A new tengu nation

[HoneyBadger]

of the Sword.

Firstly, I'd like to thank DrPraetorious for clueing me in to the long and-apparently-rich tradition of Korean swordsmithing. Korea is a fascinating place that, unfortunately and surprisingly, considering we fought a war there in my dad's lifetime, and that my grandfather actually fought in, I never heard a lot about growing up.

Anything that wasn't within the scope of the tv series M.A.S.H. (not even the movie!) we just didn't learn about.

As far as "all the swordsmithing" being Korean, as opposed *to* Japanese, from what I can tell, yes the concept/art of sword making did originally come from Korea to Japan, in the 6th century AD (atleast, what hadn't already arrived by way of China), but by the 10th century (somewhere between 700 AD with Amakuni, and 987 AD with the Koto swords), they split off considerably.

Not too much is known about the Korean swords, because the Japanese turned around and either looted or destroyed them in WW2, as much as they possibly could. I'd hazard a guess, without knowing much more about it, that they were strongly influenced somewhere along the line by invading Chinese, who were in turn influenced strongly by the Indians, who ofcourse got a lot of peculiar notions from the Greeks. But, it must be said that the Koreans are the only people I've encountered so far, who had stone-based sword technology and didn't come from South America.

Korean swordmaking started somewhere around 3000 BC, and by 57 BC they had iron swords. The Han (Chinese) were the ones who came up with the whole "folding" technique, though, and then passed it on to Korea and Japan.

So it's a little bit broader of a subject than to say that the Sword started with Korea, but the history of the sword in Korea is definitely a big, very shady area to explore.

[llamabeast]

That was interesting HB, thanks for taking the time to write that.

[Lord_Neko]

Yes, that was informative.

About the mod though, I have about half the graphics done at the moment. If my homework doesn't keep me busy this weekend I will finish the work on the graphics and perhaps move onto the actual hard part of writing up the mod.

[HoneyBadger]

It's my pleasure.

Swords and their history are a really interesting subject. And if you're going to discuss and understand the Tengu, who were said to be great craftspeople and masters of kenjitsu, then you need to understand the relation of swords in Asia.

By the way, it might also be useful to familiarize one's self with Shugendo. Tengus were believed to be followers of Shugendo, and are usually depicted wearing the yamabushi.

Tengus also tended to carry around fans which had magical power over winds, and could sometimes shapechange into human form. They were also often depicted as vengeful ghosts and spirits of war, chaos, and vanity, but not always as evil beings.

The king of the Tengu is Shojobi. He's said to have the strength of 1000 normal Tengu and is a prominent figure in Shugendo.