A Japanese Village Wants Tourists to Come for Heat, Soot and Steel

This past October, I found myself in Yoshida Village standing before a tatara, a giant open-top furnace that was filled with charcoal and raging with such controlled ferocity that it could have been a set piece in Lucifer’s bedroom. Deep within the belly of those orange flames sat a growing and mangled ingot that contained some exceptionally high-quality steel called tamahagane, or jewel steel, fr