thejapanblade.com Blog

On the Japan Sea coast in western Japan near Matsue in Shimane prefecture is the small but important steel town of Yasugi, the home of  Hitachi Metal speciality steel works. Every spring a few square blocks of Yasugi are set aside to host a blades show, and sellers and buyers come from all over to mingle and renew old relationships and to buy and sell vast quantities of anything to do with knives.

This is mostly a knife show with some tools and sharpening media, food & drink and even a classic car show thrown in to boot. Besides the streets which are lined with booths of sellers and craftsmen sharpening and restoring knives the Hitachi Museum also hosts a group of highly skilled custom knife makers for an indoor venue within walking distance on the Hitachi property nearby.

At this show about 25 custom knife makers displayed a wide variety of both folding and fixed blade knives in a gallery type setting of booths and displays. A few of the bladesmiths as I found out also sell at overseas shows like the popular Atlanta Knife Show.

Because I am keen on the sharpening aspects, at the outdoor show I mostly followed the stone path and vistied with the stone dealers. I also observed a lot of sharpening going on and especially in the one alley that was set aside specifically for restoring and sharpening kitchen knives.

 This space was manned by a host of blacksmiths and bladesmiths who would for a nominal fee totally finish off any knife in a professional manner.

click to see larger photos

Almost everyone at the sharpening station had some form of a syntheitc and a natural stone, all shaped and rounded or flattened to their own specifications and there was not a lot of chit-chat going on, just focused sharpening. There was also an area set aside for heat treating knives using small charcoal fired kilns and anvils for shaping and forming.

There was also a lot of sharpening going on in the street booths both as sharpening services or as demonstrations by vendors with varied sharpeing stations including power wheels and hand stones. I did not see any of the craftsmen flattening their stones on site with diamond plates but I did see lots of bowed and cambered stones.

Of course there were some interesting stone to look at,

and I do have a fondness for karusu, 

I really missed out on taking more photos of the knives at both the outdoor and the indoor show but here is a sample.

A couple of conclussions here. Although I did not take any photos at the indoor museum show I did notice that many of the blades shown, although handmade and fancy, were patterned on outdoor survival type knives with roots in the classic swords and daggers of ancient Japan. The treatments were updated and refined but the shapes and sizes were definitly symphathetic to the old shapes. Also I noticed that, and I am going to use this word again, the root stone or base stones that knife sharpeners use are not based entirely on the image of truly flat, and that as you can see some are to the contrary. Although they may have been there tucked away, and there was the wholesaler for Tsunesaburo selling them in a booth, I did not see any diamond plates being used. Here again I suspect that the old timer sharpeners cherished his best stones enough to refrain from grinding off haphazardly good userful grit. A flat stone must be important in some knife honing tasks, but curved seems to be OK to some degree for general work.

All in all it was a good show, it rained but with some retreat it did continue. It began with families and early birds blessed with a clear sky at the crack of dawn, and faded to covered booths and talk amongst the hardy of hand and spirit.   Alx

The very first time I ever shaved in Japan was New Years Day 1979 and it was in a public bath in a small city named Komastu, yes the tractor companies home base. It was a little tense at first, not because I was again like in a high school shower, no it was because most of the guys here in this bath house were yakuza, and they knew that I knew who they were. Lots and lots of body tatoos just like your would imagine. The thing is that the ofuro bath house was just down the street and around the corner from their office building, and it was the nearest one to my house. I ended up going there at least 3 times a week for 6 months and off and on for the next few years.

I shaved with a straight razor back then, and old German blade with a natural color bone handle, I still have it. And this was the razor I took to the ofuro. I was the only one there with a western straight but a lot of men did and still do shave with these little, but very sharp disposable straights. Of course I had a small strop with me too, no tatoos but at least I had a strop. Well, a small strop. But they didn’t have one!

From that very first day until today I have felt that shaving at a japanese bath house is one of the very best places on earth to shave, and I always get an excellent shave when I do. To begin with you have just soaked for 10-15 minutes in abnormally hot, hot water. Usually in the 42-46 degrees Celsius (110-115F) range, so talk about hydrated beard stubble. Then you got the endless supply of even hotter water if you want it to rinse in, choices in free shaving cream and your own little sit down to shave at mirror. Have you ever sat down to shave? Here are photos of where I bathed and shaved today on the 17th floor of my hotel. click on the photos for larger versions.

The soothing mineral water, an outdoor pool where I sat in the rain, and again I got a excellent relaxing shave afterwards. Alx

Hello M. *

I think it’s fantastic that you have inherited an authentic Japanese tennen toishi from your father. You might be the only one here who can stake that claim. The tomae strata stone that you have is from the Yamashiro area, a little valley just west of Kyoto and most likely from the town of Umegahata, and it could very possibly be from either the Nakayama mine or the Shobu mine. Each of these mines and others nearby share the Hon Kuchi Naori, a section of the Tamba Terrane that in some spots displays a rolled or ball form in the stratas configuration. If I could examine the back of the stone I could most likely pin it down.

Here is my example of a tomae with a kan pattern.

The strata is tomae, the ring pattern is kan or wood grain like as in tree rings. This is most assuredly a very hard stone and with out question it would benefit by the use of a nagura stone. To raise a slurry you have 3 options: the tomonagura you have, a Gifu nagura, or a diamond nagura. Each has benefits and drawbacks. I suggest that the tomonagura you have will do the trick, but you should also try raising a slurry with a diamond nagura like a fine DMT or an Atoma 600-1200. The diamond DN nagura has the unique feature of creating a slurry that is an exact match in composition to the host stone because it is made from the host stone. The quality and fineness of your host stone I am sure will provide you with all the features you are looking for in a slurry.

Here is another example of the kan pattern, this stone is very, very, very hard and from the Narutaki mine.

Unless you have created a perfect bevel on each side of your razor with a middle stone like a 5k, 8k synthetic, using your final very hard tomae stone will be an uphill challenge. So set your bevels carefully, examine them with a microscope if you can and make sure that they join at the edge and then you can go on to using your beautiful Jnat. You should be able to shave some hair after setting your bevels with the synthetics thus proving the meeting of the bevels at the edge.

The synthetics are very aggressive and in their cutting action they do not usually relinquish a slurry on their own without some coxing. The bevels they make however are very flat and true which is what we want them to create. You can try to shave off these flat bevels but they can be harsh. This is in part because of the razors really flat bevels abilities to lay so very close to the skin. I think you will find that if you incorporate a slurry into your regime while honing, the bevels will become ever so slightly rounded, and this will provide you with a slightly rounded bevel that rides a hairs breath above the skin surface and will thereby create a more comfortable shave.

Here are some photos taken at 350 power of several stages in honing up a razor. First is the bevel setting using a 5,000 grit stone on a blade that was not too dull to begin with. The 5k scratches in Photos #1 lead all the way to the edge of the blades edge but are “foiled” or prevented from affecting the extreme edge because the steel at that area is so flexible and thin that is folds out of the way rather than being abraded by the 5k grit. As the blade is turned over to set the other bevel this foil edge folds again in the opposite direction and our of the grits reach. This foil is a false edge of unsupported steel that will crumble immediately under any stress.

The next photo #2 represents the speed of the stone with a slurry incorporated, practically all of the deep long and distinct 5k scratches are removed with just 20 one way strokes. A stone can be hard or soft but the cutting speed is determined by the grit; its sharpness and friability, the grit content per weight of the stone, and the hardness of the grit particles in relation to the steel being cut.

The next photo #3 shows some progress after 20 more 5 inch strokes with not weight on the blades edge, just the guiding hand on the back of the spine. The long deep synthetic scratches are replaced by the short shallow scratches left by the tennen toishi, the bevel is beginning to round a bit and you can see that the microscope cannot stay in focus following a longer scratch because of the convex bevel and the short depth of field (focus) of the lens.

The #4 photo shows the results of the simplest form of stropping, the palm of my hand. The results are: the false edge has worn off and the true edge is reveled as much more linear form, and the grit impregnated in my palm (leather) strop has abraded with very shallow scratches the edge and flattened some of those closer scratches. This photo also displays the final results of the speed of the stone, the removal of 6k scratches comfortably within 40 short strokes.

Photo #5 begins to show the effects of using just plain water with again the moderate hand pressure. Not much change here as the grit particles are not encouraged to cut but to instead polish the blade. May users will spend several hundreds of strokes polishing their blades.

Photo #6 shows only a slight modification to the edge and the blades bevel, but, if you go back into the first 3 photos you will notice focus sharpness of the long scratches and now in this photo the inability of the microscope lens to follow these long scratches. This is an indication of the bevel curving into a convex form.

Just to pull this all into perspective I have added a photo under the same 350 power magnification of an adult human hair taped flat against the blade. It is out of focus because of its thickness and the thickness should be about 100 microns.

A slurry made up of grit as fine as the host stone also accelerates the sharpening process because the very nature of a slurry is that it is self generating, the loose grit frees up bound fresh grit during the sharpening process so it can provide fresh sharp particles. The grit of Japanese naturals is a friable material meaning it cleaves and chips into smaller pieces, and because of this the slurry in use is continually refining itself, becoming finer and finer as the grit particles crumble. They do not crumble because they are soft, but instead because they fracture along their crystalline inclusions, something that synthetics do not do readily.

Many razor users begin with a slurry when using their Jnats and continue as the sharpening session progresses to begin to dilute the slurry in steps that eventually end up with a clear water solution on the stone that acts as a lubricant. What is happening to the razors bevel during this stage is that the cutting or abrading action is slowing down while a polishing effect begins to occur. The normal biting action of the grit is diminished under just clear water as the grit is now being engaged while still bound up tight in the stone (not free and rolling around in a slurry), and the friability nature of the stone has stagnated to a stage where the surface grit is becoming rounded in profile. Rounded grit is less aggressive, and bonded grit just gets duller and duller coupled with the fact that if any swarf of steel particles are removed or ground off from the blade it may become imbedded in any voids of the porous surface of the stone.

This last clear water honing stage is popular because it gives the bevels a look and feel that is similar to the profile provided by those made with synthetic stones and the edge is actually sharper. But at what cost.

An edge composed of two converging perfectly flat bevels is an easily understood geometric shape, two sides of a triangle. A cutting tools edge is at that intersection where two planes meet, and it can be relatively sharp or dull. But the 3^rd dimension of a blade is the material or meat behind the edge found as those two planes recede and it is made up of steel. This steel can be strong or weak, or weakened or strengthened. Weakened by loss in temper, rust, micro fracturing etc., or strengthened by cryogenics or again, geometry, as in the form of a secondary bevel or micro-bevel. The thicker the steel is and the closer to the edge that the thicker the steel is, the stronger that edge will behave.

Another form of a secondary or micro bevel is a slightly convex bevel plane, this can increase the thickness of the steel directly behind the edge considerably and especially if both the bevels are slightly convex. The beauty of natural stones is that the slurry generated during the sharpening process or created from a nagura is that this thickness to the bevel is increased in direct relation to the fineness of the grit particles in the slurry which are acting as miniature blacksmiths. An amazingly subtle curve can be accomplished with no directional hand movement from the person holding the tool.

This engineered graceful convex bevel can help to create a longer lasting more comfortable shave. Another way to form this convex bevel is by stropping a blade on leather or linen. With or without added abrasive dust or sprays, almost any strop will harbor and contain various environmental contaminates that can act as abrasives. The very nature of stropping encourages a somewhat curved edge bevel as the somewhat cushion surface of the leather gives way under even the slightest pressure of the blade and this is why in part (besides the removal of a wire or burr edge), that a stropped blade will feel more comfortable than one fresh off the hone. The foreign grit found in a used strop may not necessarily be finer than the stones grit and therefore might not improve the actual edge, but it will affect the geometry of the bevel.

To sum up the above I would suggest that honing a razor is a preceedure that at best follows observable steps that lead to a result close to that which was achieved previously. If you build a repeatable system you are on the road to better edges. If you are unable to to observe closely as in the above photos, them you must replace a visual with a tactile system based on some form of empirical evidence.  good luck,  Alx

In Japan long rips from a few inches to 20 feet or more are done with the board raised up about a foot or higher off the floor on blocks or shorter sawyer stands. A good dark sumi ink line helps and a sharp, perfectly tuned saw is imperative. All the cutting is done bending over and pulling the saw handle up to your chest as you are walking backwards on the top of the lumber. Out of respect for the wood and to keep it clean I take off my shoes and in Japan you are trained to do this. If you are ripping a narrow board you can have a second board alongside for stability, but your foot pressure near the cut prevents chattering. The cut line does not progress between your feet but out beyond your forward foot, and you shuffle backwards instead of walking backwards. Have a good ink line to follow and also ink the endgrain clearly with your vertical line. You will need to blow off the sawdust as you go along with strong puffs.

To begin the cut it is good practice to while looking down, lean over the end of the stock and at the bottom/underside of your drawn line on the endgrain, accurately nip the bottom/edge of the board on the endgrain surface with a shallow cut along the side of the line you are going to follow. This is most easily done with the smaller crosscut teeth on your ryoba, nip the bottom edge then nip the tip or corner of the top edge endgrain, then go back and nip the bottom edge a bit more so you begin to build the cut line as it develops on the endgrain up from bottom to top until they meet in the middle of the end for the board. This makes a shallow accurate cut line on the end of the lumber. In this way your first full power strokes will be perfectly vertical while riding in the shallow accurate cut line you just made. Don’t get too anxious with the first strokes, keep them light and accurate.

Remember that your power strokes are on the pull and that your most accurate nip strokes are also on the pull. On heavy timbers this endgrain set-up is obvious, but even on sheeting or thin stock it is good to always follow the same method. This first vertical power cut stroke from the underside to the topside at the end of the lumber has to be true or you are screwed to whole way. It is not a bad idea to have a line snapped on the underside of the board too so you can check for drift in your cut as you go along by flipping the board over. If you cut consistently drifts left or right then you saw set is off or you have a missing tooth or a broken tooth tip or two. With a well tuned saw you can cut forever on one side of the line with no problem of drift, even with your eyes closed. Don’t cut down the middle of the line, bad form. Cut on the waste side so you can plane or finish the cut surface later to dimension the wood. For westerners with long legs you find that a lot of japanese hand work is hard on the back because so much is done at floor level or bending over, the tools are designed this way, but with a developed sawing stroke ripping this way is very accurate and much of your labor is taken up with the larger leg muscles.

A couple words of caution. Knots in the wood are hard and can act like stone to fine hard saw blades and will chip or break teeth. Good and great saws break easier then cheap saws as a general rule. Look your lumber over and know where all the knots are, so when you approach a knot area slow way down like from 30 miles an hour down to 3 mph in the vacinity of knots and when sawing through knots proceed at 1 mph speed and only with the rip teeth. Even when cross cutting a board, when you need to saw through a knot, use a rip saw and go slow to save yourself much anguish. Crosscut teeth break easier, so use the rip teeth in knots.

Also in general saw slow, let the saw do the work, don’t torque the saw handle to curve the cut and most of all do not flex or bend your blade in the passive down stroke, you can easily break off a corner of your saw or even break it in half. Again, good saws and really great handmade saws are very hard and brittle and break easily, don’t tempt fate.    Alx

I have been asked about soaking natural japanese sharpening stones in water before use.

Although this is just an opinion, I tend to not be in favor of soaking natural awasedo stones. Someone has recently thrown out there that it is OK to soak these stones because they have spent millions of years in water already, why not now. It is true that the stones mined near Kyoto were “born” as sediment in pools of water, but the fact is that for the most recent tens of millions of years they have resided well above sea level and locked in the mountains under other rock, debris & soil as dry stone.

There is some seepage even in bedrock but because of the vertical nature of the strata that the Kyoto awasedo are mined from, any percolating water is incidental and temporary. These stones do not come to us from a pool of water, they come from a dry environment. There is one exception to this generalization however. If a mine shaft is dug below the valley’s water table, then there is a great chance of standing water accumulating in the mine itself.

I have a photo of one miner working in a raincoat within the mine, this was the last shaft dug in that mine, at the lowest elevation of the mountain. The shaft was shortly bulldozed and the mine closed. The stone extracted from this shaft is considered to be of inferior quality because of the extreme hardness of the stone when compared to the excellent quality that that mine produced at the higher elevations.

There is no reason to subject the sides and the back of a natural awasedo to a soaking in water. The top of the stone however does need to be hydrated, the purpose is two fold. The first is to use the water to carry away the swarf from the abraded steel, the second is to encourage the surface of the stone to soften thereby slightly dissolving the binder (clays) so they will reveal fresh and sharp grit particles. These actions do not require the soaking of a quality stone.

The world is full of ultra hard stone, and some will in most cases scratch and abrade steel, but if the active grit particles are so firmly embedded in the base stone and will not release they will: either become dull and ineffectual or will glaze over with swarf and in either case will stop cutting. The beauty of quality awasedo is that the friability of the grit and the fragility of the binder allows the grit to cleave and the binder to allow fresh grit to be exposed.

If you are using an super hard awasedo that is not generating any amount of slurry than there is a good chance that the cutting power of your stone is diminishing moment by moment below your blade. As this happens the actual sharpening or abrading process is exchanged with a polishing effect akin to burnishing. At that stage you will not be honing the steel but just shining it up. This could be your goal, but the sharpness and durability of the edge could be compromised by a form of “plastic deformation” to the steel where stresses may interfere with the original Martensitic formation within the steel as a displacive transformation occurs.

When you soak an awasedo your goal would do so to soften the stone. If the stone has distinctive sedimentary layer lines these may absorb water at different rates. The moisture could accumulate over a period of subsequent soakings and susceptible stones by their very stratified nature could separate along those stratification layers. A stone sealed on the sides and back would of course wick-up less water per usage, but some retained moisture could simply build behind the sealed sides and over time could create unintended results.

If there is someone out there who has soaked their awasedo stones over an extended period of time I would like to hear from them. Alx

When dealing with stones that have no ink stamps it is nice to have some reference points to go back to. I am lucky enough have a few Nakayama that are ink stamped “Maruka” that date back to the first half of the 20th century, and here is an example how one stone can act as a sort of a Rosetta stone.

In both stones you can find similar indicators besides the color that in this case matches up pretty well. The circular “kan” pattern found in some chu-ishi-naori deposites, the typical Nakayama “kawa” or skin that displays rust colors along with deep black, and there is a specific sparkle in the sheen that actually reflects light like a prisim. The overall fineness of the stone should match up as a finishing stone. Also some Nakayama have these linear “Namazu” lines that are filled with a ligher color softer mineral.

Of course not all Nakayama stones are neither fine nor fast, and these qualities can only be determied by using them. The stones with the Maruka ink stamp that are genuine tend to have special attributes however because as a rule Kata-san, the previous owner of the mine, was stingy with his grading and stamped only a small percentage with this now famous inked signature. Smaller, chipped, cracked or inferior stones basically just went to the different wholesaler with no inked markings. I know of no other miner from the era who ink stamped the stone with the mines actual name, the wholesales had the ink stamps and they used them liberally. It appears in looking back that Kata was the only miner of that era who used an ink stamp as his sign of approval or endorsement, and funny enough this stamp refered to as the Maruka stamp does not even mention the proper name of the mine.  Alx

Several years ago I had a chance to visit the Ohira mine at the invitation of its owner Ishihara-san of the Tamba region of Kyoto. He is the 5th generation to run the mine and he remembers his grandfather working at both ends of the process, at the mine and in the shop along with 20 or so other employees. The Ohira mine is a realitively new mine going back only a couple of hundred years, it is on the eastern side of Mt. Atago maybe 15 miles at most from downtown Kyoto as the crow flies. He drove the one lane, at times dirt road to the middle of nowhere as far as I could tell, and he asked me to promise not to tell anyone where his mine was to circumvent trespassers. He has had some problems, but to tell you the truth after hiking for 30 minutes up a steep unmarked overgrown path to get to the mine head, I can see that easier pickings for trespassers to fool with could be found somewhere else.

We walked up through a lovely forest as it was, with native chestnuts trees and nuts upon the ground which turned out to be large and meaty and tasty when roasted. Along the way we passed a couple of exploratory shafts like this one.

This could be one of many dozens of test holes used to search out the vein of sharpening stone material from which this mine is known for. Evidently when one mine shaft has played out it is guesswork to follow the vein that is generally about 20-40 meters within the mountains surface.

Above is what they are looking for, stratified stone from the particular sediments. As we came to a clearing I saw some of the gear needed to run a mine.

Seems pretty simple at first, but the snow in the winter and 98percent humidity in the summer, the bears and snakes, cave-ins, crushed fingers plus everything needs to be hauled down the hill definitely puts a spin on the easy part.  Like I said in his grandfathers time there were 20 or so employees, some were women and children who did much of the hauling. The bucked with a gas powered winch is a new thing, in the old days all the stone was hand carried down the mountian side or sledded down along chutes. The earlier shafts were at higher elevations too so farther to move the stone. Ishihara-san has one part-time employee but he himself does not work in the mine anymore. Most of the good stone is depleted and his main stock is uchigumori of which the Ohira mine is famous for.

Above are nearly paper thin pieces of uchigumori which are not cut with a saw but are actually coaxed with a dull chisel to seperate along the grain. The waste is enormous in making these and you need to start with a really pure piece of uchigumori toishi to begin with. The next step is to hand sand them until they really are paper thin, then a layer of mulberry paper is lacquered on the back with true urushi. All along this process there is more waste and broken pieces. The final product is a finger stone used by professional sword sharpeners in polishing (not sharpening) the surface of the sword to create a certain watery look. Ishihara-san told me the Office of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs visited his shop way in the mountains there to poll him on his estimate as to the amount of uchigumori left in his mine because this stone used in this form above is integral to the complete and correct restoration of historic samuri swords. Without this stone, and there is no manmade substitute for it, the history of the sword may vanish in its purest traditional sense as far as the polishing part goes.

Looking out from the mine into the valley where his house is located in a quaint village it does not look like much has changed in the last few hundred years, still men and women sharpen and polish steel with their choice of stone.

 I have bought stones from Ishihara-san for a few years now, he is the real deal and has been very generous with his time and knowledge.

Ishihara-san is a member of the Kyoto Miners Union, and maybe the oldest active member still working. I have sorted through thousands of stones in his shop to only come up with a few, and I am lucky enough to have a good collection from his grandfathers era when the stones were very fine and fast cutting. Blessed with five daughters but no sons, he will maintain the Mt. Agago shrine at his own expense but only time will tell regarding the mine.

Not all roads lead to Atago, a shame. This one did.   Alx

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to be a samuri and live in a Japanese Castle? Chances are the daimyo or local king who owned it hardly ever went into it.

This little castle in the town of Maruoka, Ishikawa Prefecture looks like a cool place to hang out, it was built in about 1576 and is a good example of the “place of last resort” for the owner who lived like a king. His principal residence sat below the castle, a sprawling group of houses and buildings and garderns for his extended family and guests that sat between the middle and inner moat. His samuri had their homes ringing the area between the middle and the outer moat as his defense during times of peace. Daily the daimyo lived a peaceful existance, but in a time of war the defences went up beyond the outer moat, if it was breached by the enemy the samuri would withdraw to protect the daimyo, their employer, in force upon the palace grounds. If the middle moat was crossed the daimyo would have a choice to either help in the fight himself or to withdraw up into the castle keep called a boro tehshu-kaku, the highest viewing tower, up these steep irregularly shaped steps seen below.

This tower sat at the highest position within the moated grounds, it only has one entrance and was stocked and supplied. If the daimyo retreated to the tower a select corp followed him as a final defense and once inside they fought with the advantage of height. This tower looks from the outside to have two levels or floors to it, but there are actually three and they are joined by almost vertical stairs. Each level has a main room, in this case about 30 x 30 feet square, the lower floors have small hidden side rooms for samuri to be stationed in, the upper floor is slightly smaller and is just one room.

Depending on which way the seige progressed, the daimyo would move up a level along with his immediate family and the wooden stairway would be removed from below and destroyed as a trapdoor was inserted from above. The upper floor with a 360 degree view of the his land harbored a private setting if needed for the honorable deed.

As you can see, the average day of the daimyo did not include hanging out in the castle like some of us would think he did.  alx

Yesterday my wife Emiko and I took the JR bus from Kyoto station up Hwy 162 out of Kyoto’s Utano ward, through Narutakihonmachi and up into the village of Takao. The bus took us a little further up into the mountains and we got out at Umegahata Nishinohatacho, the base of the path that leads to the Jingo-ji Temple, a 8th Century Shinto shrine deep in the cedar forest and in the lower reaches of Mt. Atago.

Much of the history regarding Kyoto was formed in these mountain temples and shrines that served as monasteries for those who held the faith with an iron fist if necessary. The main temple was down in the newly formed capitol of Japan, Kyoto, but these mountain enclaves served as the safe haven for the hardy souls. This area is referred to as Yamashiro, translated as Mountain Castle, and the mountain temples were used as castles of last resort to guard against the still yet wildness of the political/religious masters of Japan. Of course now we took a bus, but in the old days this was a steep march following a rugged river and this is why some of these early structures still exist in some form or another.

I have been using sharpening stones from this area for 35 years now, so this was an exciting trip to the HonYama where many of the famous mines were located. It is not commonly known that most of the awasedo toishi stone mines of Kyoto are located on privately held land, and that the miners are simply leasing the mineral rights on a year to year basis. This land was deeded by the Emperor and occupied by the various Shinto and Buddhist religious sects over the last 1500 years, and they have been stingy in relinquishing their properties. The fee collected for the mineral rights is relatively modest and is in most cases a mere formality as the owners look at the miners maybe a little bit like as caretakers or “a warm body on site” to keep tabs on the land. In any case the original use of the stone was reserved for the sharpening of the swords of the Imperial household, this was in the early days of the 1300s. Common people had no access to this special stone until the late Edo Period and then is was mostly rejected pieces.

From the Jingo-ji site we walked back down the twisting road we had earlier ridden up in the bus so in order to approach the Umegahata area from the uphill side, and to continue down to Takao village. The mountains here remind me of the “gold country” of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California near Grass Valley, Columbia and down towards Yosemite that are rough and peopled by rugged working class individuals and or established families. As you can see in the photos below it is beautiful but narrow and steep and although as the crow flies, close in, it is not on many tourist maps.

After much walking and climbing we finally did find one location that rung true to our goal.

Below is a gate and a sign, the translation reads “Ozuku Toishi, please contact by phone ____ Mr. Kato“, but the phone number had been rubbed out. The driveway is well maintained and thanks to Google Photos and the link here http://diddlefinger.com/m/kyotofu/kyotoshi/424573   the actual mine site with various tin roofed buildings can bee seen if you search carefully around using the top tool bar’s Hybrid button under the captioned name Umegahata Kubotanicho, and on the left side of the highway marked Umegahata Rengetani and then click on the Satellite Imagery button (maybe under an advertisment) just to the left of the Hybrid button. This location is all commonly held local knowledge, and there is a sign on the road, but for me to give any more precise details might be construed as treading on privacy rights so I will restrain myself. I was also told by a retired miner that part of the original Nakayama Mine site is now covered over and has a Junior High School built on top of it, this is a clue.  Enjoy the photos. Alx

The very first time I ever shaved in Japan was New Years Day 1979 and it was in a public bath in a small city named Komastu, yes the tractor companies home base. It was a little tense at first, not because I was again like in a high school shower, no it was because most of the guys here in this bath house were yakuza, and they knew that I knew who they were. Lots and lots of body tatoos just like your would imagine. The thing is that the ofuro bath house was just down the street and around the corner from their office building, and it was the nearest one to my house. I ended up going there at least 3 times a week for 6 months and off and on for the next few years.

I shaved with a straight razor back then, and old German blade with a natural color bone handle, I still have it. And this was the razor I took to the ofuro. I was the only one there with a western straight but a lot of men did and still do shave with these little, but very sharp disposable straights. Of course I had a small strop with me too, no tatoos but at least I had a strop. Well, a small strop. But they didn’t have one!

From that very first day until today I have felt that shaving at a japanese bath house is one of the very best places on earth to shave, and I always get an excellent shave when I do. To begin with you have just soaked for 10-15 minutes in abnormally hot, hot water. Usually in the 42-46 degrees Celsius (110-115F) range, so talk about hydrated beard stubble. Then you got the endless supply of even hotter water if you want it to rinse in, choices in free shaving cream and your own little sit down to shave at mirror. Have you ever sat down to shave? Here are photos of where I bathed and shaved today on the 17th floor of my hotel. click on the photos for larger versions.

The soothing mineral water, an outdoor pool where I sat in the rain, and again I got a excellent relaxing shave afterwards. Alx