Japanese swords have long been a source of fascination for metallographers both Japanese and Western, but most studies lean toward functional explanations of metallurgical features or description of how features correspond to historical and ethnographic accounts of production. At the same time, there is a long tradition of sword connoisseurship that through its visual and historical perspective offers insight about particular smiths and their traditions. In a metallographic examination of a 15th century Japanese sword of the Bizen tradition, I take a chaîne opératoire approach and draw on aspects of both of the aforementioned scholarly traditions in order to better understand how late medieval Japanese sword smiths related to their materials and to their clientele. Based on my observations, I compare the apparent choices made by this sword’s smith to historical and ethnographic accounts of traditional sword production, and other published metallographic sections of Japanese swords. Then, I contextualize these choices in relation to contemporary production for export and for local consumption. Specifically, I will discuss possible reasons this sword’s metallurgical profile deviates from common practice according to twentieth and twenty-first century accounts of traditional Japanese sword smithing.
4. Technological Choice in the Wake of Migration
