Kansei evaluation for Japanese Sword's beauty

Abstract

Japanese sword is one of the most important representative traditional crafts in Japan. The familiar characteristics of Japanese sword is the mechanical functionality and beauty of handcrafts industrial art. Newly produced Japanese swords by the modern sword smith work arc rated by the prominent (expert) sword smiths and so on. However, novice sometimes cannot understand the difference of the evaluation results. This paper tries the scientific evaluation of the beauty of the Japanese sword from the viewpoints of both the sword smiths and novice. Here, a sensual information is one of the beauty items of the Japanese sword. The sensual information is felt by the sensibility combined by the several components. In this paper, the order of priority and relevance of these several components arc clarified by using the DEMATEL method. Moreover, by using the Thurstone method, the viewpoint of the novice is determined.