From Classic Swords to Knives Harder Than Steel: Seki

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  On day three of the journey down Gifu’s Nagara River area, we took a short 20-minute drive from Mino to Seki, a town known for making blades of all kinds.

  Like in towns further up the river, craftsmen in Seki relied on merchant boats to send their products around the country, but the Nagara River was also key in the production of metal. Two major ingredients needed to make a Japanese sword are iron sand and high-quality charcoal. Charcoal made from pine burns at high temperatures and is perfect for use in the forge. The Nagara River irrigates the pine tree forests in the nearby mountains and collects the iron sand that accumulates as the river erodes the landscape. Blacksmiths in Seki then collected iron sand from its shores. There are also many stages in the sword making process that require pristine water, especially in the many steps of polishing a sword.

  

A Center of Swordsmithing

• Japanese weapons like katana are not made by a singular craftsman. Instead, every step of the process, from forging the metal to adding the handle and scabbard, is done by a different specialist. Nowadays, swordsmiths often need to send their work around to many different craftsmen around the country. In the heyday of samurai warfare, however, towns like Seki had all the means of production, so they could supply the samurai warlords who supported them.

  Seki supplied the forces of the great warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582). He was an ambitious samurai leader who emerged victorious during the Warring States period (1467–1568), unifying a large majority of the country. His seat of power was in current-day Gifu, just down the Nagara River. Seki’s immediate proximity to Nobunaga’s stronghold allowed him to easily equip his powerful army and bolster the reputation of Seki swords. Many Seki swords later clashed at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, which brought a close to the Warring States period, ushering in an era of peace.

  Even during the peaceful and prosperous Edo period (1603–1867) that followed the decisive battle, the metalworkers of Seki made swords for the samurai class to wear on a daily basis. Today, Seki is still a town known for blade production, though they focus on a much wider variety of products for everyday use: kitchen knives, scissors, razor blades, even nail clippers. It is still a major site for sword enthusiasts; although swordsmiths and artisans are found throughout Japan, Seki is the only place where all of the specialists needed to complete a katana still live in the same town.

Beautiful River Scenery

• A little ways away from the metal workshops and factories, the Nagara River quietly flows in Seki’s Oze area. Despite how calm its jade surface looks, it can be quite deep, so children who play there usually stay close to the rocky banks. This is also where spectators stand and silently watch the firelit ukai cormorant fishing on summer nights. This is a custom that we will learn more about in Gifu City, for both the Oze neighborhood and a stretch of the Nagara River near Gifu Castle are where this ancient practice takes place.

  It was around this spot that we had lunch. The Kawara Cafe Slow Green, right off the lobby of the Seki Kanko Hotel, overlooks this scenic area. That winter day, we stayed warm with firepits on the patio and sunshine on the seats directly facing the mountains and river. True to its name, this cafe has no limit on the time you can spend there, so we slowly appreciated the greenery while savoring a long lunch and some cups of tea. While we were in the area, we also spotted one of the Oze cormorant fishers, called an usho, caring for one of his birds.

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Making Our Own Seki Blades

• In the afternoon, we visited two of the many blade-related shops and museums throughout the town: Cutler SANSYU and its Seki Hamono Museum, and Fukuda Hamono Co., Ltd.’s factory for making a luxury product known as “KISEKI:” kitchen knives.

  Cutler SANSYU sells every kind of blade you can imagine, from artisan swords to vegetable graters. Any shopper can stop by their museum of Japanese blades, but we signed up for a special experience with the experts so we could more deeply appreciate how something like a katana is used and made. It started quick and dramatic with a master swordsman drawing his blade and slicing stiff stalks of bamboo, leaving a smooth, diagonal cut through each.

  

  After a guided tour of the museum and a chance to hold a real blade with details inspired by the Nagara River scenery, we were invited into the forge and workshop. It was oppressively hot due to the flames fed by charcoal and bellows. The temperature has to be intense to make the metal billet buried in the charcoal malleable. Although beginners like us could see and feel that there were differences in the temperature of the flames, the master swordsmith is able to read the fire’s colors and determine exactly when the billet is ready. We watched for the first few times as his assistants hammered it, and then we had the chance to try it ourselves. The hammer was so heavy that we perhaps did not strike the future sword hard enough to be of much help, though!

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  Assembling a tiny pair of scissors with Seki blades was better within our abilities. We’ll probably find more uses for them than a sword, especially because we have so much paper from Mino to work with.

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• Speaking of common uses, our next stop was a factory where we could observe the newest in blade-making technology. Specifically, we learned about remarkably sharp knives made of Super Alloy, a material so hard that it is typically sharpened with diamond. The futuristic KISEKI: brand of knives has a rainbow sheen and such a fine edge that even the carrots we sliced with them felt silky to the touch.

  

  During the hands-on factory tour, we gained an appreciation for how Super Alloy knives differ from ceramic or strainless steel ones, learned the basic mechanisms of the machines, including getting a chance to operate the polishing machine. Even though these tasks are done by machine, it’s similar to the hand-crafted process of polishing a katana and requires ample amounts of clean water in order to produce a high-quality blade. The final step is checking for quality assurance. Our factory guide used a 10-yen coin to illustrate how the company’s imaging technology can be used to locate nearly imperceptible scratches on the blade to ensure that only top-quality products go to market.

  

  Our final activity was to use tiny KISEKI: blades to make our own pocket knives. They are made with the same varieties of wood used for KISEKI: knife handles, and we could choose little details like what metal to use for the fitting. The personalized final product is as elegant as it is sharp.

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Unagi Eel: A Local Delicacy

• After an afternoon of forging and assembly, we wanted the dish that all metalworkers in Seki crave: unagi!

  Although we had always thought of eel as a luxury dish, craftsmen exhausted from working with hot fires all day appreciate it as a rich source of nutrition on a quick lunch break. Thanks to the local industry and the availability of eels in the Nagara River, Seki has numerous unagi restaurants, including places like Tsujiya, which has been run by the same family for five generations. The head chef, with judgment as honed as a swordsmith’s, grills and flips the unagi skewers so that the fat and flavor is evenly distributed. The process has remained nearly unchanged throughout the restaurant’s history, with simple tools like a seashell as a ladle for sauce.

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• However, part-way through its history, Tsujiya (as well as most other unagi restaurants) switched to using farmed unagi. This is because wild unagi eat to survive, not to become a tasty grilled morsel. Actually tasting the difference, however, is the fun part; every year, Tsujiya hosts an event to compare fresh-caught wild unagi with the usual farm-raised unagi. It’s not on the menu, but an enormous eel that was caught from the Nagara River over twenty years ago lives in a pond at the entrance of the restaurant!

  

  A hearty serving of eel over rice and a good night of sleep had us ready to move on to Gifu City for the final day of our journey.

• The Kawara Cafe Slow Green

  Address: 91-2 Ikejiri, Seki, Gifu 501-3264
  Access: https://maps.app.goo.gl/TW4PdRsJXbJjJhnD9
  Phone number: 120-884-109

  Seki Kanko Hotel

  Address: 91-2 Ikejiri, Seki, Gifu 501-3264
  Access: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ocnt5JfvTzS6Dx1XA
  Phone number: 120-884-109

  Cutler SANSYU and its Seki Hamono Museum

  Visit Gifu website: https://visitgifu.com/see-do/cutler-sansyu-seki-hamono-museum/

  Fukuda Hamono Co., Ltd.

  Address: 353 Oyana, Seki, Gifu 501-3941
  Access: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZGKhyKeXVVJULAHL8
  Phone number: 0575-28-5888

  Tsujiya

  Address: Honmachi 5-14, Seki, Gifu 501-3886
  Access: https://maps.app.goo.gl/75jK2RTWtw2AKmrNA
  Phone number: 0575-22-0220