Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/171

 life and high morality. He approached his task with veneration, offering prayer to the gods, and using charms to exclude evil influences. Sometimes he employed steel only; sometimes steel and iron in combination. In either case the forging followed the same process. The object was to obtain a fabric consisting of an infinite number of the finest threads of metal woven into a perfectly homogeneous tissue. To that end the smith began by welding together several strips of steel so as to form a rectangular ingot, some six inches long, two inches wide, and half an inch thick. This he heated, and having cut it partially across the middle, he folded it back upon itself, and then forged it out to its original size. Having repeated this process from twelve to eighteen times, he welded several of such ingots together, and then subjected the compound mass, half a dozen times, to the same treatment that each of the component parts had received, until finally there resulted a bar composed of some millions of lamin of steel, which was now beaten out into the shape of the intended blade. If an iron backing was required, the forger added it, either by enveloping the steel between two flanges of iron, or the iron between two flanges of steel. In this intricate process the hammer of the forger obeyed the idiosyncrasies of his style, and these were transmitted to the metal, leaving indications which to the eye of the skilled connoisseur conveyed intelligence such as one