Note: The text below is the transcript of the YouTube video above.
Introduction
What Japanese Swords Taught Me About Beauty
“A hundred years from now, two hundred years from now. If someone looks at one of my swords and thinks, yeah, that’s a pretty good blade. That’s enough.”
These days, we often want results almost immediately.
So when a Japanese swordsmith told me he hoped his work might be appreciated two hundred years from now, those words stayed with me.
In this video, I want to look beyond the technical side of how Japanese swords are made.
I visited a swordsmith and a sword polisher in Japan to explore where the beauty of these swords comes from, and what their work might teach us about beauty, time, and how we live.
Hi, I’m Satomi Takayama, a Japanese artist based between Japan and London. Through my videos and writing, I explore Japanese aesthetics, craftsmanship, and the deeper stories behind the quiet wisdom of everyday life.
Inside the Swordsmith’s Forge
The first person I visited was Ishida-san, a swordsmith who has been forging swords for over thirty years. I drove all the way out to Gunma Prefecture to meet him.
Sword-making requires government certification, and I was told that across the whole of Japan, fewer than eighty people do this as their main profession.
Inside the dimly lit forge, the fire burned a deep, powerful red. On the wall, a guardian deity was enshrined, and the moment I stepped inside, I felt something almost sacred in the air.
Right in front of that intense heat, Ishida-san worked in quiet concentration. Heating the steel. Hammering it. Back into the fire. Hammering again.
There was something about his single-minded presence that moved me.
But what struck me first in our conversation wasn’t about technique. It was something more fundamental.
What actually is a Japanese sword?
I want to call it by its Japanese name from here: nihon-to.
I had always assumed it simply meant a sword made in Japan. But Ishida-san’s answer was quite different.
Ishida-san: “When people ask what a nihon-to is, it isn’t called a nihon-to simply because it was made in Japan. I think it needs functionality, spirituality, and artistic beauty, all three together.
Beyond being made from materials such as tamahagane or traditional Japanese iron, and beyond having a curved blade, it also has to cut well.
Japanese swords have often been treated as sacred objects.
Some are even enshrined as sacred objects in Shinto shrines. So I think if a sword has no connection to that spiritual side, it isn’t a nihon-to.
And it also has to be beautiful. If it were rusted and just lying there, it wouldn’t inspire that same sense of awe. I think those three things are the basic premise. And when a sword also carries history within it, I think that’s when it comes into its fullest form as a nihon-to.
With Western swords, the exterior was made more ornate, the parts people could see. Jewels on the scabbard, things like that. The part that was actually used was seen as a tool.
With nihon-to, though, the emphasis is placed on the blade itself, the very part that’s used.
Even though it’s a tool meant to be used, it’s polished with extraordinary precision. It’s polished so finely that even a fingerprint can leave a mark on the surface, all so that you can see the character of the steel and the character of the blade.
It is clearly a highly specialised and almost obsessive world.”
What Makes a Nihon-to
Hearing this, I felt like I finally understood why I had never quite known how to look at Japanese swords in museums.
I had always been trying to see only the shape, or only the beauty of the blade.
But a nihon-to is a cutting tool, a work of art, something sacred, and something that carries centuries of history within it, all at once.
In Japan, swords have long been deeply connected with mythology and ritual. So looking at a nihon-to is not simply about asking whether it is beautiful. It also means trying to see the time and the spirit that live within it.
As I watched Ishida-san work, I started to find it impossible to see nihon-to as just a tool or just an art object.
Let me briefly explain how a nihon-to is made.
A nihon-to is made mainly from a special steel called tamahagane. The swordsmith selects and combines pieces with different qualities, then heats, hammers, folds, and works them again and again, until strength and flexibility begin to emerge.
Later, clay is applied, and the blade is heated, then rapidly cooled in water. That is what creates the sharp edge and the distinctive, graceful curve of a nihon-to.
At first glance, a swordsmith’s work looks very physical, very forceful. But the more I listened, the more I understood that beneath that force was an extraordinarily fine sensitivity.
One of the things that fascinated me most was what Ishida-san described as the heating process: getting the steel to precisely the right state within the fire.
If the heat is insufficient, the layers will not bond. If it is too hot, the steel melts. Reading that precise point in between is what makes it so difficult.
Ishida-san seemed to be drawing on everything at once: the colour of the steel, the sparks, the sound, and probably a kind of knowing that goes beyond words.
There is an old saying among swordsmiths:
“Three years to learn charcoal-cutting, five years to master the sledgehammer, and a lifetime to master the fire.”
When Ishida-san said “a lifetime”, it did not feel exaggerated.
The Beauty of the Hamon
Near the end of our time together, Ishida-san showed me how to look at the hamon, the wave-like pattern that appears along the blade’s edge.
The hamon is one of the most important things to appreciate when viewing a nihon-to.
It is shaped by the forging, the clay, the heat of the fire, and the water used to cool the blade.
So it is not something that can be completely controlled. But it is not pure chance either.
And this is where Ishida-san said something I found really striking.
Ishida-san: If it’s too deliberate, it’s not interesting. It becomes boring to look at.
But if it’s completely random, then my own intention isn’t in the work at all. That’s also not interesting.
So what I want to do is create randomness deliberately.
“Creating randomness deliberately.”
On the surface, it sounds like a contradiction. But I felt something deeply Japanese in that idea.
It looks natural, but there is an intention behind it.
And yet, if that intention becomes too visible, something feels off.
I think Japanese gardens work in a similar way. Ceramics too. Not trying to control everything, but making something together with the material, with nature, with chance.
The hamon holds that same kind of beauty.
A Rhythm Within a Single Blade
Partway through the visit, I was honoured to be joined by Iida-san, whose family runs what is said to be the oldest sword dealership in Japan.
He spoke about how, within a single sword, there is something like a narrative arc.
Yoshio-san: So instead of being uniform from start to finish, like something made by a machine, it begins quietly, becomes lively and a little wild, and then settles down again, ending in something calmer and more refined. That rhythm exists within this sword.
It’s the same with an orchestra, isn’t it? It isn’t loud from beginning to end. There’s a quiet introduction, a lively development, and then it moves towards its conclusion.
All of that is done intentionally. It isn’t something that just happened to turn out this way. This hamon is Ishida-san’s interpretation.
A rhythm contained within a single blade.
Just knowing how to look changes everything about the way you see the same sword.
And of all the things Ishida-san said, this is what stayed with me the most.
Ishida-san: There’s a kind of romance in wondering, “Who owned this sword during the Edo period?”
Satomi: So when you make something, is it almost like waiting for it to be properly appreciated, but much later?
Ishida-san: A hundred or two hundred years from now, if someone says, “That guy’s work wasn’t bad,” that’s enough for me.
Satomi: Is that the mindset you work with?
Ishida-san: I don’t want people saying two hundred years from now, “That guy was no good.” So I make sure I do it properly.
Working for the Future
These days, we can make things so quickly. And when we make something, we want to know the reaction, the response, the numbers, almost immediately.
But to work with a sense of time so completely different from that, hoping to be recognised long after you are gone, felt like it existed in a completely different dimension from the world we live in now.
A sword made today is rarely displayed alongside ancient masterpieces in a museum. Because it has not yet contained history within it.
The evaluation belongs to people in the future.
For now, you simply make.
That simplicity stayed with me.
The Art of Sword Polishing
But even after the sword leaves the swordsmith’s hands, its beauty is not yet fully visible. One of the most important parts comes next: polishing. And this is where I realised something I had completely misunderstood. Polishing a nihon-to is not simply about making it sharp or shiny. It is about revealing the beauty already hidden inside it.
The next person I visited was Fujishiro-san in Tokyo, the grandson of a Living National Treasure in the art of sword polishing, and now carrying on that family tradition himself. He oversees the restoration and conservation of national treasures and important cultural properties across Japan.
Before meeting him, I had always thought of polishing as something practical. But what I found was nothing so simple. There was a reason nihon-to carry such extraordinary depth.
Fujishiro-san: “Sharpening a kitchen knife is about making it cut. With this kind of polishing for Japanese art swords, it goes beyond that. It is about making the sword look beautiful and bringing out its patterns clearly. That is where the difference lies.”
Not only to make it cut, but to make its beauty visible.
The polisher’s work is to draw out what is already there: the hamon, the surface of the steel, the texture of the metal, using whetstones.
And the thing Fujishiro-san said that stayed with me the most was this.
Fujishiro-san: The way you bring out that beauty is a little like make-up. Someone who is skilled at it and someone doing it for the first time will naturally produce very different results.
It’s like getting closer and closer, halving the distance each time. You keep getting closer, but it still feels far away.
Every sword has a face. A character.
Not imposing your own style, but drawing out the expression the sword naturally holds.
That, he said, is what good polishing is.
The sense of aligning yourself with the material. Not making yourself the main character, but devoting yourself to bringing out what the other holds.
When I heard this, it felt so deeply Japanese to me.
Beauty is not only about adding things to make something stand out.
I feel this sensibility runs through many traditional Japanese forms, not only swords.
Stillness, Water, and Stone
Fujishiro-san’s workspace was quiet.
Very different from Ishida-san’s forge. Just the sound of water dripping, and the soft sound of the blade against the whetstone.
If Ishida-san’s world was motion, Fujishiro-san’s was stillness.
Starting from coarser stones, gradually moving to finer ones. A single sword can take more than a month.
I was given the chance to try it myself for a moment.
Polishing requires a very particular way of sitting, and the way you distribute your weight through the body matters enormously.
When I tried, just getting the sitting position right was enough of a challenge. I realised how much the whole body is involved in keeping the balance.
You can probably tell just by watching me how difficult it was.
Fujishiro-san spoke of wanting to polish in a way that conveys as much of a sword’s inherent beauty as possible.
He adjusts which stone to use according to the expression of each sword.
What is beautiful cannot be fully put into words.
So you refine it, little by little, through the doing.
And it never reaches an end.
That echoed what Ishida-san had said about the heating.
A lifetime of learning.
A Beauty Completed by Many Hands
There is one more thing that moved me near the end.
In most cases, a polisher’s name is not recorded on the sword itself.
What is inscribed is the swordsmith’s signature, the maker’s name.
But Ishida-san said this.
“Half of how the finished sword looks. That is in the polisher’s hands.”
The one who made it, and the one who drew it out.
Both are needed before a sword can truly show its face.
And it does not stop there.
That blade then passes through the hands of many specialists: the scabbard-maker, the metalwork artist, the lacquer artist, the handle-wrapper, the braid-maker, and others, each adding their part before a nihon-to is complete.
The beauty of a nihon-to is not completed by a single name.
What Nihon-to Taught Me About Beauty
After meeting both of them, what I felt most strongly was that the beauty of nihon-to is far more delicate, and far more sensory, than I had ever imagined.
If beauty could be defined purely by symmetry or geometric form, it might be easier to describe objectively.
But in Japanese aesthetics, beauty often lives in something less fixed: in natural curves, small irregularities, and subtle nuances that are hard to put into words.
That is precisely why cultivating that kind of sensitivity takes time.
A lifetime, even, and still not finished.
There is something deeply admirable about that.
Whenever I meet people working in traditional crafts, they remind me of the quiet dignity that comes from accumulating time.
That spirit is something I find myself drawn to, again and again.
In the world we live in now, we want results immediately.
But both of them seemed to exist in a completely different sense of time. A stillness, a groundedness.
Not rushing to find answers, but simply continuing to face what is in front of you.
Not imposing yourself, but trying to see the expression that something already holds.
Watching both of them work, I came to feel that the beauty of nihon-to lives not only in the blade itself, but in that very way of being.
Now, when I stand in front of a nihon-to in a museum, I feel I know how to begin looking at it.
Not only because I know more facts now, but because I have a door to walk through.
I think that is what developing a sense of beauty is.
It is not something reserved only for people with special sensitivity.
When the way you look at something shifts, even slightly, something you used to walk past can suddenly come into view.
Continuing the Exploration
I will keep exploring Japanese aesthetics, craftsmanship, and these quieter ways of seeing, and sharing what I find here and in my newsletter.
At the heart of this, I am interested in how we can stay grounded in a world that moves so quickly, and how we can recover our senses, our attention, and a quieter way of being.
For me, Japanese ways of thinking, aesthetics, craftsmanship, and spaces are doorways into that question.
I am slowly shaping these ideas into essays, reflections, and future projects, including experiences and spaces. So if this way of seeing the world resonates with you, I would be very happy if you subscribed to this channel. It genuinely means a lot to me and helps me keep making videos like this.
And if you would like to go a little deeper, you can also join my Quiet Japan newsletter.
That is where I share deeper thoughts, stories I could not fit into the videos, and any new projects as they take shape.
And if this video made you curious about nihon-to, I’ve also linked the website of Iida-san’s sword dealership in the description below.
See you in the next one.
