As I have discussed in previous posts, I am interested in Japanese philosophy and how its teachings can be applied in everyday life. Last week I came across a short documentary at Aeon from the University of Arizona Libraries special collections regarding the art of making samurai swords, known as katanas. The film, titled “The Japanese Sword as the Soul of the Samurai” was made in 1969 by Arizona filmmaker Kenneth Wolfgang and it is narrated by the familiar voice of George Takei (Star Trek). Wolfgang was allowed rare access to the Tokyo workshop of a master samurai swordsmith to explore the craft and history behind the iconic Japanese weapon.



The film provides some great insights about both the art and the philosophy of sword-making. It takes literally years of painstaking work to create such an elegant weapon from the initial material. The master swordmaker is completely devoted to the piece and makes critical decisions throughout the process. Even the people responsible for sharpening the blade have been training for that for a long time before the master swordmaker allows them to work on the katana (you can encounter similar training even in sushi or ramen restaurants, where a trainees will have to work for years until they master the rice or noodle making process).

A thought I had while watching the film was whether a similar mentality can also be applied in academic disciplines and how useful that might be. For better or worse, we live in an era where productivity is considered the ultimate goal. Just by looking at the amount of scientific work that is published every year, there is almost an exponential growth. However, the actual progress of science doesn’t seem to follow the same trend. This is a classic example of Goodhart’s law which states that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”. Is the master swordmaker interested in the amount of katanas that he will create, or about their quality? I think we all agree that he is deeply invested in the latter.

Could it be that we are reaching the limits of human knowledge and no matter how much we produce, we will not be able to make the next big step? Maybe, but that is a different discussion altogether. Could it be that we are developing a myopic view of knowledge and we are focusing on ever more specialized topics and fail to recognize connections between disciplines and the big picture? That is also possible. Could it be that the research enterprise is closely linked to the prevalent economic system and for this reason it has to comply to what it dictates? I will just leave that to think about it.