User blog:Saniworm/Of Swords and Men: A Rambling Post about Inquiries to History

Well after a while of immersing myself in sword hell and Japanese history I've got a few thoughts that really no one should be bothered with but hey why not chuck them down into one blog post

Warning for brain-dead boring inquiries that might only require a few clicks around Wikipedia

Will be updated periodically depending on what kind of dumb shit I manage to cook up while idle. Or bored.

On swordsmiths and popularity
Okay so y'all should've known by now that Kanehira of Ko-bizen made the Ookanehira but aside from that did he craft any other sword of notable fame

Answers coming in in 3, 2, 1...

Okay, so.

Yes, back in the days swordsmiths became popular based on the quality of their works. And yes, the more popular they became, the more commissions they got, therefore increasing the number of swords known under their name. So it should mean that quality always go hand-in-hand with quantity, right?

Well, yeah. If you're Yoshimitsu.

As evident in the game, Yoshimitsu was a master craftsman of tantou. And tantou were very easy to mass-produce. It just so happened that Yoshimitsu's quantity went along with quality, leading to the high number of well-known existant works. When you're a master craftsman of tachi instead, it'll take a much longer time to produce something, not to mention the extra time put into resource gathering, maintenance, repair, etc. Tachi masters, therefore, have a much lower work count associated with their names, but there seems to be no difference in work count between the regulars and the top tiers. Where did the supposedly higher number of commissions associated with fame go?

Wars happened. And during those times, swords got chucked away left and right, burned, stolen, sold, or disappeared without any logical explanation whatsoever. Older swords are more prone to suffer from this fate because well the more you extrapolate into the past the more events you get that put them at risk. Many swords of great masters of the good ol' times didn't make it through the ebbs and flows of history. Quality might've gone hand-in-hand with quantity in the past, but time can destroy quantity leaving only quality to prove the great ol' masters' worth.

And one more factor that decides on a swordsmith's popularity: a sword's name, given by its owner and not the words engraved on the tang. There are many swords out there but only a fraction of them have received individual names, signifying that they meant something to their owner rather than just an addition to a sword collection. So, if a sword ever receives a name, it's an indirect recognition of the smith, and a great bump to his popularity. A smith becomes even more popular if his sword is granted a name by a great lord, especially the shogun, or if the sword's name is attached to a grandiose story, like slaying a monster, or just merely cutting through stuff. Even if the name is ridiculous or just plain lame, it means a lot to the swordsmith. The most meaningful victory is probably when a sword's name is the smith's name itself, attached to the prefix "Oo-", which means "great."

On the title of "Great Swords Under Heaven"
Tenka Goken. Five Great Swords Under Heaven. That should be enough to tell that this is a title belonging to five swords considered to be peerless among all Japanese swords. Rulers of the good ol' age scrambled to get their hands on them to prove their power and their worthiness to rule. Kinda like what the Excalibur means to Britain I suppose.

The question is, why does this title exist? Why a group of swords? Why five, and not one, two, three, seven, or even ten?

(Wouldn't larger numbers make Ookanehira's life easier? Who knows, it didn't happen in history anyway :^) )

Back then, before the age of the mass-produced, easy-to-access katana, the tachi was a highly revered symbol of power. Only the richest and most powerful could afford the money for sword commissions, and rulers did their best to restrict weapon ownership of the lower classes. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, for instance, confiscated swords from all over Japan and melted the steel to make a giant Buudha just so that the peasants wouldn't be able to revolt against him.

(Do you ever think about all those times you've dismantled a sword with Ichigo as secretary)

So if only the rich and powerful could own swords, then naturally there should be certain swords that only the richest and most powerful could lay their hands on. Kinda like the Chosen One. So five swords were chosen to do the task. Someone own them and they automatically prove themselves to be worthy of utmost praise and respect. Nah it doesn't mean they're gonna be fighting against Sauron lmao

So, why these five. Well Mikazuki Munechika is renowned for being the most beautiful sword, and since a superlative for a positive characteristic is there...? Juzumaru is a symbol of Buddhism, which was a very important and influential religion for the ruling class in order to establish order throughout the country (even though his original owner was a revolutionary hahah). The other three... Well, without delving into too much spoilers (lmao history isn't even spoilers), the stories around them are borderline folklore. Those stories convey not only ancient Japanese culture and beliefs but also implications of political propaganda, hints of unrest, and other sorts of background noise. They're like pages and pages of a history textbook transformed into swords, waiting for someone to read and decipher the meaning. I suppose the people back then foresaw that for a sword to be worthy of the title, they had to carry the same qualities as a history/cultural studies textbook?

Trivia: Ichigo was a candidate for the title but then he was ON FAIYAAA

Sorry Ichi-nii

In the game, Uguisumaru mentions that Ookanehira is bothered by his lack of status as one of the Great Swords Under Heaven. Meanwhile, Ookanehira is considered to be on par with Doujigiri, the most famous out of the quintet, like the champions in sumo of the East and West. It's like a student complaining that he didn't get into Harvard while he himself is an Oxford valedictorian

Then again, why five, and not a different number?

On decorative swords and their role in history
Lotsa decorative swords, I should say. So much steel that should've gone into improving infrastructure or making arrows or just simply giving peasants tools to live through the day but oh nooooo

No, Japanese nobles weren't crazy about steel or anything. Ah well there's the thing about collecting swords but that's not the entire reason

Before the mass-production of katana, the steel used for swordcrafting was a special type specifically designated for one single task: to be used for smithing. Yeah basically there's the normal steel for doing whatever and there's this special steel separated from the rest to maintain its high quality. Well that cut off the steel supply for the general community a fair bit simply because of slight functional differences. That, and the price tag, too. If something's special it has to have the high price to prove it.

The tachi is not designed to be a good combat weapon. Yeah you read it right, some dudes thought it was a good idea to spend all this money on expensive steel to make blades that would end up all being unsuitable for fighting. Tachi are sharp with great cutting force, but due to their sheer length and weight, wielding them in battle is very inconvenient. So these blades that could've been superweapons ended up becoming decorations instead. And thanks to nobles forever associating tachi with power, the commissions kept rolling in... and steel kept rolling out. Essentially, the nobles wanted these tachi made for sitting around and being inanimate pampered princesses and doing nothing aside from looking good.

(Now you know why you're always out of steel. Cuz you're power-hungry.)

At this point you may ask, why keep crafting all these swords, then, when there have already been some pre-established popular ones and especially the quintet mentioned above? Well it's all about power and the proof of wealth. Simple and clean, they got the money so they just gotta fling it somewhere. Better somewhere that'd produce something to further emphasize their power. A swordsmith it is, then.

(Tachi could make excellent emergency defenses, though, so that's a bonus)

From the tachi's point of view... well they're mostly useless. But that doesn't mean their entire existence is meaningless. Those that manage to survive until today are witnesses to ground-shaking events, great changes of the nation, the rise and fall of rulers, the endless stream of life and death. They are history manuscripts written on steel. Their existence, defined by the hands of men, embodies the saying of "History is written by the victors." In expensive decorative steel we see the stories of wars won and lost, of people murdering and murdered, of pride and sorrow. In swords we see the rise and fall of the ambitions of men.