Hi everyone,
I always wanted to own a sword, I think I got the idea when I was 10 years old. There was some kind of gothic apparel / decorational shop just around the corner of our house, and everytime I went by that shop I fancied those wallhanger swords they displayed in their windows. Of course every try to convince my parents of the fact that I am unbelievbly reasonable for my 10 years and sure as heck wouldn't cut myself into pieces if they got me one of those only ended up in tears and frustration. So it stayed at window shopping for several years, until I eventually forgot about my deep desires of owning sharpened metal.
Now my financial situation is pretty alright at the moment, that plus the fact that I may have watched The Last Samurai one too many times lately, finally made me make my long forgotten childhood dream come true.
A couple of days ago I bought a samurai sword to hang on my wall and decorate the room.
And hell, it decorates the living shit out of my room.
Now it's a cheapo one, cost me around 50 bucks and is supposed to be a handmade carbon steel blade, but I guess by that they mean "put into the metal press by hand". Then again, from what I could figure it's made in China, and as we all know one man hour is way cheaper than one hour of machine run time over there, so that might actually be true. Who knows, and more importantly, who cares?
I for one do not, and I seem to be a little bit special in that regard. Pretty much everyone's first question when laying their eyes on this piece of metal was: "So... is it real...?"
And then there am I, standing in desperation trying to figure out what makes a sword which is supposed to color up your room real.
Thing is, in my oppinion every bladed something that is longer than my kitchen knifes and has a handle is a sword, and if it's even made out of some kind of steel, it's real. That's what defines a sword, right? And as for the second most popular question "Is it sharp?" I could only give the answer that it's probably not sharp enough to cut your arm off, but I wouldn't exactly call it blunt either.
 |
| Really real, really cool, really expensive |
On the other hand some say that there are no "real" swords being made anymore, as, well, swords were real when they were practical in medieval times, and everything newly made therefore doesn't deserve the term "real". And that makes just as much sense to me. You can grab real real samurai swords all over the net from what I've seen, if you feel like spending from two grands upwards for some piece of metal that may be 300 years old and is as functional as a letter opener. A probably way cooler thing to have hanging on your wall though, and you can affirm the question about it's authenticity without feeling awkward about it.
I've also heard some other funky explanations about what makes a samurai sword real. One of it, it came from my stepfather, was that these things are only real when they've been folded like about a hundred times, because that's what makes them harder. Now while it may be true that originally swords (not just the asian ones) were folded, this process was only necessary to even out the carbon content in the steel, because the medieval iron ore was of pretty bad quality when put in comparison with modern industrial steel. Also, folding it does in no way make the metal harder, I have no idea where he grabbed that info. I could have told that even without the large chunks of metalworking I had to do for my electrical engeneering apprenticeship.
And then again, you can get cheap "folded" blades for around 100 euros, from what I've seen, which are made from damascus steel. Now if damascus steel counts as being folded you could just as well say that every industrial made steel is pre-folded thousands of times as they are pretty much homogeneous in their contents.
 | |
| Damascus steel blades - In my oppinion this is as far off from being traditional as it gets |
A buddy told me genuine samurai swords have to be from Japan. And that's it. Like, the japs are probably the only people in the entire world who know how to make them. And they vigorously refuse to tell anyone. Ha.
 |
| Look at this, it doesn't get much more real than that. |
Other Kind of Informational fun fact: Japanese katana evolved from the Chinese tachi, which is basically the same thing only rebranded. So the design is actually Chinese. Now if the Chinamen feel like stealing their own design back by producing tons of replicas they should be free to do so, don't you think?
Yet another friend teached me some of the stuff he learned from watching his favourite anime. It had something to do with real swords having star-shaped hand guards, being unbreakable and being able to cut through metal without even using any effort. I forgot about the details, but it was painful to listen to and was loaded with more bollocks than I want you to read on a blog that's supposed to be at least kind of informational.
So have we learned today? Probably not much, to be honest I just needed an excuse to show you my new kick ass ninja accessory. So have another picture of it taken in a cheesy sideways angle here.
And I'm out.
Greets,
Wesh
