The "ore" (called Tamahagane) is sandy/rocky stone material which needs to be forged repeatedly to remove impurities and get a higher carbon content in the steel. Then the forged bars are broken down, pieces sorted by carbon content and forge welded back together. This is a very labor and skill intensive process.
There was a really good blacksmithing video in YouTube about making a Katana from Tamahagane. Unfortunately I can't find it now, but my searches come up with many low quality vids on the subject.
If you're feeling adventurous, you can buy some Tamahagane sword steel ore from here:
https://www.dictum.com/en/steel-cca/japanese-sword-steel-tam...
FWIW tamagahane is already a steel, made from processing ironsand. Tamahagane is not the raw material.
Ironsand is found throughout the world, but outside of the japanese few made actual iron (or steel) out of it historically, because there are usually better sources of iron available.
NZ is an other country which is very poor in iron ore but it has a lot of ironsand, some of its beaches are ironsand (which is genuinely dangerous: it heats up quickly and very high in the sun). While the japanese were largely the only historical users of ironsand, I think NZ is the only one which industrially smelts ironsand.
There aren't any iron ore mines in my corner of the world either. The material traditionally used was called "lake ore", which is iron-rich stones collected from lakes that are the result of activity from iron-consuming freshwater bacteria.
Some blacksmithing enthusiasts still work with lake ore for a fun challenge.
It depends on what you mean by superiority. Perfect for local needs? Yes. Very good against an unarmoured target? Yes. It is also an important status symbol because of its price and artistic beauty. It also requires some amount of skill to use, because of its single edge and the angle at which you need to strike in order to cut. That increased its status as an elite tool.
They managed to do something that would not have been possible in this part of the world without the elite craftsmen. In that sense, it was superior to its competitors.
But was it superior to other swords? It's comparing apples and oranges. It could not deal with the heavy armor seen in the West. But many Western swords could not either. Some could because they were heavier or pointier... but that would have made them poor against unarmoured or low armored targets. You couldn't use it on horseback either, but the Japanese had longer versions for that.
It was a very good and beautiful tool, that's what it was.
By the 14th century, Swiss sabers were simply more generally performant than just about anything that came before. They could stab almost as well as a long sword, and slash almost as well as a scimitar, with good balance, and the added advantage of having both a cross guard, and a light basket hand guard.
(Personally I think swords are an over-romanticized weapon, and almost wholly inferior to spears in large scale melee combat, but they still evolved like every other piece of military technology, and earlier designs like the katana have a lot of obvious design flaws when compared to what you see on the battlefield in the 14th, 15th, or 16th centuries)
Otherwise, I completely agree with you. The Swiss saber was made to deal with similar targets as the Katana, so it performs in similar ways with the added benefit of having all the features you would expect on a western sword. Another sword that is quite similar to the Katana is the Kriegsmessers, which is also two handed. Both benefited from the advance in European warfare technologies while the Katana kind of stalled in it's perceived "perfected" form.
Swords are over-romanticized now but I believe that it was also the case in the past. Any hardened soldier could have told you that spears or pikes where what won wars. Yet it's the sword we see and hear the most in art. The myths surrounding the Katana are probably as old as the sword itself.
Yes, and even inferior to the staff. Here is a (1599!) plea to Englishmen to cease wastefully killing each other in duels (esp. with Italian mores/swords/styles) b/c those swords/styles are unsuited to generalized warfare (and thus provide no useful training for the common defense) and also are inferior to other more common weapons/styles, esp. the short staff, in single combat:
"Now for the vantage of the short staff against the sword and buckler, sword & target, two handed sword, single sword, sword and dagger, or rapier and poniard, there is no great question ... the short staff has the vantage against the battle axe, black bill, or halberd: the short staff has the advantage, by reason of the nimbleness and length: he will strike and thrust freely, and in better and swifter time than can the battle axe, black bill, or halberd, and by reason of his judgement, distance and time, fight safe. And this resolve upon, the short staff is the best weapon against all manner of weapons, the forest bill excepted...Also the short staff has advantage against two swords and daggers, or two rapiers, poniards and gauntlets(19)...
From George Silver's Paradoxes of Defense:
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/paradoxes.html
wherein Silver analyzes the interaction of various weapons in great detail, underscores the advantages of the short staff in most situations and in doing so presages Theodore Roosevelt:
"I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick: you will go far!'"
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/speak-softly-and-carry-a...
I expect stick would have the problem of not killing. A sword can easily stab someone dead or maim and any hit is (significant) bleeding. A hammer could bludgeon someone dead in a hit.
But a staff? I don't know about that. Yes you can hit somebody in a duel from afar and keep your distance, yet you hit them 5 times and they keep coming at you.
In "Paradoxes of Defense" Silver talks about both:
a) He believes that dueling traditions adopted from other cultures are wasteful of English life and limb and provide little or no training for use on the battlefield. It was important that each well-bodied Englishman be able to serve his country in a war. Once war was declared, there was scant time for training with new weapons and the dueling skills were not very useful.
b) He discusses most weapons and considers their use in one-on-one, one-on-two and battle situations.
user5994461 says "I expect stick would have the problem of not killing."
Many have been killed/wounded by a "stick"(AKA rolling pin, tire tool, baseball bat, 2x4, flashlight, etc.). But "sticks" per se vary from a short stick, e.g., police baton, to a short staff, e.g., 1-2 inch diameter by ~1 meter length, to a longer staff (maybe ~3 meters and longer). Sizes differ for different cultures. Some "sticks" have lead/iron weights in them. Some are wrapped with metal.
A larger weapon is usually capable of dealing harder blows. "Sticks" kill by breaking heads and bones (ribs, shins, arms and legs, the neck, eyes, throat), etc. Usually they disable immediately (hard to fight with a broken leg or if your larynx has been crushed). It would be foolish to fight with a broken arm or missing eye if one could simply play dead.
user5994461 says "...yet you hit them 5 times and they keep coming at you."
You need a bigger stick or some exercise. Oh, and don't mess with those Orcs!8-))
Silver(author of Paradoxes of Defense) was likely more familiar with this than you or I. I don't doubt his experience.
An English nursery rhyme:
Sticks and stones
may break my bones
But words shall never hurt me.
One challenge with all these examples is that they are used because they are handy not because they are efficient. The police baton is perfect example of something used to NOT kill (manifestations would be terribly bloody if the police was responding with swords or daggers), it's better than nothing but you don't want to go to battle with that.
If we're talking medieval fighting the other party has significant padding if not a gambeson, and they're not waiting idle to get your best hit. If training with wood weapons is any indication, the one with a stick variant loose everytime, they can hit but they get closed upon anyway and stabbed/slashed.
If you make the (long) stick a spear, a tip that can cut and stab, it's a great weapon. You'd certainly want to have a spear not just a long stick.
A wood mock up of a sword would, of course, not be as useful against an iron sword (especially if deployed in a sword-like manner) as would a 6-foot staff of hickory. What kind of "wood weapon" are you speaking of? Are you speaking in the context of some "dojo" or some style of martial art?
One problem with dojo drills is that the opponent must "hold back" due to possibility of injury. Also, in a dojo, only one style (e.g., use of the rapier) is usually being taught: not unsurprisingly all other styles somehow fail to measure up. There are many reasons for this: unskilled users, absence of in-house expert ("sensei", "master", etc.) in the opposing style, the power of suggestion.
Don't confuse choreographed drills in a dojo with a real fight/battle. Some dojos sell the belief that their weapon of choice (longsword, rapier, long staff, Klingon Bat'Leth, short staff, firearm, knife, bare hands, etc.) is the "one and true" weapon that will protect you against all comers. But they'can't all be dominant in all situations and that is part of what Silvers' "Paradoxes of Defense" says.
In a real fight the pole cracks skulls, breaks legs and arms and is thrust into mouths, noses, eyes and necks before an opponent's blade can reach the poler. A "stick", as you call it, can be as long but is likely quicker than the sword, cannot be easily damaged by the sword and as Silvers summarizes, is superior in battle.
Pictures of men wearing gambesons show exposed faces and limbs. The gambeson likely lowers mobility (and might be uncomfortably warm). It resembles a bulletproof vest, most which spend their time in the closet. And, as you may know, a man with a knife can make short work of a man in or out of a bulletproof vest (there are gaps).
Take for example the Bo that can easily break bones and can bend even a Katana with a proper strike.
Even pool cues will kill when used in bar fights.
The Halberd for Europeans, the Qiang in China, the Naginata of Japan.
Across the world, it has been demonstrated that to make a "better sword", you put the sword on the end of a long stick. Such a weapon requires less training, and the greater amount of wood makes it lighter and cheaper to manufacture.
The additional swing weight allowed Halberd users to regularly break shields and punch through armor. Length and swing-weight are key.
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Swords almost universally were status symbols. It was expensive to make a sword no matter what culture you're in, so carrying a fancy sword indicated nobility.
Smaller weapons (and smaller shields) like swords were for status and every day situations. Bucklers / Rapiers don't make any sense as a battlefield weapon. But when you consider the day-to-day life, walking around a city... the smaller blade and smaller shield suddenly make sense.
That's what different sword grips were for, though. It is common to grasp a sword by the blade, in order to parry, or to use it as a kind of spear, or even to reverse the grip on the weapon, and striking with the edges of the cross-guard - as you would with a hammer.
In a serious battle however, you'd simply call the squire to fetch you a war-hammer, a spear, or whatever other weapon you needed.
European weapons are fascinating: they had a different weapon for every kind of battle situation. One polearm to pull people off of horses. Another polearm to break through shields and armor. Etc. etc.
The blog I would refer people to is https://acoup.blog/2020/10/02/collections-iron-how-did-they-... (in general as well as that post); I don't think they've covered katanas specifically but they are great on detail.
For example, there is this smithy that is local to me: https://www.darksword-armory.com/medieval-weapons/elite-seri...
> also known as pattern welded steel swords
Pattern welded steel is not the same thing as the ‘original’ Damascus steel from 1000+ years ago.
The folding and reforging reomves these impurities from the steel and changes the carbon content, making the stell more flexible or harder and thus sharper but also more brittle. Quite ingenious, if you aske me. Nowadays, Japanese deposits can be exploited with electromagnets, resulting in basically pure iron ore making all that metalurgy more or less unnecessary.
Not that Japanese swords were bad, they were as good as any other sword in killing people. So no katana superiority, but neither any deficiencies compared to European swords.
Also be aware that swords used to be the medival equivalent of modern day pistols. More or less.
Folding steel is only required to remove impurities, so in theory high-quality steel doesn't require much folding (if any). However in Japan due to the volcanic nature of the land, the iron deposits are full of impurities which lead to the need for folding. After you've done enough folding you end up with a billet which is basically the same quality as western steel. In other words, there's nothing intrinsically better about the steel in a finished Japanese sword (if anything the starting materials are worse).
But again, I'm only speaking a someone who read about this and other bits of metalworking last year in a spurt of interest in the subject. Wikipedia claims otherwise:
> The folding removes impurities and helps even out the carbon content, while the alternating layers combine hardness with ductility to greatly enhance the toughness.
But in my mind this does raise the question "why don't all modern swordsmiths all use this technique if its objectively superior?"
Katanas retain their sharpness better, so, as they are harder. And carried in wooden scabords and not metal ones as European sabres and such.
Certainly perhaps the Japanese steel may have contained other impurities and been harder to refine but certainly European Iron had to be worked to make Steel.
See this answer on a subreddit dedicated to high quality answers by historians: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/77tq5r/japan...
Those blades would have been so expensive in relative terms that I truly wonder how much real combat they were used in. In any war the peon's get the worst of it. Anyone rich/ senior enough to have them wasn't going to be on the front line.
Then there's the fact that the handle was usually attached by a single mekugi ( bamboo or ivory peg ) which is not strong from an engineering point of view and completely at odds with that engineering marvel of a blade but perfect for swapping out the handle to match the fashion occasion.
IMHO, Katanas became or rather retained their religious status with Japan closing down and more or less freezing social development. The knighlty sowrd was somewhat replaced in that role in Europe with the introduction of firearms and the fall of Knights.
There are parallels in modern warfare.
Javelin missiles cost $175k, and are fired by troops making $20k/year. It gets even more disparate when you move into things like fighter jets.
[0] https://ask.metafilter.com/153280/Steel-is-strong-but-flesh-...
There’s also that somewhat famous (infamous?) Lindy Beige video on the subject on YouTube. But I get a sense that there’s a lot of opinion and subjectivity when it comes to a historian’s perspective.
I'd have assumed thay "any cuttystabbything will do" applies to basically any kind of sword.
But there are certainly trade-offs in design. Katanas are good at chopping unarmoured opponents and being sharp. The crossguard of a longsword can and was used to bludgeon an armored opponent, who would be basically immune to cuts. So if I abducted you and forced you to pick a sword from a lineup, then fight someone to the death, you'd want to know who you were fighting and what they had, and pick based on that.
Now I’m curious and have to explore this further.