Many people must have asked a question about the samurai in Japan. The swords they hold in their hands are obviously swords, but when it comes to the spirit they revere, and the various techniques that use swords as weapons, they always use words such as "kendo" and "swordplay" to describe swords. This starts with the culture of the sword.
The killing knife and the living sword
The Japanese generation of swordsman Yanagi Sheng Zongji has a sword genealogy, that is, the "Biography of the Martial Arts" of Yanagi's new yin stream (a school of swordsmanship), in which there are two chapters, named "Killing Knife" and "Living Sword". As a sword monograph, the "knife" and "sword" here actually refer to Japanese swords, so why is it a knife when killing people, and a sword when people are left to die?
katana
As a close neighbor of China, in fact, Japan's early swords were imported from China. In China, beginning with the Han Dynasty, swords evolved into ceremonial vessels and status-symbolizing accessories, while swords were popularized on the battlefield due to their stronger lethality instead of swords. The same is true in Japan. One of Japan's three major artifacts, the Kusanagi sword– whose shape is clearly a reference to China's double-edged bronze sword – often appears as an important ceremonial vessel on occasions of sacrifice and blessing. As a battlefield weapon, the ring head knife slowly evolved into the appearance of the Japanese sword we know today.
Similar to the culture of "unknown soldiers" in our culture, the knife of conquest and killing symbolizes bad luck, and the knife of evil sacrifice represents sacredness. It's just that the Japanese are relatively simple and rude: since the knife is not good, isn't it enough to call the knife a sword? This is where the terms "knife of killing" and "sword of the living" come from. The name of the sword is the sword, which is related to life and death, full of philosophical implications, and it is very interesting to think about it.
There are five kinds of more common Japanese knives: Tai Dao, Fighting Knife, Yakyo, Short Knife and Pheasant Knife, but if we say that we have a common Japanese knife in our impression, it generally refers to tai knife and fighting knife. The reason why the Japanese knife has such excellent performance is inseparable from its smelting technology, tool shape, forging method and heat treatment method. As far as heat treatment is concerned, many Japanese knives are treated by the method of covering the soil and burning the blade, which, as the name suggests, in this treatment method, the soil pulp wrapped from the body of the knife to the blade is thick and thin, and the edge is often not painted. Such a coating method, when quenching, the blade cools faster, and the knife body slowly cools, the result is that the blade is hard and sharp, but the knife body is soft and tough.
Due to the low efficiency of the process of making Japanese swords, in ancient times it often took a lot of resources and energy to make a sophisticated knife, coupled with the sword as a symbol of strength and blood, so that the Japanese gradually developed a primitive spiritual worship of the sword, which is the source of many Japanese myths about the sword.
The three major artifacts of Japan: the Eight Mirrors, the Kusanagi Sword, and the Eight-Foot Qiong Gou Jade
"Life Test", "Death Test" and "Solid Thing Test"
For the production of knives, of course, one step that cannot be separated is testing. In the process of development, not only the knife-making technology is becoming more and more sophisticated, but the method of measuring knives is gradually specialized and standardized, but the evaluation method is really bloody. Since the only purpose of Japanese swords is sharpness, how to cut more labor-saving and effectively is the pursuit of each generation of craftsmen. The shape of the Japanese knife is between the machete and the straight knife developed in other civilizations, and it has the physical characteristics of cutting and cutting. For flesh without armor protection, its destructive power is unmatched among similar weapons.
The ancient Japanese pursuit of the sharpness of the knife to the point of morbidity (in fact, many Japanese in many industries are like this), and many famous knives handed down have used the human body to test the sharpness. The test is divided into "living test", "dead person test" and "solid object test". There are many records of the trial of the beheading of the living in the earlier history, such as Toyotomi Hideyoshi's son Toyotomi Hideji, who often took innocent passers-by as the object of the test beheading on the side of the road, leading a very bad atmosphere, making the people miserable, and getting the nickname of "killing Guanbai", which means that he is in charge of cutting people. The trial of the living was too cruel, and later there was a "death test", that is, the beheading of the beheaded body of a death row prisoner. The knife that has been tried to cut will be engraved on the stem of the knife with the words "two carcass cut off" and "three carcass cut off", which is called "truncated inscription".
Engraved with a truncated inscription of "two carcass cuts"
In fact, as a weapon to carry around, japanese swords can only play a self-defense role more often, and do not have much effect on the battlefield. In the Ming Dynasty's struggle against the Wokou, the proportion of soldier damage caused by the sword did not exceed 3%, the fundamental reason was that although the Japanese sword was very effective in cutting the human body, the effect of breaking the armor was very poor. A high-grade knife that can cut off two or three corpses is often unable to cope with an ordinary lock armor, not to mention the plate armor, za armor and other armor with better defense effect.
In the book "The Last Samurai", it is recorded that at the end of the shogunate, the new selection group under the Kyoto Guardian sent Five people, including Isamu Kondo and Nagakura Shinhachi, to sneak up on the choshu clan that had fallen behind the curtain. The battle took place in a hotel called Ikedaya, and a new group that had not investigated the number of people in advance burst into Ikedaya, only to suddenly find that there were more than 20 enemies. Although the Choshu clan was not prepared in the slightest, the sudden appearance of the new selection group caused some panic, but after all, they were all samurai who had experienced hundreds of battles and swords, and after some adjustments, they immediately counterattacked, but they still could not escape the result of being brutally slaughtered. This was because the new selection group and others not only had the advantage of the raid, but more importantly, several samurai were dressed in chainmail armor, and even their heads and hands did not fall, wearing forehead iron and cage hands, and made all-round defenses. Under such circumstances, the disadvantage of the Japanese knife not being able to break the armor is exposed, and the Japanese knife is light in texture in order to ensure the speed of the cutting, and even the more serious blunt weapon injury effect cannot be achieved. Therefore, in movies and television, a samurai sword cuts iron like mud, and splitting gold and cutting armor is basically artistic processing, or it can simply be said nonsense.
Japanese lock armor
Samurai culture
As a privileged symbol of the status of the Japanese ruling class, the katana has also formed a unique cultural system, as well as corresponding etiquette and culture. In today's rules of the road, except for the Commonwealth countries, most of them walk on the right, while Japan, like the United Kingdom, walks on the left, which is related to the influence of samurai culture. Because the samurai's swords are worn on the left side, it is convenient for the right hand to smoothly pull out the sword when fighting (after all, the right hand is the majority), and walking on the left side is to avoid colliding with the oncoming katana sheath, which is enough in samurai culture to draw the sword and fight for life, because it will affect the honor. Japanese samurai will not tell you as politely as Westerners when they duel before cutting people, "Please apologize to me, otherwise duel", they are some people who cut their swords without saying a word, and no one wants to be in close contact with the katana without knowing it. This culture has influenced the rules of transportation in Japan today.
In 1862, Richardson, an Englishman doing business in Shanghai, went to Japan and met the Guards of the Lord of satsuma Domain, probably enjoying the privilege of being a "foreign lord" in China, not taking the yellow people seriously, and riding a horse into the guard. The samurai did not draw their swords directly, but only shouted at the British, not knowing whether they did not understand or did not care at all, Richardson and others had no intention of backing down. An enraged samurai could not bear it, and went up and slashed from Richardson's left shoulder to his right rib, and another samurai immediately cut open his abdomen with another knife, and his intestines immediately flowed out. Richardson did not have time to feel the pain, and after he fell off his horse, the samurai next to him made up another sword and compassionately gave him a pain. Several of his entourage were also seriously injured, but fortunately they were on horseback, and the samurai were not able to exert their strength from the bottom up, giving them the opportunity to escape.
Samurai image manga
Today's katana and samurai spirit have long been far away from Japan, more often only as a cultural symbol and art form, in addition to the film and television image, more understanding of history, will not be blinded by false propaganda.
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