The following is an old tale from Japan’s Toyama Prefecture. It’s not exactly a Christmas story, but includes all the classical elements a story shared on a cold winter’s eve must have: A beautiful maiden, a cranky blacksmith, an elemental creature, magic, weapons of death and destruction, an impossible challenge, and of course…, chickens. I hope you enjoy it.

Long long ago and far far away in a country in Japan called Etchu (modern day Toyama Prefecture) there was a large blacksmith’s shop.

The owner of the smithy, called “Master Blacksmith,” was well-to-do with many craftsmen working for him. He lived in a big house called a chouja.

Master Blacksmith had a single daughter of marriageable age, a rare beauty with almond eyes and long black hair shiny as a raven’s wing.

One day he announced to all the craftsmen in the area that he would give the hand of this daughter to the first suitor to forge 1,000 spearheads in a single night.

But no matter how skilled, every weapons blacksmith knows that it’s impossible to forge 1,000 spearheads in a single night, so his challenge went unanswered.

Master Blacksmith decided he needed to expand his offer and so put up a notice board describing his challenge alongside the main road for passersby to see, and waited for skilled craftsmen to appear.

Lo and behold an ogre that lived on a nearby mountain meandered by late one night and saw the notice. It did a little jig the way happy ogres do and gleefully exclaimed “Ha ha hee heee! A thousand spearheads is easy for meee!

The next morning, using the elemental magic that many ogres have, it changed his appearance to that of a young man and went down the mountain to Master Blacksmith’s house.

The Master looked doubtfully at the ogre in the shape of a young man and disdainfully said “What makes a young fella like you think he can make a thousand spearheads in one night?”

The ogre responded, “I can do it. I will surely make them before the cock crows in the morning.”

Thinking he had nothing to loose, the Master responded: “Then make them if you can.”

As the sun went down, the ogre in the shape of a young man went into the smithy, closed the doors, and began working.

Master Blacksmith heard sounds like the wind blowing from inside his smithy, but nary the sound of  a hammer striking metal or the ringing of an anvil. Perplexed, he said to himself “What can he be doing in there?”

Slipping quietly around to the back of his smithy and peeking through a crack in the siding boards, Master Blacksmith was shocked as he had never been shocked before because he saw fire spewing from the young man’s mouth as he bent and folded and shaped yellow-hot steel in his bare hands like it was warm taffy!

Before his eyes a smoking stack of completed spearheads quickly grew. It became obvious to Master Blacksmith that all 1,000 spearheads would be finished well before dawn.

Fearful for his tender daughter, Master Blacksmith realized he had to do something to stop the strange young man from successfully completing the challenge, so he thought and thought and thought until his thinker overheated.

“The only way out of this mess I have made is for the cock to crow before all 1,000 spearheads are completed,” he eventually reasoned. Following this logic to it’s natural conclusion, he took a jar of hot water into the chicken coop where the chickens were all fast asleep dreaming of stretchy worms and crunchy beetles.

Desperate to make even a single chicken crow, he poured the hot water on the roost where the chickens slept soundly. The surprised chickens all woke at once in a panic with the hens squacking, cackling, and screaming while the roosters all crowed out “Cock-a-doodly dooooo!”

Hearing this racket from the chicken coop the ogre in the form of a young man became frightened, wailing out “I have been discovered!”

Instantly, the magic that had changed its appearance popped like a soap bubble revealing the ogre’s supernatural red skin, yellow horns, and shiny white fangs again. The ogre ran out of the smithy like ten stampeding bulls raising a cloud of smoke all the way back to the mountain where it came from never to be seen again. 

With this, the blacksmith rubbed his chest and exclaimed in relief “I see, he was an ogre after all!” 

“And just what is this?” he said as he walked fearfully over the shattered remains of the front door to his smithy and peered inside in amazement at the stack of smoking-hot, sparkling spearheads left behind by the ogre. Indeed, it turned out the red ogre had left behind exactly 999 completed spearheads, each wonderfully made.

From that day forward the blacksmith’s shop was famous for the quality of its spearheads, which are still known as “ogre-spears.”

And the blacksmith became wealthier than ever.

The End

YMHOS

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The following is an old country folktale of the sort a grandfather would tell his grandchildren before bedtime. So imagine you are little boy or girl sitting around an irori fire with your family on a full-moon autumn night, with the wind rustling the dried leaves on the trees just outside the closed wooden amado doors, as your white-bearded grandfather tells you this tale. Don’t be frightened!

Long ago and far away a traveling merchant was crossing over a mountain in the country of Oki in Japan (Sanin area) at  sunset. As he reached the highest point he came upon a large lone pine tree with a crotch at about twice a man’s height. Using a bit of rope he always carried, the chubby merchant managed to pull himself up into the crotch and fell soundly asleep as the darkness deepened around him.

Hearing a strange sound, the merchant woke suddenly and was shocked to see his tree surrounded by dozens of large, long-toothed goblin cats glaring up at him in the darkness and yowling. He panicked fearing the monsters would jump into the tree and attack, and him without any way to escape. But all he could do was sit in the tree and pray the goblin cats would just go away.

At some point the beleaguered merchant began to realize the goblin cats were not just yowling but were actually speaking words he could just make out.

“My fellow goblin cats” said the boss cat. “That plump human in yon tree is the perfect main course for our banquet tonight, but obviously we can’t wait here all night for it to fall out.” The largest cat proposed a solution. “Noble goblin cats, I tell you what; I’ll climb the tree and push the fat lump out. When he hits the ground you jump on him, and our feast will  be secured.” Without waiting for a response from his demonic feline friends the goblin cat placed a stick against the tree’s trunk, extended his sharp claws, and using the stick for his first step, slowly crept up the tree trunk towards the intended victuals.

Hearing these strange words and seeing the boss goblin cat’s preparations, the merchant realized he was facing a sticky end best avoided, so he quietly unsheathed his long 9sun 5bu dagger (288mm, 11.3 inches) and readied it for the cat’s attack. (If you like blades, here are some links to YouTube videos of beautiful formally recognized historical examples: (Yoshimitsu tanto (designated National Treasure); A tanto by Sukesada of the Osafune School of Bizen in the “yoroidoushi” style intended to penetrate armor. A tanto designated as a “Tangible Cultural Property” with the name “Uebataima“.)

The plump merchant couldn’t see anything in the poor light, but he heard the frightening sound of the goblin cat’s claws cutting into the treebark as it climbed “Zaku.., zaku…, zaku..” 

He thought to himself “Here it comes!” “Just a little more now!!”

Suddenly the merchant saw the cat’s face just as it leaped at him with hooked claws extended and salivating fangs bared, but the merchant’s dagger pierced deeply into the big goblin cat’s abdomen releasing a fountain of blood, killing it instantly. The cat’s body collapsed in the same tree crotch with the merchant.

The goblin cats surrounding the base of the tree yowled and screeched like the demons from hell they were as they circled the tree’s base, shredding the bark with their wickedly sharp claws, then yowled and screeched some more. At last one of the evil creatures calmed down enough to say “It seems tonight’s dinner is more formidable than we first thought.” Hearing this, the merchant pushed the dead goblin cat’s limp and sticky body out of the tree so it landed with a wet thump right in front of furious goblin cats circling below.

Looking at their expired leader’s body, the goblin cats all jumped twisting into the air, cutting with their claws, spitting, frothing, screeching and yowling even harder. Then one said angrily “Now dinner’s gone and done it! This means war!” Spitting, hissing, and screaming things I won’t repeat to you children the goblin cats all scrambled up the tree towards the merchant getting in each other’s way and making a real hash of the job. In the confusion the merchant, who wasn’t really all that good with weapons, used his dagger to hack and stab every goblin cat that came within his reach killing and injuring more of the monsters.

The surviving goblin cats stopped their reckless attack and huddled panting and bloodied at the tree’s base arguing how to deal with this difficult menu item. “What shall we doooooo! What shall we doooooo!!“ they yowled up at the sky in frustration.

As they gradually calmed down one cool cat said “We must avenge these foul murders even if we all die in the attempt.” Another cat added “I’m not afraid to die but I worry about what will become of our mates and kittens if we are killed.”

The cool cat thought for a minute and finally said “Ok, here’s what we’ll do. Let’s go ask the blacksmith’s granny for help.” And with that all the goblin cats sped off into the dark like greased lightning.

Seeing his chance to escape, the merchant sheathed his dagger, gathered up his pack, and started to climb down from the tree. But before he could lower himself all the way down from his perch in the tree he heard the rhythmically chanting voices. In the dim light of the rising moon the merchant could just make out a palanquin born by six goblin cats chanting in cadence and surrounded by many others approach and stop beneath his tree. 

“This is the place, Granny.” “Please knock that fat human out of this tree so we can eat him at our banquet!” beseeched the goblin cats. 

The palanquin door slowly slid open revealing not a human grandmother but a huge white goblin cat of great dignity wearing a sleeveless kimono with a snow-white shawl over its shoulders. The monster rolled its large eyes in disgust at the smaller goblin cats and said “What is wrong with you useless ninnies?! Can’t you even take care of a pitiful human like that? You bunch are hopeless as yakuza.” 

She paused her berating of her fellow goblin cats, and gazing up into the tree said “Well, I suppose I must knock this human out of the tree myself. Such a bother! You useless idiots stay out of my way now.”

With one voice the smaller goblin cats all yowled “Thank you Grandmother!”

Grandma cat removed her white shawl and handed it to the closest younger goblin cat, then began carefully testing her claws on the tree trunk. When her claws were ready, and without a second look up at the trapped merchant, she slowly began to climb the tree.

Let me pause here, children, to catch my breath and wet my whistle….. Ahh, thank you Hanako, an excellent libation indeed! Your mother’s sake brewing skills improve every year. And you helped, did you? An excellent child. Well done. Just one more sip.

Ah yes, and where was I? That’s right. The huge white goblin cat, who did not look anything like a granny at all, was slowly climbing a tree high in the moonlit mountains, one sharp claw at a time, to kill a plump, tasty human who had repelled and killed several precious members of her goblin cat yakuza gang.

So far the frightened merchant had bravely driven off every attack, but this time his legs were shaking with dread at the memory of the many goblin cats and the boss goblin cat that had attacked him already, but to make things worse, now a huge white monster goblin cat had arrived in a deluxe palanquin no less, and was climbing his tree! What terrible creatures they were! Can you imagine it little children?

Once again he heard the zaku.. zaku… zaku sound of claws cutting into the tree coming closer, but this time the pace seemed slower than before, perhaps because the newly arrived goblin cat was older and bigger. The poor merchant’s whole body shook like a leaf with fear.

It’s getting closer…. It’s almost here!! 

But after another minute passed the big goblin cat still hadn’t reached his roost, so the merchant began to hope he might be able to to fend off the monster with his blade.

He gripped his knife tighter in his sweaty hands… and raised it over his head… just like this!

Suddenly the big goblin cat’s huge eyes appeared right in front of the treed human’s face. Gyaaaaaaa! he screamed in fear.

The monster struck out with its wicked, curved claws cutting the shocked merchant’s face deeply. But the merchant recovered his senses, and despite his injury, cut about wildly with his knife.

The big white goblin cat jumped up onto a limb of the tree and deftly swatted away the merchant’s frantic blows with her huge paws.

In between blows the man and the goblin cat spat curses and gasped for breath covering each other’s face with stringy spittle.

Although it seemed like the battle continued for hours, in less than a minute the merchant had been driven out to the end of the tree limb with no room to retreat. Suddenly, one of the goblin cats down below called out in despair, “Oh no, the sun is rising!”

Hearing this, the big white goblin cat stopped her attack, jumped down from the tree, stepped briskly into the palanquin, slid the door closed, and raced down the mountain road followed by all the other goblin cats scrambling like cockroaches in the sunlight.

As the sun began to rise in the East, the panting merchant collapsed back into his tree crotch. He thought about running far away from the terrible place until he recalled how afraid the goblin cats had seemed of the morning sun. And he thought of getting revenge for his injuries too, but confident there were enough hours of daylight left to make a decision, he collapsed back into his tree crotch and fell into an exhausted sleep. As he slept, he remembered the goblin cats that had first surrounded his tree saying something about the blacksmith’s grandmother.

When the sun was high and bright, the merchant climbed down from his tree, sore in every joint and with deep and painful cuts on his face, and followed the path down the mountain the goblin cats had taken. After he had walked a while he began to hear the “tink tonk tink tonk” sound of a hammer striking metal. Soon he came upon a small blacksmith’s shop with a house nearby. Inside the smithy was sweaty man hammering away at a hoe blade.

“May I ask you a question, good blacksmith?” said the merchant. The blacksmith paused his hammering, looked over the cut and bloody merchant and responded “Yup, what do you want?”

The merchant said “I heard there was a grandmother living around here….”  The blacksmith pointed his hammer towards the house and said “Well, maybe. My granny is been sick and hasn’t left the house over there in a long time.” He raised his chin, squinted his eys at the disheveled merchant, just like this, and asked sharply, “What’s your business?” The merchant calmly answered “I have something to deliver to her.” The blacksmith then asked “Who is it from?” The merchant said “they didn’t give their name, just handed me this package and left.” The package the merchant was holding contained a whole yellowtail tuna fish he had bought at a fishmonger’s shop on the way. It wasn’t a very fresh fish though, and stank badly.

The blacksmith gave the merchant a distrusting look, when from inside the house they heard a hoarse voice croaking out “Saburo!” The blacksmith’s name was apparently Saburo because he called back “Yes, grandmother?” The voice answered “What’s going on?” Saburo answered “Somebody brought you a big fish, grandmother.” “Well, what are you waiting for, bring it here.”

With that, Saburo accepted the stinky fish and took it inside the house. When he returned, the merchant whispered to him explaining the events of the night before and pointing at the deep cuts on his face and arms as evidence. But the blacksmith would not believe the strange story and responded “That’s ridiculous!” “But I tell you, it’s true” said the merchant. “If you doubt me, just take a look for yourself.”

The two men then walked around to the back of the house as quietly as a pair of tiny mice wearing fuzzy bunny slippers, slid open the shoji doors into grandma’s room just a crack, and peered inside where they saw an old woman wearing a white kimono sitting up on her futon. The old woman reached out to the package containing the fish, brought her nose close, and smelled it  “sniff, sniff.” As the two men watched, she greedily snatched the big raw smelly fish from inside the paper packaging and began to greedily bite off large chunks and swallow them.

With this, the merchant slammed open the shoji door, and jumped into the room. Saburo was too shocked to do anything but let out a roar of indignation. Surprised by the sudden noise, grandma turned back into her true form of a huge, white goblin cat, but before she could attack or flee, the merchant drew his sword and cut down the monster which leaked rivers of bright blue blood and died right there, thank you very much.

Saburo was so shocked by seeing his grandmother change into a monster and then die in a puddle of blue blood he could do nothing but stand there with his mouth hanging open as flies buzzed in and out. 

Finally, the merchant asked “How long has she been alone in this room?” Saburo closed his mouth, opened it again, and said “About three years now.” “Three years, huh? Well your real grandmother is nothing more than bones by now, I wager.”

At the merchant’s urging, the blacksmith and his neighbors searched the house, and towards evening they found a pile of white bones wearing the Blackmith’s grandmother’s kimono under the floor, meaning the big white goblin cat had killed grandma and had been passing itself of as her for 3 whole years.

A sad but all too common story. Time for bed now my little ones.

(A folk tale from Oki Province)

YMHOS

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of the page and use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below.

Please share your insights and comments with everyone in the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, fascist facebook, or thuggish Twitter and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. May a goblin cat nibble on my eyeballs if I lie.

“End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it. White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings”

The story of C&S Tools is not one of a business looking for products to sell, or of a manufacturer looking for buyers, but of craftsmen looking for better tools.

Your humble servant has lived and worked in Japan for many years, and learned about Japanese woodworking and Japanese tools from serious professional craftsmen called “shokunin.” They included primarily carpenters and joiners, gentlemen that were obsessed with the quality of the products they produced, their production efficiency, and the performance of their tools.

These gentlemen influenced me to seek out the best handmade woodworking tools available, including chisels, planes and saws because better tools help one perform better work more productively while making the job more pleasant. I am still absolutely convinced that is true.

I bought many different brands of tools back in the 1980’s and tested them. I asked craftsmen who’s skill and work impressed me what brands of chisels and planes and saws they used. After years of trying various brands, in the end, I concluded that Kiyotada and Ichihiro made the best chisels and Yokozaka Masato made the best plane blades available at the time. Over the next ten years, I disposed of my other chisels and planes and built up sets of chisels and planes by these blacksmiths.

My work has required me to move many times. In 2009 I was transferred back to Tokyo from Southern California, but the moving company mistakenly placed all of my chisels and planes in storage in the US instead of shipping them with me to Tokyo, so for several years I did not have access to them.

I no longer use my tools to feed the family, but still enjoy woodworking as both hobby and therapy to help maintain my sanity, so life in Tokyo without my tools was lacking something important.

I tried to purchase a few of my favorite tools by Kiyotada, Ichihiro, and Yokozaka but found they were no longer available, and because of the Kezuroukai effect, even used ones had doubled in price. Only Yokozaka-san was still alive, but once again, the Kezuroukai effect resulted in long waiting lists and inflated prices for his planes.

I eventually purchased a 10pc set of oiirenomi bench chisels from a retailer I trusted under the brandname Kiyohisa because, while the retailer warned that Kiyohisa’s products were nowhere near as good as Kiyotada or Ichihiro, he insisted that the Kiyohisa brand was as good “as it gets” anymore. They were shockingly expensive.

Sadly, I discovered the Kiyohisa chisels to be not only inferior to Kiyotada’s products, but of poor quality even when compared to cheapo tools, with some blades chipping unduly, others rolling their edges, and still others with poorly-performing differentially-hardened cutting edges. Absolutely hopeless. I was irate.

I took them back to the retailer and demanded a refund, but he responded that Kiyohisa products did not have a warranty. I since learned that this blacksmith does not warrant any of this products. As you can imagine I lost faith in that retailer’s opinion and the products they sell. You can probably imagine my opinion of Kiyohisa too, so I won’t inflict you with the rant.

At this point I was thoroughly frustrated and so procured many different famous brandname chisels and tested them to destruction. The standard against which I compared them all was the excellent Kiyotada products forged by Shimamura Kosaburo, a blacksmith who was at one time lauded by metallurgists as being the best chisel blacksmith in Japan. I have yet to find a better chisel, but I tried. The testing criteria were initial sharpness, durability (resistance to cracking and chipping) and edge retention ability.

The testing process I employed was to sharpen each 24mm chisel’s blade to 10,000 grit, and cut mortises with it in a Japanese hardwood called Keyaki (zelkova wood). I would abuse each chisel to determine how tough it was, and examine the edge after cutting each mortise. If the edge rolled or dented (and many did), then I knew it was too soft and rejected it. But if it chipped, broke, or performed well, I took it to the next step where I re-sharpened it and continued to cut mortises until the edge chipped or dulled. I rejected those chisels that readily chipped or quickly dulled. Most of the newly-produced chisels sold under famous brand names, and all the chisels produced in Miki, which were too soft, failed these comparative tests utterly.

It was an expensive process but I learned an important lesson, namely, that brandname has nothing to do with quality or performance; The true source of quality and performance in edged tools is rather the blacksmith himself, his experience, skill, and rock-solid dedication to quality. Sadly, this common-sense logic is not applicable to mass-produced products.

The key point I want Beloved Customers and Gentle Readers to take away from this story is the fact that most “brandnames” are owned by by wholesalers and retailers and are marks stamped onto products sold to faceless “markets” that have no direct voice, whereas blacksmiths sell to “customers” that give them direct feedback.

Right about now astute Beloved Customers and Gentle Readers are no doubt saying to themselves “Aha! But the wholesalers and retailers are still customers. Forsooth! Is their opinion of no worth?”

As always, our Beloved Customers have hit on an important difference to which I am compelled to provide a distinction. To whit, wholesalers and retailers are, with few exceptions, shopkeepers to whom a hard day’s work entails packaging boxes and writing labels, not producing timber frames, cabinets, or furniture. Most have never used a tool in the field or workshop professionally. Accordingly, while many talk a good game, their only source of feedback is the volume of sales and product defects complaints received from their customers. Their focus, therefore, is on moving volume at the highest possible profit margin, not making sawdust. In short, lacking hands-on experience and motivation from a demanding foreman or Clients, their ability to differentiate quality and performance from one brand to another is like the proverbial fundament and elbow.

I digress. Back to the point of the story.

Wholesalers and retailers don’t care about feedback so long as product keeps moving. If a particular brandname stops selling, they change the brandname and dress the product up in a different color miniskirt and sequined hooker heels and send it back out to the street corner, so to speak. Thus it has always been.

But the blacksmith has only his reputation, a precious thing that, once lost, cannot be recovered with a fashion remake and a new hairdo.

Accordingly, the quality and performance of a blacksmith’s products directly impact his personal reputation, self-respect, and long-term income, as illustrated by the example mentioned above, whereas most wholesalers and retailers have little at stake.

If a tool wholesaler’s primary market is amateurs located in far-flung countries outside of Japan, then the fluid reputation of his brandnames, inflated by marketing, have much greater influence on his profits than blade quality. Indeed, few amateurs in any country know how to properly use and maintain professional-grade chisels.

Even in Japan, amateurs carelessly damage blades blaming their failure on the blacksmith. Therefore, when marketing exclusively to inexperienced amateurs either domestically or internationally, the wholesaler’s surest path to profitability is to sell mass-produced blades with a high profit margin that are softer and more resistant to damage than blades intended exclusively for professional woodworkers. Therefore, blades sold primarily to amateurs overseas do not need to be hand-forged from the best materials but can be mass-produced using less-expensive steel at lower cost resulting in higher profits. And since the brandname is fluid and can be repaired through marketing, quality is of little consequence.

That is the Miki way of doing business, very much in the style of MacDonalds. Do you like kangaroo meat?

I had learned an expensive lesson during this first phase of buying chisels and planes and destroying their blades. And so putting it to good use, I next went looking for real live blacksmiths instead of famous brand-names.

I focused on traditional blacksmiths unaffiliated with the large wholesalers, working in small smithies who continued to produce chisels and planes for professionals using traditional blacksmithing techniques, and did not stoop to mass-production. I had set myself a time consuming challenge that couldn’t be accomplished using the internet or telephone alone. Indeed, these craftsmen don’t even own computers or mobile phones.

During the next phase I bought more chisels and damaged more blades. I spent weekends on trains going all over Japan visiting woodworkers and blacksmiths, inspecting forges, and checking QC techniques and steel stockpiles. At last I found 3 chisel blacksmiths and one plane blacksmith that consistently produced only the professional-grade tools I wanted with real-world performance approaching that of Kiyotada, Ichihiro, and Yokozaka.

I should add that Kiyotada, Ichihiro, and Yokozaka’s tools were expensive even when they were alive and producing daily. But since the tools I was seeking were to be secondary, perhaps temporary tools, I was willing to sacrifice appearance for lower cost on condition that the tools satisfied my performance goals. The blacksmiths I found did not make the prettiest blades, but they all cut like crazy and kept cutting a long time without dulling or chipping.

During this process I was in communication with professional woodworker friends in the US that know how to use and maintain Japanese planes and chisels. I told them of my adventures and even sent them some of the tools I found to try. After testing the tools they too wanted some. Word of mouth spread and one thing lead to another.

I have a day job, so C&S Tools is not focused on maximizing profits. We sell our tools for the standard retail price in Japan plus PayPal fees of 4.1%, without a gaijin or export markup. It’s more of an excuse for me to spend time with the Japanese blacksmiths and other honest craftsmen I respect.

Unfortunately, our blacksmiths are not getting younger. All are in their late 70’s and 80’s. Production will not continue much longer, so if you are looking for professional-grade chisels and planes at a reasonable price, as I was, then don’t wait too long. No one knows when the “grey rain-curtain of this world will roll back and all will turn to silver glass,” as the old wizard put it.

Stan Covington, Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant.

If you have questions or would like to learn more about our tools, please click the “Pricelist” link here or at the top of the page and use the “Contact Us” form located immediately below.

Please share your insights and comments with everyone using the form located further below labeled “Leave a Reply.” We aren’t evil Google, fascist facebook, or thuggish Twitter and so won’t sell, share, or profitably “misplace” your information. If I lie, may my chisels chip and my plane blades chatter and gossip unceasingly!