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I was wondering which style of straight came first, the kamisori or the folding straight with scales. My guess is the kami, but I only base this on the fact that it looks primitive, especially the ones that are just a hunk of steel, no handle.
Any good articles out there on the history of the straight razor? The wiki is not that interesting.
Are you going to ask about chickens and eggs next ? Your reasoning sounds good but I don't know if anybody really knows. Zak maybe or ....
The first narrow-bladed folding straight razors were listed by a Sheffield, England manufacturer in 1680.
I have heard the Kami is over 800 years old but take that with a grain of salt. I ain't a history major when it comes to razors.
Unfortunately, information about shaving prior to about 1820 in English-speaking nations is increasingly scanty the farther back you go. There are articles on the history of razors, but I haven't seen any attempting an overview that I'd describe as good. They tend to be written by people pushing a pet theory who leave mountains of contradictory evidence to the wayside. An example of a terrible overview article would be this one.
Shaving is undoubtedly an ancient tradition. It is well known that the Romans did, and there's pretty good evidence of their tools. I suppose you might technically describe those as 'kamisori-like', but it's pushing things, IMHO.
The key feature of the kamisori is that, like the Western folding razor, the blade geometry contains the jig for edge angle. IE, they are by design 'easy' to hone to razor sharpness. It's approached differently, but the philosophy of the design is essentially the same.
As near as I can tell, the Roman designs are simple variants of knives. All the examples I've seen from the ancient world are.
Can anyone provide examples of very old kamisori? What little information I can turn up is sufficiently lacking in detail that I'm dubious of its accuracy. (Specifically, "kamisori came to Japan from China during the Asuka period" 1200 years pass without any further detail "and then former samurai sword smiths began producing things other than swords -- like kamisori!")