JAPAN
derives in every-day life from the calligraphy of a manuscript or the brush-lines of a picture. Sometimes the forger's fashion showed itself in a manner perceptible to any observer, the fibre of the steel when it emerged from his hands, being dis- posed in a pattern like the grain of wood.[1] In the very finest class no iron was introduced, but three varieties of steel were combined in such a manner that they occupied in the blade the exact positions where their several qualities were most useful. After the forging followed the tempering, an art in itself; sometimes practised by nobles and princes, and once by an Emperor (Go-toba). A clayey composition—for which each master had a special recipe—was applied to the whole blade except the edge,[2] which was then heated by passing it several times through a bright charcoal fire. A certain temperature, estimated by the master's eye, having been developed, the blade—its edge alone still exposed—was plunged into water, of which also the temperature had to be exactly regulated. The polishing and sharpening were the final operations. The object here was not merely to produce a cutting edge. What had to be done was to polish the blade in two principal planes—the edge-plane and the body-plane—inclined at an angle to each other, and in a minor plane—that of the point—inclined at a different angle to the other two. That does not, perhaps, seem very complicated. But a
146
