Summer in Japan is notorious for being hot, humid and unpleasant. If you are a blacksmith, however, even the summer air is probably refreshing.
The temperature in Shigeyoshi Iwasaki's two furnaces -- one stoked with coal and the other with gas -- can rise as high as 1,100 C. When the 66-year-old blacksmith forges red-hot iron with a hammer, sweat cascades down his face and arms like waterfalls. Even so, he says smiling, "Heat does not bother me much."
The products Iwasaki creates at his tiny smithy on the outskirts of Sanjo City, Niigata, are of the highest quality. He produces a wide variety of edged tools -- from agricultural tools to carpentry tools -- but his knives and razors are especially famous. His razors, for instance, can split a hair in three.