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Samurai & sword polish during battle


Mark Green

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Hi Gang,

Jean, I will open the new thread for ya.

As a Midievial reanactor, I have some first hand experience with this. In a two week period of being in the field, at war, living in canvas tents, with a good bit of rain. I had an old wak nearly turn brown from rust. I don't think I had it in the open air more than a few times. And I had a fair amount of oil on it most of the time.

So, you can only wonder how badly a sword would get rusted up if it were in REAL combat.

Or just being on campaign for a month or two. So, it is very likely, Samurai had their weapons being polished very often. That is why in times of war, many thousands of swords were being made. In war, swords break, and are being polished every day. Not the kind of ART POLISH we see in modern times, but just enough to get the rust off, and keep them sharp.

There were no finger stones, or Hadori, or any of that mess.

I was told once by on old ww2 polisher that he had 3 stones in the field. I think the last being a hato or jito, or maybe a uchi.

So most fighting Samurai likely had many a sword in his lifetime. If you were lucky enough to live through REAL combat, and have been in the thick of it, you may have owned many a sword in one campaign. there were usualy many swords with no owners after a hot action.

Pick up a new one and drive on.

Mark G

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So, it is very likely, Samurai had their weapons being polished very often. That is why in times of war, many thousands of swords were being made. In war, swords break, and are being polished every day.

 

Polished every day ? :doubt:

In war swords break :idea:

 

Somebody once said " a sword has 4 battles or four hundred years in it, whatever comes first".

But not because polish, that's for sure...

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Hi Carlo, :thanks:

I ment swordssss in the army as a whole were being polished every day. There would be no point in polishing each sword every day, as most would be starting to rust up in a few days.

But if that sword had seen a bunch of action in a day it may well need some chip repair.

Also, the kind of light polishing that would take place in the field, would not likely take much steel off. And, the light rust could be taken off with powder, or finger stones, until you got home.

I have also found that for some strange reason, Yari are not as likely to rust as quickly as swords do. But I only have a few to judge this from.

I believe that it has to do mostly with the steel of each sword/yari. My gendi sword that I carry to the field has rusted very little ever. The steel is very tight, compaired with the old beat up shinto wak that seems to be the worst rust bucket.

Mark G

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Since we dont have contemporary accounts of actual polishing inbetween battles in the sengoku jidai we cannot be sure..

 

every polish removes metal from the blade.

 

hard to tell... and well... not having hazuya back then? maybe not the average foot soldier..

 

there are accounts however of togishi who were attached to daimyo's who took them along on campaign. not that we know what they did exactly... but polishing a lot of swords might be well possible.

 

KM

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I once worked as a boner and slicer in an abbatoir and we sharpened our boning knives heavily 5-6 x a day. I dont mean steeling them I mean with an aluminium oxide stone.

The keeness of the edge was similar to a very sharp kissaki as it had the same purpose.

This experience gives me the ability to judge fairly how much "meat" is lost during the sharpening/polishing proccess.

Not as much steel is lost as you think, our blades started 1/8"thick and wore out over a period of 3-4 months very hard work.

So the conclusion I have is that if the Togi knew his stuff he could easily make a sword last more than one campaign.

This is to assume that the chips were not fatal and the owner was willing to 'battle on' with a few minor nicks and have them polished out once the fighting had subsided.

Is that sound reasoning?

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Hi,

But i thought the sword was polished on the whole flat of the Jihada not just the Hamon as you would an normal Knife.

Or are you saying that they may have "wetstoned"the blades hamon only?

This would make the hamon dissapear very fast i would guess and does not seem a practical solution.

However i am not a togoshi so i am not sure.

regards

shan

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The boner's method is to place the whole blade flat on the coarse side of the stone for several stokes then flip the stone over and raise the blade between 7 and 10 degrees for 3-4 strokes towards the edge.

My point was that is such constant use/abuse of a thin blade only resulted in tiny quantities being lost.Togi would have been able to keep most well used swords functional for longer than some have assumed.

This is only an educated guess based on years of experience wearing out very hard steel knives.

I remember seeing a site by a swordsmith in Japan where a sectioned sword showed at least 1/8" of skin steel in a new sword. This is a good margin.

A common mistake I see made by untrained people is they oversharpen and remove many times the amount of steel necessary to achieve a good lasting edge. Sharpening like that is only needed if the edge has been badly abused or badly sharpened.

I dread people asking me to do their kitchen knives as it always means hours of sweat and toil to undo years of misshaping. 8)

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Hi Steve, In my 20s I worked for a couple of years in a meat packing plant. We had belt grinders using a fairly high grit to rehone the edge. A boning knife would typically last a year or more. For keeping the edge between time steel were used a dozen times a day. Before my computer crash I had copies of prints showing bushi sharpening their swords prior to battle. I think most kept their swords keen themselves. Of course these swords were probably in the kazuuchimono category. In 'Twilight Samurai' there is a scene that shows the protagonist sharpening his shoto prior to use. I know, a movie, but, a likely scene. John

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Hi Steve, In my 20s I worked for a couple of years in a meat packing plant. We had belt grinders using a fairly high grit to rehone the edge. A boning knife would typically last a year or more. For keeping the edge between time steel were used a dozen times a day. Before my computer crash I had copies of prints showing bushi sharpening their swords prior to battle. I think most kept their swords keen themselves. Of course these swords were probably in the kazuuchimono category. In 'Twilight Samurai' there is a scene that shows the protagonist sharpening his shoto prior to use. I know, a movie, but, a likely scene. John

 

 

 

My guess is a samurai would have a couple of stones just as a soldier carries a rudimentary cleaning kit for his weapon.

Same principle weapon failure = death.

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I agree Jacques, but when you have 15,000 men most of whom are ashigaru and given how long it would take for each sword to be repaired, I think the common foot soldier would be on his own for the most part. I'm sure there would have been togishi, kachushi, fletchers, saddlers and a whole host of support personnel with large forces on campaign. The retainers of rank getting preferential treatment. John

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Generally speaking, Logistic shall interfere only if badly needed, it is some kind of Weapon/food MASH (without Gould und Sutherland :rotfl: :rotfl: ).

 

People on the battlefiel have their own care kit (several slings for their bows, cleaning kit for their guns, honing stones to whettle their blades).

 

Let's imagine in Muromachi, an army ready for the battle, it means let's say 15000/20000 soldiers (it could be greater number); 30% had swords (let's imagine), it means 4500/6000 blades. Whatever the logistic, fat chance to have a sword polished. I am sure that soldiers were rather on their own and in case of surviving matter, I would not take chance and take a ticket to queue up and have my sword repaired.

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Hi,

 

In fact, battles such Nagashino or Sekigahara ran less a day; after battle polishers had time to repair swords (those which could be). There were also those which were picked up on cadavers and sometimes quickly remounted (second nakago ana on an ubu nakago).

 

 

Just an amateur opinion. :glee:

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I'm sure there would have been togishi, kachushi, fletchers, saddlers and a whole host of support personnel with large forces on campaign. The retainers of rank getting preferential treatment. John

 

Who was paying for the bill ? The "Boss". Who would have taken first class attention ? First class Samurai.

 

I think it's not safe to use the same scale from XIII c. to XVI c. battlefields.

Lots of things changed in between. Dimensions of armies and long lasting campaigns being to be considered.

Maybe the large scale Armies full of specialized soldiers with at least some basic armor reached in the Sengoku made

available some sort of "standard" maintenance to lessers figthers too, but hardly to the point of a trained Togishi or an

armourer able to repair a broken rivet in a 32 plates Kabuto.

Whealty Samurai had spare weapons/armors to replace the ones in need of repairs, leaving these items free to be

stored for later care, either on the battlefield after the fight or at home (*when* returning home happend to be an

available option).

On the other hands, lesser items were just that, lesser and expendible items not worthy the time and attention of a

professional. I'm quiet sure that medical care followed the same line being, at that time, the concept of "expendible" easily

extended to human beings too. "Do it yourself" was likely a very common practice on the battlefield.

 

BTW, in WWII the most recorded problems were about the cracking/breaking of the Tsuka, not the blade, till to

the point that it was later misinterpreted, leading to the supposition that Japanese swords were prone to break in the

handle (read Nakago) when it really wasn't the case.

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Hi,

 

On the support staff, aren't there a couple of books that list this? I seem to recall reading one or two in the distant

past that had lengthy lists of personnel and supplies that went into a military campaign.

 

One thing I've wondered about a lot was what surface condition most swords from this period actually had at the time -

did they all have the "white metal" type of polish similar to a lot of modern martial artistas leave on their pieces, or

was it even that good? I have an early shinto naginata with what appears to be the original finish on it (the piece was

never mounted), and its pretty coarse (the trouble is that I don't know if this was the actual final finish, or just how

the swordsmith left it).

 

Here's a couple of old bad pictures:

http://home.teleport.com/~rkg/photos/ub ... verall.jpg

http://home.teleport.com/~rkg/photos/ubu_nag_tip1.jpg

 

Has anybody done any research into what the finish of a Japanese sword was prior to the hoity-toity polish that

was developed during the Edo period?

 

The other question is what kind of (if any) oil was being used - some vegetable based oils kind of form this nasty

varnish when they dry, that might have been fairly protective. (as an aside, what kind of oil were you using on

your pieces? seems like you shouldn't have had any problems if you were using some of the modern gun oils like

sheath or break-free...).

 

Best,

 

rkg

(Richard George)

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On the support staff, aren't there a couple of books that list this? I seem to recall reading one or two in the distant past that had lengthy lists of personnel and supplies that went into a military campaign.)

 

Guess we focused on personnel specifically intended to polish blades, not about general logistics.

The logistic type and dimension varied according to the periods and the tasks of the different campaigns.

I think the biggest one was achieved during Hideyoshi's Korean campaign with a ratio almost similar to present-day

being 3 supporters each fighting man. But the lines of supply were the longest ever experimented by a Japanese

army till to that date. More, it's hard to fix a line between "supporter" and "fighter", back then.

For earlier periods we should consider that pillaging was the usual way to gather extra-supply, reducing the needs of

personnel or, notably, of beast of burden, more valued then most of the peasants.

 

Has anybody done any research into what the finish of a Japanese sword was prior to the hoity-toity polish that was developed during the Edo period?

 

About the polishing level from "The Art of the Japanese Sword Polishing " :

 

"The Japanese have long appreciated their swords, and a large vocabulary exists to describe elements like the shape of the sword,wich is easy to see,but the less clearly discernible details of the steel and hamon,most of wich cannot be seen unless the sword has been give a quality polish. The relevant vocabulary appears to date to at least the Muromachi period (1394-1573),indicating that the Japanese were able to closely examine and appreciate their swords long ago.

The earliest stages of the polishing process refine the shape of the sword to produce a functional weapon.However,references to extremely fine details of the steel and hamon (e.g.,nioi,nie,ashi,kinsuji,jihada,jigane)suggest that,at very least,the basic methods of modern Japanese polishing techniques existed as early as the Kamakura period (1185-1333)" …OMISSIS… "Dr.Honma Junji in his article discusses a sixtyh-century sword,excavated from a tomb,wich was found with portions of its blade in good enough condition to see that it had been polished with a stone similar to the Nagura,indicating that swords were already being given careful finishining work by approximately the sixth century.This particular sword is now a national terasure (Kokuho)...Another straight blade (chokuto) described in the same article was excavated in 1939 in Shimane Prefecture.This blade was from Nara period (710-794) and was well preserved,with sections still unrusted. Close examination indicated that it had been polished with a nagura stone. The nagura stone is used after arato, kongoto, binsui, kaisei stones in the foundation polishing process, indicating that blades in the Nara period were receiving careful polishes. Skilled work with the nagura stone will often bring out most of the details of the hamon. Thus,by the Nara period ,were receiving careful polishing techniques were likely advanced enough to allow the Japanese sword to have a well-finished shape and visible hamon.".

 

From Kanzan Sato -The Japanese Sword :

 

"A Japanese dagger (tanto) was discovered in a wooden figure in Ankokuji temple in Hiroshima.The blade has relatively clean steel surface and was accompanied by a document stating that it had been placed there in 1274 (Bun'ei, Kamakura).Scientific examination of the blade indicated that it had been apparently polished with a uchigumori-like stone since the details of the hamon and jigane were clearly visible"...

 

Now, are we sure that the blades were really badly rusting so easily on the battlefield ?

Why Samurai managed to protect their swords this way ? :

 

frt001.jpg

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Hi Gang,

After speaking with my other Samurai friends that have 'REAL' Nihonto That they carry to the field durring our events, I have found it to be quite a mixed bag of rust. These swords range from Koto to very new.

I use choji oil on my swords, others do use the modern synthetic base oils on their SCA carry swords. I feel that the modern 'gun' oils may be a better choice for our use. The guys that have used the modern gun oils say they have had much less problems with rust than those of us that use only the pure choji. Some guys use a thin coat of grease. That seems the be the best bet. Their saya get messed up quick though.

I am sure that in period, the Samurai, and other troops had learned what worked best to keep the rust off. It may in fact have been some form of oil/lard/vegi matter, that formed some sort of protectice coat on their weapons that would just dry on and remain until the campain was over, or until it was time to touch it up.

They had hundreds of years to perfect this. I'm sure once someone found something that worked well, the word would spread fast, than everyone would be using it.

I still believe that it mostly comes down to the individual sword, and it's steel. The very old Koto sword I use, the Gendi katana, the 3 late shinto yari, seem to have much less problem than does the early shinto wak that seems to be the worst, no matter what I do, in terms of amount of oil I put on it.

I will do some experiments/research this year to see what helps the most.

Mark G

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Mark,

 

form I understand, you use authentic nihonto for historical re-enactments. I am sure that you give your blades adequate attention, but still, as you admit, they do rust... Wouldn't it be better if you used replicas?

 

Just a humble question...

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Mariuszk,

Thanks for the question. And I understand your concern. I have had more than a few lovers of Nihonto ask me this same question.

I love my swords. I have many that live in my safe, they only come out for friends to see, and a once in a while display/class I do for the 'Society for Creative Anachronism'. If these swords have a spirit, it is a dark and lonely existence.

However, for a lucky few, that are beat up, or dead from loss of boshi, or cracks, or that I just like too much, these get to go to war once again.

I am a Knight in the SCA. This is not just a title, it is something I have earned through real full contact fighting, in full armor, with ratan weapons. These weapons will not cut you, but they will cave your head in, or break your bones, hence the full armor. A knight is like a 5th++++ deg. black belt, or a top level kendo dan. Full contact marshal art.

So, Although these swords&yari, do not get to be used to kill people, they get to be part of modern Bushido in it's best form. I go to wars where many thousands of combatants fight every day, all day. Where else would a yari from the 1500s want to be????

So, I guess that while replicas may be better, it sure is cool to be able to pull out your 500yr old sword and show it to people that can understand just what it ment to live and die by the sword.

I hope this has answered the question for you.

Mark G aka Sir Marc d'Aubigny/ sir Tomoyuki

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'Society for Creative Anachronism'

I've seen them in action here in SA and they put on an impressive display and are very serious about it. I think the full contact stuff revolves mainly around medieval battles and combat?

I am sure the Nihonto are reserved for displays and appearance only..

Let's not go too off topic into this one...it is a great thread with lots of interesting facts.

 

Brian

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It's mostly your interesting facts that are keeping me captivated here Carlo, so by all means don't stop posting your knowledge of battles and tactics etc :)

Since the topic has changed slightly to this battle theme, I wonder if anyone has any theories on things like yanone during a battle. I assume the better and more elaborate shaped heads were reserved for special occasions and incidents. Would it be common for soldiers to then collect whatever arrowheads were launched against them, repair and remove from broken arrows, and re-use in their own arrows? I can't see many of these being left on the field and unlike most other weapons they were launched never to be seen again unless you were the victors?

Most would have obviously been simple iron battle heads, but the number of other shapes seen makes me think the archers must have kept quite a few different shapes in his utsubo (quiver)

Perhaps a subject for another thread?

 

Regards,

Brian

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