Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

I write a lot about the Medieval period in Europe but I have to sometimes think that much of the world went through a fascinating cycle of Dark period, Middle Ages, and Renaissance. And one great example of this was brought to me by a PBS show I watched two nights ago. Secrets of the Samurai Sword. It was quite a remarkable show and it went through the whole process of how Samurai swords are made and how they achieve their remarkable quality. They actually take us to a little town in Japan where they still forge the steel the way its been done for hundreds of years and that alone is something. The master forger has to tend the forge for four days straight without any sleep to get a batch of steel that is good enough. The whole show was just astounding.

And if you are familiar with Samurai Swords or katanas you know they have a beautiful curve to them. But what I didn’t know is that the blacksmith doesn’t make it with this curve, it automatically happens when the sword is quenched. And it is due to the different expansion and contraction rates of the steel.

Anyway, I am a big fan of swords and weaponry that came out of Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance but the samurai swords were something else all together! They masters the art of carbon bonding and mixing two different types of steel into a sword without understanding why it was happening. And the best samurai swords today command prices of over $100,000.00. It’s a remarkble art that still continues today.

PBS has a companion site to go along with the show and it is here: Secrets of the Samurai Sword

Even though European culture and Japanese culture are so very different there were some remarkable parallels between the two. A couple of great examples of this different yet the same phenomenon would be the art of sword making and the similarities between the European Code of Chivalry and the Japanese code of Bushido.

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