The Soul of the Samurai - the Japanese Sword Decisive Weapons

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Nothing symbolises the Japanese at war as much as this weapon -

the sword of the Samurai.

It's the ultimate cutting weapon. It is designed to cut and it will cut.

What the Colt 45 is to America, the Samurai sword is to Japan -

the stuff of national myth.

The Japanese sword is capable of cutting through iron plates or other sword blades without being damaged.

But it is revered for more than just its pitiless beauty and deadly precision.

The sword was a weapon that represented the Samurai himself.

The great Shogun, Tokugawa Iyeyasu, referred to the sword as "the soul of the Samurai".

This is the weapon that saved Japan from one of the most warlike empires in history - the Mongols.

It seemed nothing could stop them,

until in the Battle of Hakata Bay they met the Samurai and his sword.

This was the sword that kept Japan Japanese.

Before gunpowder, wars were fought with swords.

But of all the thousands that have existed in history,

only one remains as potent today as it did 1,000 years ago - the Japanese sword of the Samurai.

No other can rival it for beauty,

or cutting power.

For 1,000 years, swordsmen have agreed that where the cut is concerned

the best weapon is this - the Japanese sword.

It has a curve to the blade.

This means that when you strike at your opponent,

only one little bit of the curve reaches the target first, and then the rest bites in,

bites through, and cuts to the bone.

IN JAPANESE

Compared to the Japanese sword,

western swords of the same period are crude bludgeons.

On the eastern Mediterranean there were European crusaders

who were fighting with a weapon like this.

It is straight-bladed, as most were.

It was basically a thrusting weapon.

You hoped that you pushed with enough strength to get the point into the chain mail,

which is what the Europeans faced when they fought each other.

If you struck a blow... It's heavy.

Although it had a sharp edge, the edge would not cut much because it's not curved.

The whole blade lands at the same time.

You stunned your opponent, more than cut him.

But the Japanese sword has another claim to uniqueness. Sword blades can be either sharp or resilient.

The Japanese sword was both.

The whole blade is quite rigid and the edge is extremely hard.

In the Western sense, one would expect it therefore to be brittle.

But it's composed of this sophisticated laminate of a mixture of steel,

so that a hard edge can be regained which will not chip in combat.

All the other weapons were purely offensive. You defended yourself not with the weapon but with a shield,

or you hoped your helmet was strong.

This blade...always was heavy enough

to knock aside an opponent's blade, to make what fencers call a beat,

or to make a parry.

That made it unique.

Mastering the art of attack and defence armed with sword alone

made the Japanese warrior one of the most skilled in the world.

When sparring,

bamboo swords are used instead of real blades.

With no shield to hide behind, swordsmen relied on a repertoire of parries and cuts.

Brute strength alone was useless.

Exercises were practised endlessly

against an imaginary opponent.

The sword was the mark of a Samurai.

They were the real power in Japan, with the Emperor a mere figurehead.

The Samurai's word was law, particularly about swords.

No-one else could wear one,

on pain of death.

The badge of the Samurai -

the mark of the Samurai -

was the possession of a sword and the right to wear one.

The person with a sword through his belt was a member of an elite.

It was the weapon with which he had been trained, with which he would defend his life,

and, if necessary, end it.

In the hands of a Samurai, the sword had only one purpose -

to kill rivals.

Duels between Samurai were governed by an elaborate etiquette.

IN JAPANESE

The secret of the Japanese sword lies in the extraordinary way in which it is made.

To this day, sword-makers continue to forge them in a complex process

that dates back 1,000 years,

and yet remains one of the most sophisticated.

The Japanese perfected a technique that solved the dilemma at the heart of all sword-making -

how to combine a hard, sharp cutting edge

with a blade that will not break in combat.

The sword-maker combines hard and soft steels, which are hammered together.

They're heated and folded up to 15 times, creating a layered structure in the steel.

When finished, the sword can have over 30,000 layers.

The steel is now stretched out and beaten gradually

into its distinctive, curved shape.

The blade is ready for hardening,

a critical moment in the sword-making process.

When steel is hardened... by quenching in water...

it's able to take a sharp cutting edge, but it becomes as brittle as glass.

To overcome this problem, Japanese swordsmiths control the hardening process by applying a layer of clay.

Different cooling rates produce varying degrees of hardness in the blade.

The Japanese blade,

because the cutting edge is hard and the back of the blade is soft,

the soft back reinforces the cutting edge, and enables it to be left as hard as it possibly can be.

The clay-covered blade is reheated for the last time.

This is the climax of the process.

Quenching will fix for ever this combination of hard and soft within the blade.

The sword-maker judges the right moment to remove the hot steel. According to tradition,

he waits until the metal is the colour of the August moon.

The finished sword is marked with a crystalline pattern in the form of a ripple along the blade.

Called the hamon, its form can determine the period of the blade, as well as the swordsmith.

The hamon is also valued for its beauty.

Before it could be used in battle,

the new sword had to be tested.

It could be tested on bamboo, bundles of straw, or soft metal.

The most horrid test was obviously that against a living person,

then testing it on a dead body.

The sword was ready for the purpose for which it had been designed -

the settling of scores between rival Samurai warlords.

But against a foreign enemy, the sword was untried.

Then, in the late 13th century, Japan faced the most feared army in the world - the Mongol Hordes.

War against the Mongols culminated in the Battle of Hakata Bay.

The battle is as significant to the Japanese as the defeat of the Spanish Armada is to the English.

Known as the Devil's Horsemen,

the Mongol army exploded from their homelands in central Asia.

Their style of warfare was very different from the Samurai's.

Mongol expansion began in the early years of the 13th century.

By Kublai's time - Kublai became Mongol Emperor in 1260 -

the Mongol Empire stretched from Korea in the east to Hungary in the west -

the largest continuous land empire in the history of the world.

The Mongol weapon was the bow.

Most people didn't get close enough to a Mongol army

to find out whether they were good with swords, because they were shot.

Theirs was the first army to have fire in movement.

They evolved tactics used by Rommel and Patton. They worked with tanks

as well as they worked with archers.

By the end of the 13th century,

all that remained for them to conquer were the islands of Japan.

The Japanese had no intention of capitulating without a fight. The Mongols were happy to give them one.

In 1274, 40,000 Mongols crossed the sea, bound for Hakata Bay.

The Japanese warriors had no idea what was about to hit them.

The Japanese, hearing of the arrival of Mongols, galloped to meet them,

and were intent on singling out a suitable opponent, preferably someone of high rank.

The whole of the tradition of the elite Samurai warrior

was based around the desire to meet a worthy opponent in battle,

to challenge him to single combat, and to win a glorious victory.

We know from records of the time,

that this was initially what the Japanese expected to do with this strange enemy.

But there was one slight problem. The Mongols didn't speak Japanese.

Their swords had proved useless against the marauding archers.

With no regard for etiquette,

the Mongols swept the Samurai aside.

It must have created enormous terror. And then night fell,

illuminated only by the burning buildings.

The Mongols spent the night on their ships rather than on land.

And that was when the great surprise happened for the Japanese.

When dawn broke they walked back to the beach, wondering where the Mongols were. They'd all gone.

It was normal Mongol practice,

prior to invading a new part of the world,

to send reconnaissance in force

before mounting a full invasion.

It's possible to see this invasion as a reconnaissance expedition.

The Japanese gave thanks for what they saw as divine intervention.

But they knew the Mongols would be back.

The Samurai would keep faith with their swords, but a new way of fighting was needed.

A defensive wall was built at Hakata Bay

and the etiquette of the personal challenge was dropped.

Seven years later, the Mongols turned their attention to Japan again, calling for their surrender.

The Japanese made their defiance clear.

The Japanese, encouraged by the withdrawal of the Mongol force in 1274,

got into the habit of executing Mongol envoys.

This was a heinous crime in Mongol eyes.

They regarded the person of an ambassador as absolutely sacred.

This left Kublai with no alternative but to invade as soon as circumstances permitted.

The result was inevitable. In 1281 the Mongols sent a second invasion fleet, even larger than the first.

They expected little resistance.

The skies went dark with the arrows from the Mongol troops.

At the same time, the Mongols advanced, shoulder to shoulder,

with spears lowered.

The Samurai met them from behind their defensive wall, and managed to force the Mongols back

to take refuge on their ships.

Because the line held and the Mongols weren't able to force their way inland,

the Japanese then were able to take the fight to the Mongol ships.

This time, the Japanese would fight the battle that suited their swords,

not on the open beaches where archers could hold them off, but on the ships' decks.

It was a masterstroke.

The Japanese would go in small boats of 12 or 15 people in a boat,

and launch night raids on the Mongol ships lying at anchor.

These boats would be rowed out into the middle of the bay.

The mast would be let down as a sort of ladder on which they could climb on board.

Then, with their sharp swords, the Samurai were there to attack the Mongols

on board the ships.

The Mongol sword, although very useful on a horse,

I think could have been a problem against a Japanese sword.

This has no strength to it at all.

It's not designed for meeting the opponent's blade.

One good beat from a Japanese sword, you'd be dead.

If it was sword to sword, the invaders didn't have much chance.

These tactics kept the Mongols on their ships for four weeks, unable to establish a beachhead.

But the coup de grace would be delivered not by the Japanese sword

but by the volatile Japanese climate.

The Mongols could not land.

The Mongols could not find a friendly harbour.

The Mongols had to sit there and experience

the wind and the waves and the ships smashing against each other.

Some sources speak of casualties approaching 90%

in some of the contingents of the Korean or Mongol armies.

Such troops as remained - much reduced in numbers - were captured or killed by the Japanese.

It was a catastrophic defeat for the Mongols.

The Mongols would never return.

Having beaten this terrifying enemy,

the Japanese would come to venerate their swords.

The Japanese prized them over all other weapons.

So complete was their faith in them

that when gunpowder and muskets should have made swords obsolete, the Japanese would not give them up.

A myth, a legend, a belief -

an act of faith, almost -

grew that the Japanese Samurai, who grew more and more to be personified by the Samurai sword,

was a match for anything in the world.

The arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century,

bringing muskets that fired bullets,

they were withstood.

The brave individual Samurai with his sword were absorbed into the culture

to such an extent that firearms could be rejected in favour of the sword as the superior weapon -

superior not only in military terms, but superior in moral terms.

But the Samurai spirit

had a darker legacy.

During the Second World War the sword became infamous,

identified for ever with atrocities

committed against Allied prisoners of war.

Probably the most active use of the sword

was beheading Allied prisoners.

The killing of prisoners, whether done by a Samurai sword or not,

was out of step with the Samurai tradition into which those people had supposedly been initiated.

It was left to post-war Japan

to try and rescue the spirit of the Samurai and his sword from those terrible years.

For the great film director, Akira Kurosawa,

they're as potent a part of Japanese myth as cowboy films are to America.

IN JAPANESE

His most famous film, The Seven Samurai,

supplied the blueprint for one of the great westerns -

The Magnificent Seven.

The Samurai sword may no longer be used in anger,

but it lives on as a work of craftsmanship and for use in martial arts.

Strictly controlled by the Japanese government

in terms of number and quality,

they're still made with the same reverence as the swords that won the Battle of Hakata Bay,

testimony to a weapon which refuses to become a relic.

Subtitles by John Macdonald, Subtext for BBC Subtitling, 1997