Anyone who knows about Samurai, or older japanese culture? HELP!

I have to write a report, and give a six minute presentation in a class of mine in my university. The professor decided to be old-fashioned and "assign" us a country to give a speech "about." Didn't give us a topic, or anything to talk about. Just a country. So, I was given Japan. I know very little about Japan, so I figured I'd do my report/speech on something I've always been interested in- the Samurai. Philosophy/Tradition/General culture.

Is there anyone here who knows anything about this that could help me out? Or even if anyone knows anything interesting about Japan that would be enough material to give a six minute speech on, that would be great. Have to have it done by Tuesday morning!

-Rain

I know how to build an authentic samurai sword, using the original smelting process and all...but that's about it. Quite fascinating, though.

Heroic Simile
by Robert Hass

When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai
in the gray rain,
in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty,
he fell straight as a pine, he fell
as Ajax fell in Homer
in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge
the woodsman returned for two days
to that lucky place before he was done with the sawing
and on the third day he brought his uncle.

They stacked logs in the resinous air,
hacking the small limbs off,
tying those bundles separately.
The slabs near the root
were quartered and still they were awkwardly large;
the logs from midtree they halved:
ten bundles and four great piles of fragrant wood,
moons and quarter moons and half moons
ridged by the saw's tooth.

The woodsman and the old man his uncle
are standing in midforest
on a floor of pine silt and spring mud.
They have stopped working
because they are tired and because
I have imagined no pack animal
or primitive wagon. They are too canny
to call in neighbors and come home
with a few logs after three days' work.
They are waiting for me to do something
or for the overseer of the Great Lord
to come and arrest them.

How patient they are!
The old man smokes a pipe and spits.
The young man is thinking he would be rich
if he were already rich and had a mule.
Ten days of hauling
and on the seventh day they'll probably
be caught, go home empty-handed
or worse. I don't know
whether they're Japanese or Mycenaean
and there's nothing I can do.
The path from here to that village
is not translated. A hero, dying,
gives off stillness to the air.
A man and a woman walk from the movies
to the house in the silence of separate fidelities.
There are limits to imagination.

Thanks for the poem, Taosaur!

Mario92, can you tell me a little bit about how that's done? I'm sure that would come in handy, as I would likely talk largely about how important a samurai's sword was

Okay, in the smelting bit, they build a great oven out of earth. For three straight days they feed iron sand and charcoal into it, slowly forming the steel used in swords. On the fourth day, they crack the oven open and examine the metal. If it is of good quality, it is shipped to the sword maker.
The sword maker examines the different bits of steel sent to him and sorts them based on carbon content, which determines hardness. The steel is then heated and folded over many times to relieve it of impurities. They do this for both the hard and soft steel separately. They hammer the hard steel into a pointed "U" shape, and form a piece of soft steel to fit in the middle. The two pieces are hammered together and fused. The blade is left straight, though. The master then paints the blade with different mixtures of charcoal and clay, causing different parts of the blade to cool faster or slower in the quenching process, which ultimately results in a unique pattern. This is an expression of art for the sword master.
The trickiest part comes at the quenching process. The blade is heated once more to a very specific temperature, as determined by color. Once the blade is of perfect temperature, the master thrusts his blade into a basin of cold water. This causes some parts of the metal to contract more than others, resulting in the unique curved shape held by samurai swords, or katana. The sword is polished by another master, and is ultimately given to the samurai warrior.
The significance of the hard steel blade and soft steel core comes down to physics. The hard steel holds a blade, but is brittle. The soft steel can endure a hit, but cannot hold a blade. The ancient samurais knew this, and crafted their blades accordingly.

Brilliant! Thank you, Mario92! So out of sheer curiosity... there are some who say it is very difficult to break a Samurai sword, but that they are extremely sharp and retain their edge. How did they balance that out to make it so? Or is it even so?

Ah I saw your thread and figured I would come and give a helping hand but it looks like you're already taken care of. ^.^

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rainman

Brilliant! Thank you, Mario92! So out of sheer curiosity... there are some who say it is very difficult to break a Samurai sword, but that they are extremely sharp and retain their edge. How did they balance that out to make it so? Or is it even so?

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I suggest you read up on heat treating metals. After initially forging a blade,
one allows it to cool very slowly (over several hours) so that they'd be left
with a softer steel. This is called annealing. Everything but the edge and
tang is then coated in a special wet-clay mix, the blade is heated until it
glows a deep cherry red, and it is then quenched in either water or oil (the
tang is not submerged, however). The rapid cooling of the edge causes the
metal to take on a different crystal structure that expands relative to the
back of the blade, and also causes the metal to harden. The clay is used to
reduce the amount of heat transferred over time for the rest of the blade, so
that it maintains its softer, less brittle quality. You end up with a structurally
sound blade that wont shatter the way cheep factory-made China Town
swords will.

Also, a blade's carbon content determines its hardness, and therefor how
brittle the metal is. One typically wouldn't exceed 1% carbon rating, but
katanas have to been known to sport as high as 4% in the edge. Might be
right around surgical grade steel too, I don't know.

Of course, the process is much more involved. Smelting of the tamahagane
alone is very, very tedious. You can also ask MoS if you'd like to know more
about forging in general, I think he's a bit more acquainted with the terms
than I am.

I think Cyclic13 knows a bit about that, maybe you can ask him.