How do Samurai keep their katanas clean?

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hank_rearden

hank_rearden

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You know, after having to cut someone up, or cut anything wet or dirty for whatever reason, how do they keep the blade nice and shiny without having to take a trip to the polisher?
 
Rich has given you a good answer. Though I might add that is regardless of who or what you are cutting, you would/should never return your sword to the saya without wiping the blood, guts, mud and grit or even the reside from cutting tatami off of it.

As an example, when you have a sword polished today, you don't return it to the koshirae (if it had one), but have a shirasaya made for it. The reason why is that one grain of sand or grit inside the old saya could potentially ruin your new and very expensive polish.

In olden days there was less emphasis on artistic merits and more on sustainability. The polisher performed a more functional task of keeping the sword sharp, chips removed, broken tips repaired, etc., in order that the warrior could return to the battlefield.

One more thing I might add is that using Antique Nihonto for cutting is seriously frowned upon. With so many well made functional reproductions available, as well as newly made Japanese swords there is no reason to risk ruining a historical piece. Plus, many people do not realize that in many cases, Nihonto which have been polished several times over the course of their lifetime, lose some of the structural integrity they once possessed due to the removal of steel during the polishing process.
 
Southern Comfort, What do you know about the wiping of a blade after use with paper? Into Nemuri Kyoshiro films and often after "Snapping" the blade to remove blood, he will wipe the blade down with several pieces of paper. Then re-insert the sword into the scabbard. Is this something that was done in the real world of Samurai's? John
 
How do Samurai keep their katanas clean?
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Well . . . rather than sit directly on the ground they sit on one of their dead enemies.
(They wear kind of a kilt like thing right ?)
 
John A. Larsen said:
Southern Comfort, What do you know about the wiping of a blade after use with paper? Into Nemuri Kyoshiro films and often after "Snapping" the blade to remove blood, he will wipe the blade down with several pieces of paper. Then re-insert the sword into the scabbard. Is this something that was done in the real world of Samurai's? John
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John, I can not say for sure. Personally, I have never read any documented evidence from ancient times to support this, yet some evidence exists in Iai kata. The "snapping" you mention is called chiburi which translates to blood shaking, along with the term chinugui which means blood wiping. Chiburi is seen at the end of most Iai kata.

As most of these techniques were developed and handed down from ancient times, combined with the fact that blood is quite viscous it would seem reasonable to believe these techniques were used to clean the blade before placing it back into the saya (noto). My personal thought is that in real life, a combination of the two would have been most effective as chiburi may remove excess blood, flesh and bone fragments, yet it would not have removed all traces of the blood from the blade.

Due to the viscosity of blood, placing a bloody blade back into the saya could cause it to become stuck in the saya. Blood would cause rust and corrosion to the blade as well as swelling and deterioration to the saya. As their lives depended upon their weapons, I suspect they were kept in as good of condition as possible.
 
SouthernComfort said:
In olden days there was less emphasis on artistic merits and more on sustainability. The polisher performed a more functional task of keeping the sword sharp, chips removed, broken tips repaired, etc., in order that the warrior could return to the battlefield.
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Yes, Keith Larman and the other polishers always mentioned that you would have found something closer to the polish that Gus or Tinker give you on a working sword. Easy, quick, got the job done until the next time.

SouthernComfort said:
One more thing I might add is that using Antique Nihonto for cutting is seriously frowned upon.
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This is simply not true. Many people still use Nihonto to cut with, especially people in Japan, where it is illegal to import swords from anywhere else or to create new swords unless created specifically from certain government approved materials.

Even then-- The Japanese literally laid their swords down 100 years ago, so "antique" can be relative.

SouthernComfort said:
The "snapping" you mention is called chiburi which translates to blood shaking, along with the term chinugui which means blood wiping. Chiburi is seen at the end of most Iai kata.
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Chiburi is more ceremonial than anything else. A polisher one time retold a story of how he cut himself while polishing a sword and reapplied blood until he was satisfied that Chiburi didn't actually work. Then he had to clean his shop.
 
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hank_rearden said:
You know, after having to cut someone up, or cut anything wet or dirty for whatever reason, how do they keep the blade nice and shiny without having to take a trip to the polisher?
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I was under the impression that there weren't any more Samurai. But in case I'm wrong I guess you could just ask one...o_O
 
Mecha said:
Wrong.
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They never existed as we romanticize about them, there were assassins, yes, but what we think we know about ninja/shinobi was more of a Chinese fictional construct from the best of my understanding.
 
SonX51 said:
They never existed as we romanticize about them, there were assassins, yes, but what we think we know about ninja/shinobi was more of a Chinese fictional construct from the best of my understanding.
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There is mystery and balderdash surrounding the legend of the Ninja/Shinobi, yes, as there is about many true things in history. However there is lots of evidence that they did exist and not too far off of what may be seen in cartoons and cinema and such.
 
Mecha said:
There is mystery and balderdash surrounding the legend of the Ninja/Shinobi, yes, as there is about many true things in history. However there is lots of evidence that they did exist and not too far off of what may be seen in cartoons and cinema and such.
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We are off topic at this point, I would recommend researching more.
 
I recommend everyone researches everything more, you can never know everything there is to know, and anyone can be very mistaken about key facts on any subject that they think they are well versed in.

Now, the subject of this thread is about keeping blades clean.
 
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