I want to talk about a category of object that is shaped like a tool, but distinctly isn't one. You can hold it. You can use it. It fits in the hand the way a tool should. It produces the feeling of work-- the friction, the labor, the sense of forward motion-- but it doesn't produce work. The object is not broken, it is performing its function. It's function is to feel like a tool.
In 1711, a toolmaker in Kyoto named Chiyozuru Korehide began forging kanna blades for the carpenters building the temples at Higashi Hongan-ji. The blades were forged from laminated steel, the highest quality white hagane forge-welded to soft iron, and were extraordinary.
Three hundred years later, his descendants still forge them. A Chiyozuru kanna costs somewhere between three hundred and three thousand dollars. It takes days to set up. The dai must be hand-fitted, the blade back flattened on a series of progressively finer stones, the chipbreaker mated until light cannot pass between it and the edge. Only then can you take a shaving.
The shaving curls are transcendent. It is beautiful. It is also, in the economic sense, worthless. A power planer does the same work in a fraction of the time. The kanna exists so that the setup can exist.
I want to talk about a category of object that is shaped like a tool, but distinctly isn't one. You can hold it. You can use it. It fits in the hand the way a tool should. It produces the feeling of work-- the friction, the labor, the sense of forward motion-- but it doesn't produce work. The object is not broken, it is performing its function. It's function is to feel like a tool.
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