Art Perfected

The Japanese katana was perfected over hundreds of years.  This is just an example.  There are plenty of things that modern society treats as perfected.  The Japanese katana is just one of many.  As I watched a few videos today on the ancient art of katana making, and I heard this phrase applied to the weapon, I began to wonder, exactly when was this art perfected?

I believe that claiming some art or craft has been perfected is a cop out.  Consider, Masamune, who lived from the mid 1200s to the mid 1300s, according to most scholars, is credited with inventing many of the techniques that are still used in katana making today.  Modern katanas are not still made exactly the way that Masamune made them though.  According to scholars as well as Japanese lore, improvements were still being made to the process and to the end product for many centuries after that.  In fact, general consensus seems to hold that the art of katana making reached perfection sometime between the 1600s and the 1800s (though, it is possible that improvements were still being made into the early 1900s).  All traditionally crafted modern katanas use approximately the same process used to make the weapons around 150 to 200 years ago and possibly as far back as 400 years ago.  The question is, why did the improvements stop?

Scholars, historians, artisans, and other experts will claim that the art of katana making was perfected, and improvements were unnecessary or even futile.  The question I have is, what if Masamune had thought that the art of Japanese sword making was perfected before his time?  We would not even have the katana, if Masamune had just given up and abandoned his experimentation that lead to a significantly superior blade.  Now, keep in mind that the katana is just one example here.  How many crafts have been "perfected" prematurely?  What are we missing when we walk away because we think there is no longer room for improvement?

I believe I know the reason that people tend to do this.  Most historians seem to believe that the katana had reached perfection sometime between the 1600s and the 1800s, but I think that this consensus was actually reached later than this.  Before this time, individual katanas were often considered perfect, as an extension of the spirit of the owner, but there were still experimental techniques and techniques that were not agreed upon by the masters, in the art of making the weapons.  The samurai class began to fall around the time guns were introduced to Japan, because an untrained peasant with a gun could fell a samurai warrior with a lifetime of training with hardly any effort.  World War II was the major turning point in Japan for the art of sword making.  This is often regarded as the completion of the fall of the samurai.  I believe that the word "perfect" shifted from being applied to individual weapons to the art of sword making in general during this time.  By the end of WWII, sword making had become something of an obsolete craft.  This is when it finally changed from a legitimate profession to the preservation of an ancient tradition.  The art of Japanese sword making most likely shifted from a living and evolving craft to a "perfected" art when the craft became obsolete and started dying out and the focus went from the production of useful tools to the preservation of national culture.

The fact is, katana making is not a perfected art.  It is an art where evolution, improvement, and progress no longer have any value.  Improving the process will no longer increase the value of the weapon.  No one buys katanas to kill people anymore.  Collectors care more about authenticity than function, so for them, changing the process actually reduces the value of the product, even if it improves the function.  Katanas are not really weapons anymore.  They are collectors items, novelties, souvenirs, national treasures, and historically interesting objects, but they are not weapons.  As collectors items, novelties, souvenirs,...etc., perhaps they are perfected in their current state, because any change to the process would reduce their value.  As weapons though, to claim that katana making is a perfected art is the ultimate hubris.  Cheap guns were used to kill off the warrior class that dedicated their lives to this weapon.  The katana may be the very best close combat weapon ever created by human hands, but that does not mean that it could not be improved.

This seems to be the trend with all "perfected" crafts.  They are almost always crafts that have lost all of their practical value.  The are usually processes that have been automated (though, usually at the cost of quality), or products that have been replaced by something cheaper and easier to produce (again, often at lower quality).  People who still do those crafts usually stick to traditional methods, but not because they cannot be improved upon.  Like katanas, most "perfected" crafts are not improved upon either because there is no value in improving them, or because changing the process would reduce the value of the product, because no one is buying it for function.  The real question though, is what are we missing because we are walking away too soon?

The techniques used in katana making have been applied to many modern manufacturing processes, because they result in better products.  If Masamune had not introduced the technique of layering different qualities of metals to improve the differential tempering process of Japanese sword making, we might not have high quality saw blades.  What if Masamune had decided that the art of Japanese sword making had already been perfected?  Perhaps katanas are not valued as weapons anymore, and maybe this offers a justification for giving up on improving them further, but maybe we are missing out on something that could improve or even revolutionize many industries, because we are copping out by claiming that an art that is not as valuable as it once was is no longer worth improving at all.  And, beyond just katana making, what things are we missing from all of the other "perfected" arts?  Even arts that have merely been abandoned,  with no claims of perfection (like blacksmithing), could be hiding valuable secrets just beyond the horizon.

No human craft or art is ever perfect.  Perfection is just a made up excuse to cease improvement.  Yes, it may be justified to stop improving on something that is no longer valuable, but lets be honest: We are not stopping improvement because the craft has been perfected.  We are stopping because there is no longer enough value in it to justify the cost of innovation.  If we cannot admit that, then perhaps the craft is still worth improving, and if it is still worth improving, let's do it and see what we discover!



Disclaimer:

(If nothing about the above offends you, feel free to stop here.  The main article is finished.)

I love the art of Japanese sword making.  I have studied it in some depth.  The techniques involved are ingenious.  Yes, we have known about them for a long time, but the original inventors of the techniques deserve recognition for their invaluable contributions to our current level of technology.  I am very glad to see that the traditional methods have been preserved, and I would like to gain some experience in them.  I plan to eventually forge my own katana, as close to the traditional methods as possible.  In other words, I have great respect for this ancient art that produces one of the highest quality products mankind has ever made.  Still, I am almost certain that there is room for improvement, because there is always room for improvement.  It is a shame that we are hiding this with the claim that the art has already been perfected.