the craftsmen (and they are legion, forging, fitting, polishing and sharpening are all separate professions in the Japanese sword making trade) and it embellishes the impression of the Japanese sword, and its process, as something special.

We can't do this for a 16th C. spanish blade because those craftsmen and their traditions did not survive the advances of pikemen and gunpowder. The great smithhouses of spain and Italy and elsewhere did not endure much past the 17th C. By the 19th C., blades were generally much less sophisticated and many 19th edged weapons were purely for show.

The loss of craftsmanship and native tradition greatly informs our disposition of the past and its relative worth and development.

A japanese Katana has a legacy that a spanish flamberge simply can match because the culture that created one endured and the other did not.

This informs our opinion of their relative worth.

Now I'm not a metal expert, but I have been told that the 16th C. was the era of greatest sword making in Europe.

To compare, a katana is pattern welded from many different varieties of iron in laminations. The edge and core, as well as the spine are all made up of various pattern-welded steels that are best suited to that part of the weapon. The spine is flexible and the edge is harder, right where it needs to be. We know exactly how this is done, and it is very impressive.

When we look at a comparable 16th C. sword from Toledo (NOT Ohio) we see a very different weapon. No pattern welding, one solid piece of steel that somehow, and this is amazing, varies in hardness and carbon content over the length of the blade. The edge is hard high carbon steel, the core, more flexible and lower in carbon. Even the crystalline structure varies across the blade, tight where it needs to be hard and sharp, long where it needs flexibility.

How do you do this?!! Modern smiths have replicated this...somewhat... by varying forge and metal tempature, "cold"-forging, and other techniques.

This is just amazing. A Katana represents one principle technique - pattern welding - honed to perfection. A lack of naturally harder iron ores, like those in Europe, probably led to the necessity of perfecting this method. The techniques of the spanish blade are obviously far more complicated, and presume a great deal more metallurgic know-how, but we can't verify it, or even marvel about it. It's lost.

The knowledge of how to do this disappeared, and the swords fell out of use and their legend along with it.

The legend of the katana lives on, and its reputation surpassed the Toledo smiths, even though I think you can make an argument the spanish blade is a better blade.

In a way it's a lot like Erwin Panofsky's theories on Gothic art, based on Abbot Suger's writings on St. Denis. He credits Suger with the theoretical formation of Gothic. But there's a big problem with all this that Peter Kidson points out. Why did he use Suger's writings? because that's all that survives from that period! Presumably if we had other books we could write other theories, but we have to take what survives.

Now I'm not a metallurgical expert and I'm relying an awful lot on what some colleagues have told me, but I do know that history is based on what survives.

I know the Katana is a fabulous sword, but I suspect if we had a surviving band of hardy Toledo Smiths still toiling away, we would have fabulous anthropology films of them at work too and their blades would be just as popular, and show up just as often in comic books, movies and pop culture, particularly if a band of Spanish knights had survived into the 19th C.

Come to think of it, that would be a REALLY cool plot for an alternative history novel.

Hang on, I have to call my agent!

Travis