Holy shit you're wrong, now with references
https://gunbai-militaryhistory.blogspot.com/2018/02/iron-and-steel-technology-in-japanese.html
Egg_Egg
joined 3 weeks ago
The truth is that the steel made from Iron Sand was not lower quality than the Steel made from other sources of Iron.
Impurities are melted into slag. Not the iron. That's what slag is.
The Japanese used western imported iron a lot, as well as western imported guns.
It's difficult to get historic figures for this, but in the early 20th century anywhere between 70-90 percent of iron ore used in Japan was imported, and even almost 100% in some years. There's highly likely to be history to this importing going back a long while. https://d-arch.ide.go.jp/je_archive/english/society/wp_je_unu33.html
Tamahagane steel, the stuff produced from sand, was likely much more popular for ceremonial blades whereas imported steel for blades meant for actual combat. This means the historic examples we have left are more likely to be Tamahagane steel, but if a western swordsman and a Japanese swordsmen were in a position to fight, both would likely be using steel of a similar quality as they would both be using steel from similar places.
One thing to remember is that the empires at the time were very competitive and if Japan was fighting with one of the imperial powers, you can be damn well sure a rival imperial power is supplying Japan with the best equipment to fight back.
Both Europe and Japan had lots of different types of sword, ranging from short to long and light to heavy. You should compare like for like.
Both Europe and Japan used weapons both in warfare and ceremonially.
Yeah they're a bit better at slashing whilst a straight sword is slightly better at thrusting. Typically a curved sword is a bit better whilst on horseback or whilst fighting unarmoured or lightly armoured opponents and straight blades are a bit better whilst fighting one-on-one and against somewhat more armoured opponents.
But these are slight differences and sword styles are also varied in each region, so the Japanese did develop swords which were more adapted to thrusting with reinforced tips and Europeans did develop swords which were more effective at slashing.
I think some people obsess over what swords are the best and the worst. In reality the style of sword was unlikely to be the major deciding factor in a one on one fight. The amount and quality of armour and the skill and capacity (Size and strength) of the fighters themselves are much bigger factors.
The whole "Japanese steel was really weak" thing is as much of a myth as the whole "katanas are super powerful superior weapons" thing.
They're all just swords, and don't make that much of a difference either way.
The comment was talking about things being Orwellian. Is it not Orwellian to have police killing many, many civilians?
Where are the horse exoskeletons for horses that fall and get injured in completely unnecessary horse races?
You are 66 times more likely to be killed by a police officer if you are in the US compared to in the UK.
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I worked for an ISP that uses Openreach's infrastructure in the UK. In order to make changes to customer installations or repairs we had to call an Openreach Contact Centre. These were basically big call centres in India. Many of my customers got contacted by scammers from India shortly after me contacting Openreach about their accounts using information like their address, contact details and information about the work they were receiving, and demanding things like card details to ensure the work went forward.
It was obvious Indian workers in those call centres were taking pictures of customer account details and using that info to scam those customers, but my company refused to do anything about it because we "lacked evidence" and just told us to let customers know any communication about their accounts would come directly from us and we'd never ask for any card details etc.
I'm certain any other companies, whether UK or US, that use centralised admin from India and similar places with poor security will be plagued with these exact same issues.