History of Aogami steel (better translation needed)

[Larrin]

I have been struggling to find the history of the blue paper series of steels by Hitachi. I imported a book in Japanese that has a brief paragraph on its history but the translation generated by Google could be better. It seems to be saying that the blue steels were based on a British steel used for machining cannons. Someone making blades with the steel (is Echigo Nagahiro a name?) gave the steel to Dr. Haruto Kudo who copied the steel for Yasugi/Yasuki steel. I also found a wiki entry for Haruto Kudo: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/工藤治人

I’ve got a picture of the book and the page in question.

 

[ethompson]

Can’t help by translating directly, but DeepL has much, much better Japanese to English translation power than googlr

 

[refcast]

Hahaha yeah I posted that earlier on the forums from a separate source too

 

[Larrin]

Hahaha yeah I posted that earlier on the forums from a separate source too

Ok I see: Tamahagane and blue steel history/legend notes

 

[refcast]

Echigo nagahiro was a Kanna maker, and is still pretty well regarded for the ones he and his lineage made

 

[Larrin]

How do we find the death year for Nagahiro? That would help narrow down the dates.

 

[refcast]

Ohhh boy hmm, probably by googling his name in japanese, I'll try searching later in japanese.

There's another famous nagahiro, more famous, in Tokyo a chisel maker, so those can interfere when searching. He also made kanna

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

I miss @KenHash. I hope you are well out there friend.

 

[refcast]

https://www.city.sanjo.niigata.jp/soshiki/keizaibu/shokoka/monodukuri/sanjokaji/4540.html
Site has name of nagahiro 1, and the year that his master came to Niigata, 1882.

、その弟子永桶米太郎（初代永弘

Googling that leads to the nagahiro/hatauhiro smithing lineage tree but I didn't find death dates of nagahiro 1 yet