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How is it to be a Japanese Swordsmith Apprentice ?

What do you do for a living while apprenticing? I have heard of apprentices living with their masters in a sort of barracks-style life.

Traditionally, apprentices lived with their master’s family, being part of the family. That meant they also participated in daily chores. Newcomers would help the wife cook and clean around. Not much forging for the first year. Nowadays there are many different situation, including the classical one, because japanese swordsmiths are not rich, and cannot always take charge of additional family members.

In my case, for the first three years of my apprenticeship, I was teaching English on week-ends, and visited my master daily on weekdays. That meant no day off for a year or so, and then only Sundays. From the fourth year, however, I’m lucky enough to have a mixture of much support from my wife, and then a tiny bit of English teaching (a couple of hours per month) and some side business (I act as a broker for western sword owners who want to purchase a sword, or get one restored or appraised).

I also spent three weeks at my master’s own master, the traditional way. Like my master used to say, the only free time you have is on the toilet and in the bath! Otherwise, every minute is controlled and directed by your master, and there’s no procrastinating around. From 5h25 in the morning to 23h00 at night, it was work, with a total of 1h40m for three meals and one tea break. It’s good to develop one’s skills. It’s very bad for one’s social skills

I read that you didn’t practice any fencing martial art. How can you know or understand the requirements of certain practitioners who use a katana?

When you seriously get into making something, very often you understand more than those who use it. I’m sure that F1 engineers understand what happens during a race than the pilots. The pilots are more intuitive, and they have experience. The engineers understand problems of gravity, g-force, rubber against pavement friction, engine combustion, engine power transfered to wheels, direction, aerodynamics, etc.. A fine swordsmith understands very well what a fine sword should be. We get so intimate with each blade we know them by heart.

For example, we understand how well a sword can cut, without actually cutting something, by feeling the nature (hardness, brittleness, “tightness”, etc) of the steel when we forge it, by feeling its reaction when we quench it, and by feeling its nature while shaping it with drawknives, files and polishing stones. Moreover, when a polisher works on a sword, he understands just as much how good the sword is.

Cutting power is just, after all, determined by blade geometry and the hardness-toughness of a steel.

And yes, it works: we agree with sword users and they agree with us!

This being said, I practiced Aikido – will practice again when I get near a dojo again! – and I practice kenjutsu katas with a bokken sometimes. It doesn’t have much to do with my work, it’s just to keep me in shape

Why did you choose to become a smith rather than a polisher or fittings maker ?

It’s really the environment of the swordsmith that reached me. Working in the forge, by the live fire, pumping the bellows, shaping steel into such beauty and elegance.. I can’t get enough! Beside, it’s the one main element of creation: all other trades revolve around swords, but we swordsmiths make the swords. It’s a little bit like comparing the trade of a painter with a frame maker and an oil paint manufacturer..

They’re all equally important, but they all revolve around the painter. I’m not saying I want the world to revolve around me (actually it’s the opposite, if I had a choice), but the swordsmith is the creator and creating is my breathing. I need it to live. So it’s the freedom to create and the context of work.

A special trade is polishing, though. I have infinite respect for the polisher’s work. It’s tedious and very very very difficult! People who think they can polish without training are usually very wrong. It’s infinitely complex, and without the polisher’s work the swordsmith’s work would be invisible. I could never do it myself, though!