Like that stuff about how katanas are made by highly trained masters folding steel into a thousand layers and how even then so many attempts failed and had to start over again from step one?

That’s true…ish… enough, but overenthusiasts tend to read that backwards as a sign of the supreme awesomeness of the end product when it’s more a matter of the supreme crappiness of the inputs.

The Japanese islands are notoriously lacking in extractable minerals, which means that traditional metalworking not only used very low quality iron sands as a ferrous source, but had to make do with charcoal rather than bituminous coke (and even that very expensive and thus used as little as possible) as a fuel source and reducing agent for smelting. Applying extensive and elaborate high-skilled labor to these shitty materials wasn’t just a matter of pridefully insisting on a quality product but more a necessity for making something acceptably functional.