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Muramasa/Masamune Japanese swords

Everybody forgot about the Rasamune. The Rasamune was created by a person who was jealous of Masamune. He Quickly created a sword that he tried to make rival the Masamune. The sword was so horrible that if used it would sap the strength of the person using the blade.
 

I also have Master Paul Chen's blades. I bought the complete daisho including the tanto. While this purchase was perhaps the most questionable acquisition on which I have ever spent good money, I love them as works of art. They are more akin to a Maxfield Parrish paintning than weapons like my sidearms and rifles. I take them from the display stand each month to dust them, oil the blades, and talc them with the polishing ball because it thrills me just to have them.

It is, however, my understanding that these edged weapons were all created by the maru-gitae method of forging, using special clay to coat the blades (except for an eighth-inch of the cutting edge) before quenching them. This allowed the blade to cool more slowly, making the steel softer and more supple--except for the actual edge, which cooled quickly, into a very, very, hard steel, able to hold sharpness under abuse.

This method is used to mass-produce swords. The great works of Japanese sword crafting would likely be made by other methods, the makuri-gitae method being one I would select if I was a wealthy daimyo looking for the finest of swords.

IIRC, the curve of Japanese single-edged blades is formed by the cooling, with the denser metal contracting at a differenet rate than the forward edge portion. The style of sword play made use of the curve, enabling samurai to s-l-i-c-e through their victims with a pulling strike, rather than hack through with massive force.

It was my understanding that the Nordic and Sweedish sword makers of about the same period (10th through 13th Centuries) made weapons of equal quality as far as the steel used in the manufacture. It was in subtlety of design where the Japanese sword smiths had their advantage. The undeniable advantage in beauty of simplicity was an added advantage.

Am I misinformed?

PS: is it true that Japanese sword smiths used only water to quench their blades, not oils like Western craftsmen?
 
sup everyone, im a newbee to this forum and i am very interested in purchasing a katana. so i thought i might as u guys for some info. like where can i get a katana, not a fake one but a real one hand made, folded steel. i want one as a family heir loom. but i dont want something that is fake for it would not hold any value. but i dont know too much about japanese swords and i would probably end up buying something that is not what they say it is.
i have found several sites that say there swords are and made folded steel but im am reluctant to make a purchase. swords from guys like Paul Chen and last legend look nice but are they pretty good quality swords. i have no idea so some help would be greatly apreciated.
would someone point me in the right direction???

if u have any ideas or info that would help me find one feel free to private message me. thanks every one.
 
One such source

If you have a pretty deep pocket (over a thousand dollars) you can try the Sword Armory at http://www.swordarmory.com/. They sell the line of daisho forged by Paul Chen that are folded steel, finely sharpened, and are hardened in the Marru Gitae style.

I own the complete daisho of the Tiger blades (katana, wakizashis, and tanto), but it was an investment of over two thousand bucks five years ago when I made the purchase. It costs much more to procure the same blades today.

Of course you can get a set of swords that are blunt, of cheap steel, and with phoney temper lines (hamon), and only fit for display at almost any pawn shop. The price will be a couple hundred bucks.
 
no way im willing to spend good money for these swords, but i have no clue if paul chen swords are any good and need opinion and input on this.
but thanks for the heads up shooter.
btw do u like ur paul chen swords. are they pretty good???
and what about last legend swords are they good too??
 

They are indeed of high quality. Master Chen makes excellent edged weapons of various quality, but the folded steel weapons are as good as any found outside Japan. His forge is located in the PRC. He--as I stated before--uses the maru-gitae method of sword craft that is designed to mass produce weapons of uniform quality for worthy vassels. It is not the method one would use to produce the very highest quality swords when price is not an issue. Swords such as those of makuri-gitae style, are priceless works of art that are declared national treasures by the Japanese and are unavailable at any amount of money.

I am very proud of my daisho. My Tiger katana is in fact the first that was sold in the USA and the same one that is displayed at the Sword Armory website. Go to http://www.swordarmory.com/katanas/1204gt.htm to view my sword and the prices on the set of Tiger weapons.

It holds a fine, sharp edge, but I must admit the I have yet to kill anyone with it in combat, so it has not been abused at all. The true mark of a Japanese sword is that it is resilient in combat. Short of that, I can vouch for them.

The workmanship is first rate and done totally by hand (no machining goes into any of his folded-steel swords). That is why they are so damned expensive.

I hope that helps.

PS: Last-Legend weapons have sterling reputation. I cannot say more since I own none of them.
 
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thanks for the input shooter. i would definetly look into to paul chens swords. i think i might get the folded orchid or the folded bushido sets. i like those swords. i have been serching the net and doing research and i think it would be good to get one of his peices.
thanks again shooter
 

'T'is my plesure, newbee. I hope you find your blades.

I am told that the word for "sword" in some languages is the same as the word for "truth." I hope you find the truth of your life.


Gloria virtutis umbra
 
just to clarify

I'm writeing this just to clarifiy a few facts. I hope thats ok with you guys.

What distinguishes japan's swords from most is the fact that they are made in a style resembeling a damascues blade. A piece of very strong metal is brought and is melted when it has completly melted it is then straightened into a long bar and than pounded on it self to make it bend into layers. from there it is pounded again to make it into three layers and the process goes on as much as the sword maker wants it to be. The thickest blades are usally made to 2 to the power of 3 or was it to the power of five sorry cant really remeber the number exactly but it is between these powers. This made the sword very resistent to breaking while making it very functional yet it is rare and very expensive to find a sword with the thickness talked about in the above. The sword was made to withstand a lot of abuse due to the fact that although the japans wore armor in battle the armor was made of raw treated hide and a well placed blow would easily split it this was due to the fact of the shortage of iron ores in japan and although the battles are not what they show in the movies but when you have to master that have train on the sword for 10 to 15 years the battle will atleast take more than 5 minutes. Also about testing the blades by cutting a human body it is not really testing the blade it was actually a process used to cool the sword for the final time. it is belived that by doing that a sword cans the will to actually seek blood since it has been implanted into it from the moment of making it but this was a rare process and was only used against criminals. The most number of people used for this process were five, the sword would be passed through five people while it was hot to cool it down but usally it was less and was rarly done. hope somone finds this information useful in anyway
 

I do not mind at all, Jack. However not all Nihonto are laminated in one way. Some, for example, are made with a soft core of steel that has harder steel wrapped around it--the makuri-gitae style I described previous being one of which I am aware. There were also kobuse, honsanmai, shihozume, wariha-tetsu...I cannot even remember them all. There are many sources on the Net if you are interested in the basics. I am not aware of any exponential measurement, but they are indeed stronger than unlaminated blades.

The quenching method you describe does not strike me as being efficient and is somewhat bizzare. Are you sure that information is not apocryphal?

Japanese armor is also laminated. It is my understanding that it was usually made from differening substances that often indeed included metal plates along with sinew, bone, leather, padded fabric, wood, etc. They were secured with silken cords, a possible vulnerability.
 
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Cool.

What are you doing in abu dabi?
 
swords

i appreciate your insite on your view about the crafts of the swords. keep this in mind most of the information i looked up and read came from an official book about samurai's and most of the practices that they did. the references were reserched in Japan itself so most of the topics we talk about are based on someones elses reserch. One things for sure, like your findings many blacksmiths did things differently when it came to selecting a crafted sword. my information was based on the crafts of the two legendary swords and how they were crafted. So no one is wrong in the information that they find about the crafts of the swords. thank you for your input. I think one of the most interesting swords to investigate is the flexable fencing sword.
 
Laminated European Blades

As luck would have it, I saw a piece on the International History Channel that described how pattern-welded blades were made from twisting steel rods together, pounding them flat while super-heated, folding them repeated times, and then forging into a sword. This process was required because it was difficult to assure the quality of the iron from which the sword was forged into steel in the first place.

This process was discovered by Anglo-Saxon swordsmiths in the Eleventh Century and was remarkably similar to the Damascus process earlier mentioned. It had been copied from Nordic and Danish smiths, who had discovered/stolen the secret even earlier.

So much for assumptions.

*shrug*
 
Hello I am new to this site but however i could not help but read all of the information you have posted on some of the most famous swordsmiths in japanese history. the few articles on masamune caught my eye and if it woulddnt bother anybody i would like to add a bit more on masamune. masamune was a swordsmith and very well known during the kamakura period. His swords were and still are widely known for their perfect cuurve as well as strength and sharpness. An0othher interesting quality his swords had were the hamon(temper line) It seemed to shift like clouds. a masamune blade today only needs to be cleaned maybe once or twice a year and it never rusts which any sword collector find quite unusual in his swords. Now as for the legend part. the leggend of masamune's sword was that only a man/woman (non discriminative here) of pure heart could weild the sword and to tell this the weilder would thrust his sword into a river and if a leaf that were flowing towards the blade were repelled then the weilder was truly pure of heart. the reason oof his sword doing this was to show that a sword was not only to take lives but also to save lives. Where as a murasame sword would attract the leaves to it and cut through them all showing that his sword was made purely for destruction. *takes a breath* I hope that you all may enjoy some of this info that i have given on masamune and if anybody would like to make a correcti0on or have an opinion please do as i would much apreciate it. take care.
 

personally, i'm looking at the Miyamoto Musashi daisho set orientalweapons.com
 
Well, the price is certainly right!

alke said:
personally, i'm looking at the Miyamoto Musashi daisho set orientalweapons.com
Click to expand...
The add does not say if they are folded blades or not. Not all of Paul Chen's blades are folded steel. These are certainly maru-gitae method swords because of the tempering process, so they are of certain quality.

Wish you luck with the swords, alke.
 
Wartime swords

There are in my region two swords that were taken in the Pacific as war trophies. They are part of an estate that has gone into liquidation and the price tag on each is not all that much, but I have heard from many sources that the swords carried by Japanese officers during the Second World War were "lesser swords" of varying quality. I have not the expertise to value them, but I was wondering if Mandylion has any idea of the general quality of wartime Japanese sword craft.

Whatcha think, Mandy?
 
Japanese war swords, or the swords made for officers to wear, are called "gunto" and in terms of the NBTHK are generally not considered worthy of recognition as art swords. In fact, they are illegal to own in Japan (since they do not qualify as "art" they are thus only weapons) and upon confiscation are destroyed.

The steel used to make these swords was quite often of a much lower quality than that used in swords of earlier periods or made using traditional methods. Many of the WW II officer swords were also mass-produced by machine rather than hand-forged.

This is not to say the swords are not worth having. One man's junk is another man's treasure. They would probably be interesting as historical artifacts if nothing else.

You can find a much more detailed discussion of these type swords at Rich Stein's site (which is incidentally linked to by Mandylion in his main Q & A post here and here.
 
Thank you, gakaro-san

While I will review the suggested sources, I have been counciled by a former member of the US Department of State that all war-trophy swords collected by returning US servicemen from the Second World War in the Pacific are advised to be returned to Japan. As this is not a requirement and these swords are not prohibted by private ownership here (yet), his advice was that these weapons may have some historical significance to the Japanese.

Whether or not Japan will destroy these two swords when they are returned, if they are returned, I am taking the advice of my friend and I will not seek them at auction as I had entertained thoughts of doing.

If I find out later that one of the two katanas was the personal sword of Admiral Nagumo, I will feel foolish (what a trophy!) but since they were most likely taken on Saipan even if it was possible, it is unlikely.

I'll stand aside and let this truck hit someone else
 
Your friend sounds noble-minded and I applaud his concern that the possession of a fallen soldier might fall into the "wrong" hands, but....

I will state, unequivocally, that "gunto," Showa-era, stamped, machine-made swords are now illegal in Japan. They will be confiscated and destroyed if detected.

An exception might be a sword collected by a serviceman while in Japan which was not, in fact a "gunto" (i.e. not made during the Showa era) but an older sword made using traditional methods, which could still be considered an "art" sword. (Note there are traditionally-made swords being made now called "gendaito" or "shinsakuto" which are not illegal--this has to do with their aesthetic value and the fact that they are now considered "objets d'art"--regardless of their capacity to be used as real weapons. The distinction is still made.) Swords were outlawed during the U.S. occupation of Japan, and many were confiscated--thus the possibility that these older swords could have fallen in to the hands of U.S. servicemen.

If the sword was taken on Saipan it is unlikely to be anyone's heirloom or older sword. I'm not sure how your friend suggests returning such swords--mailing them General Delivery to the Tokyo post office? To the offices of the NBTHK? There would be precious little way of finding the original soldier/s who carried such swords, and, even, if found, locating any living relatives. A moot point if the blade were to be destroyed, anyway.

Most Japanese I've spoken to about swords had almost no interest in them. Some people are openly hostile to swords, as they represent the violence of Japan's warlike past, which many are ready to forget. Just in this small town I'm living in now, there is a family who has ground down the blades of heirlooms (rendering them worthless, in addition to useless) for just this reason. The true sword connoisseur will obviously hold all swords in some regard, and you could no doubt find someone in Japan willing to argue against me, but bidding on this sword you mentioned would not be the moral crime you seem to suggest it might be.

Just one man's opinion. I won't belabor the point (any further )as I believe we should all go with our conscience. Just don't let someone guilt you when there is no need.
 
what was the name of the sword, that was used in kenshin "used to slay the rider and the horse with a single stroke" sorta a the appearance of the buster sword used by cloud in FF7..or did that even exist?
 
it may be just me but i know a lot about japanese swords and both muramasa blades and muramase blades were legendary. they were a symbol of power and status. Muramasa is a blade that is told to be cursed in that it cant noit be sheathed without drawing blood. to respond to the vid posting, that is y ur health goes down as u use it. also it was an demon sword that held great power but few could master it. The creators iof there swords were very powerful because the swords took a long time to make and were as good as 1000 acres of lands to trade. the reason the blades took so long to make is that they were all made a certain way so that the sharp edge was both delicate and functional. it was made so that u could fight with full strenght and the blade wouldnt break and yet it could still cut paper. The most famous muramasa sword was the most powerful. The warrior who used it knew the consiquences of loss. The sword endowed the weilder with great speed and strenght and made them all but invincible. The only thing was it had to steal asoul from a fallen enemy or it would take that of the wielder. (ps i kno i type a lot about it but i am tellin wat i kno. :sorry: ) The cursed blade was passed down throught the familys and it was rumored to have a demon sealed inside to prevent the constant use of the blade. But some abused the power and were consumed by the demonblade.
 
Dont get me wrong, put as others have said earlier in this thread. The Murasame swords were considered to be cursed do to the Tokugawa Family misfortune with tese blades. These instances were commited by a person using a Murasame blade, though the blade doenst contain a demon inside, thats like saying Excalibur of Arthurs time contained the spirit of Merlin, after his death.

But anyway the way a sword was forged, had alot to do with the swords quality, but I can also see the value of European swords, for these were developed due to the changing military styles, but in Japan, the samurai and the military styles changed little over the centuries. As others have said, everything in Japan, remained quite unchanged until the Westernization.

It is sad, though that families in Japan are destroying older swords, made in past centuries. To me, these swords should be preserved in an heirloom sense, yes I can see a reason, to alter them, but to me they shouldnt grind off the edges. I could see the families securing them in small vaults or safes.

I too, am trying to become a sword collector. I want my collection to contain mostly Asian Blades, though I might collect a few European Blades. Ive see a few Middle Eastern Scimitars that seemed quite nice.
 
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