The Mystique of the Hamon

Very interesting thread...

I think it is a great mistake to judge the hamon done by Western craftsman on Western style blades from a Japanese perspective. Without a doubt, most of the hamon done on blades posted here would be considered very poor in the eyes of a Japanese smith but these are not Japanese blades, only Japanese influenced. While the hamon is what "makes" a Japanese blade come to life, Western knives have gotten along just fine without them and it seems that they are more decorative in their application. If a Western smith wants to make an all out Japanese sword, then sure, it would seem fair game to hold his work to the established aesthetic and quality levels used in Japan. In this case, it seems quite illogical to judge a hamon on a Bowie knife as if it was a Shinto era hira-zukuri wakizashi.

The shape, brightness, clarity, and activities in the hamon are all major indicators of not only the period, school and maker, of a Japanese sword, but also of the inherent quality of the blade. It should come as no surprise that the aesthetic characteristics of the hamon that are highly valued by collectors and connoisseurs are also indicators of a high quality blade. Form following function is at the heart of Japanese aesthetics.

In these Western blades, a hamon is mostly another way to decorate and thus they shouldn't be constrained to an outside aesthetic but rather enjoyed for their decorative quantities, as most here seem to be doing...
 
i agree, but they must be judged on something, i was pondering this issue at length the other night and today as i was making charcoal...any western smiths or collectors care to weigh in on the function vs form balance of their hamon? here's a few stray thoughts i happened to catch as they went by, hope they contribute to the discussion while we enjoy the photos on this thread:

thoughts on aesthetics:
i would think that there must still be at the core of the western appreciation a strong root in functionality and what the hamon says about the function of a particular blade...if it were not so, there would be many easier and more controlled ways to create hamon...but a line or pattern simply acid etched by a stencil does not seem to appeal to most, so i think function is very important to western collectors and smiths...

a hamon is beautiful because of the underlying function it represents

there was a reference in an earlier post about catering to the current market, about how difficult it is to do business in japan as a swordsmith (i believe it was STeven)...during the edo period, the smiths and other sword artisans faced similar challenges as they worked to equip a class of samurai who had not seen battle in more than a century, and a rising merchant class who did not have the restrained aesthetic of samurai but wanted to show off newly acquired wealth and the status to go along with it...there are some wild hamon and even wilder koshirae (mounts) and you can often spot the merchant sword koshirae out of the batch immediately...but as far as blades and hamon, there were still creative limits based on the functionality and the hundreds of years of nihonto preceding this time period...

thoughts on the tech side:
i think every smith and every era can and should remix what has been handed to them, the goal should be to improve on the previous generation...anything else means the eventual loss of the craft...but in the same manner as a jazz musician or dj/producer, the understanding of the foundation, building blocks, and music theory, must precede the impromptu freestyle and mash up or the piece will be a flop...

as far as the actual implication, of course you can put any sized hamon on a knife and then proceed to temper it as a through hardened knife and still get slightly improved performance over the through hardened blade...but japanese knifemaking tradition is about taking things right to the limit, allowing a hard edge (far too brittle for the through hardened knife) and a body far to tough and resilient to hold a good edge on that same blade...

other items in defense of "western style" hamon are that most of them are on knives far smaller than nihonto and the issue of stress and shock (of battle!) will not be as important to most users...and that the kogatana size of blade (~4") can be found hardened in the "silver dollar" style: http://www.sayashi.com/sales frames/Swords/KGMTS2.JPG (partially because of the logistics of trying to perform yaki-ire on a thin, narrow blade, but also for aesthetics)

thoughts on progression:
the different western appreciation for hamon may be found more in the strong "overexposure" of the hamon and activity as compared to nihonto, rather than in the lack of functional application of it, and there is time to improve yet...there are stages where things are explored and stages where things are refined...for example, i am thankful that the "edge-packing" myth is over and the information on proper normalizing is common knowledge among knifemakers...some feel that grinding the the chokuto sword "american tanto" chisel tip on anything and everything is perhaps a phase, but that is for another thread! （￣～￣;）ウーン・・・

hamon are new to many in the west, when i managed my first a couple of decades ago, it took a lot of explaining for most people wondering what went wrong with the edge of my blade, now even the word hamon is common knowledge in knife circles, and i hope the refining of the "western hamon" is the next phase of the art and craft on this continent...

_____

my personal approach to hamon was to first understand the purpose, the roots, the interaction of the proportions and the materials, and then to try and produce hamon within that set of creative constraints (i lost many many blades and still do from time to time)...and absolutely function first, even if i create a rough forge finished western outdoor blade that will never be polished, it will be japanese style clay tempered in water the same as if i was making a fully mounted tanto...though no one will ever see that hamon, the performance is there for the user and that is important to me...followed by the subtle beauty of a purposeful hamon on a polished blade...

i want to get the most possible performance out of each piece of steel using the tools and skills i have to work with...and i have much to learn yet!
 
I think in time an aesthetic to judge these Western hamon will evolve. It still seems like a new toy for many that is in the experimental stage. Perhaps as more smiths master it and it becomes more understood in the marketplace, a more qualitative assessment will become possible.

It bears keeping in mind that the materials and finish on Western blades will in all likelihood prevent the creation of hamon on par with those done on traditional Japanese blades. This makes it difficult to impossible to create hamon that can be compared to those of traditional Japanese blades in terms of brightness, activities, etc.

There are two elements in the judgment of the Japanese hamon that could perhaps find a place in the evaluation of the Western counterpart: the purely artistic (line, shape, balance, etc. common to the analysis of any artistic composition) and the purely mechanical (control of the process). Of course, the judgment of the artistic composition is always open to debate. The mechanical, much less so.

If I were to evaluate the hamon I have seen in this thread on the basis of control of the process, I would say that the work of Messrs. Wheeler and Branson, to single out a few, show a well organized and even treatment with a well controlled mastery of the process variables.
 
Watanabe, you still making knives? Used to see your stuff published, but not in a while. Always admired your work.
 
watanabe said:
If I were to evaluate the hamon I have seen in this thread on the basis of control of the process, I would say that the work of Messrs. Wheeler and Branson, to single out a few, show a well organized and even treatment with a well controlled mastery of the process variables.
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That would be a factual analysis.

In other words, they have a good idea of what they are doing, a fair idea of the overall aesthetic as pertains to acheiving an "acceptable" hamon with a western steel and finishing techniques that lend to the optimization of how that hamon is presented.

When I talk about "Western" hamon vs Japanese....it is not focusing on specifics like ashi lines, ni and nioi or even hada(which you pretty much don't find in monosteel unless there is some degree of alloy banding, as is seen on Howard Clark 1086 blades). I mean there are a lot of Western smiths that don't know very much about hada.. how it is created and how it has evolved, and don't care....and that is just fine.

The key feature that gives me fits about "Western" hamon is the overall propensity to harden more of the blade than necessary for whatever reason, and create an overall aesthetic that is "brutish" and shows lack of understanding in an overall sense of shibumi.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
Kohai999 said:
The key feature that gives me fits about "Western" hamon is the overall propensity to harden more of the blade than necessary for whatever reason, and create an overall aesthetic that is "brutish" and shows lack of understanding in an overall sense of shibumi.
Click to expand...

Many simply show a lack of control of the process, in my opinion, more than anything else. I think it is possible to have a wide hamon that is attractive, as long as it is controlled. There are many Japanese blades with "hitatsura", or "full temper", but it is done in a such a way that it looks natural, not forced. When looking at it, you get the impression that the smith and the fire were partners in a choreographed dance, rather than one was chasing the other haphazardly.
 
if we borrow terms, i think we should be careful to use them as correctly as we can, especially for those pursuing traditional aesthetic and methods...i don't want "hitatsura" to be the new "western hamon" as they are quite different...(and i don't like the term "western hamon" either, we will have to ponder this and come up with a good name!)

hitatsura is about the tempering method more than the location of the line...hitatsura are "full tempered" in the sense that there is little or no clay resist, but should not be all martensite by any means...i have not seen one that had its full average location far from the proper proportions...careful temperature control and use of the water bath keep the hamon in its location and the upper surface of the blade should consist only of islands of tobiyaki...

even though it is a modern piece, the yoshimitsu blade attached earlier in the thread begins its choji right at the one-third line and stays within the parameters of nihonto...

scroll right to the bottom to see some more examples, note the origin of the ashi: http://www.ksky.ne.jp/~sumie99/hamonpatterns.html
 
Don, you might be thinking of Mike Manabe (not sure on the last name). Known for 'double temper lines' and western knives with hamon back in the 90's.

Dan
 
To me, the big differential between a OK hamon and a superb hamon is often less the heat treatment than the time & skill invested in the polish.
 
Joss said:
To me, the big differential between a OK hamon and a superb hamon is often less the heat treatment than the time & skill invested in the polish.
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That's a wide open statement, with far too many variables for me to consider. Certainly, aspects of hamon are captured and visually optimized by a kick butt traditional polish, but I have seen and own some hybrid polishes by western polishers that are pretty damned good.

Price attached to a polish does become a factor wrt to time invested when you are talking about a knife from say an "average" ABS MS that is intended to be sold for less than $1,000.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
As I mentioned, there are many factors used to judge the aesthetics and quality of a traditional Japanese sword and the elements such as hada and hamon that are a part of it. Hamon come in many styles, shapes, widths, etc. What good hamon have in common has much to do with brightness, clarity, consistency, control, and the activities within it. We can find masterpieces with many styles of hamon, including works with very wide hamon that touches all the way to the shinogi as seen in the work of Inoue Shinkai of the Osaka Shinto group, or the Ishido group, also of Shinto times. I have seen Ichimonji works of the Koto period (which the Ishido smiths modeled their work after) with quite wide hamon as well. The sudareba made famous by the Yoshimichi smiths during Shinto is also an example of a hamon that covers much of the ji.

It is said that a poor polish can kill a blade and it is true that without a proper polish, the full beauty of the sword and the skill of the smith will be hidden, but even the most skilled polisher can not make a poorly crafted blade into a masterpiece.

Most Western made blades with hamon will not have many of the features found in a first rate traditionally made Japanese sword because they are not forged, water quenched, nor made from a steel like tamahagane, no matter how skilled the polish is....Many blades were made during WWII using Western steels and a limited amount of forging, then oil quenched. These are easy to spot due to the absence of activities found in traditionally made blades. The hamon in many of these blades is quite similar in appearance to those being made now in the West, though of course, the shape of the hamon is very different.
 
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