What?  No Monty Python black knight clip yet?

OP...... no, Hollywood shows do much more damage.... to our republic.

Why does this remind me of Shamwow guy?

Swords of any type are the wrong tool for defeating plate armor.  That's what hammers and poleaxes for.

Which european swords are you comparing a katana too?
Not every european sword was a giant claymor or great sword made for hacking at a fully armored person.
For example look at german langmesser and kriegsmesser.
Every bit the equal at slashing as a katana at a similar weight and usually made out of better steel.

Not really.
Depends on the euro sword and what it was made for.

Jack wont be using his right hand to rub one out anymore.
Skip to 1:00 mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyaVkf54ias

best post in the thread.

Samurai were effectively the jack booted thugs of the Japanese Empire. A Gerber machete from Walmart is effective when wielded against unarmed serfs.

The Katana is cool from the standpoint that feudal Japanese smiths made a really good sword from poor materials.  They will do a good bit of damage but are not the mythological wonders that Hollywood makes them out to be... 

very true.. the drunk Portuguese swords man would of had that Samurai ran through a few times before that sword cleared the sheath.

My understanding is that most real fighting got done with archery and polearms.

Gonna have to disagree there.  I find the extra spacing helps tremendously with the less ergonomic guards such as Ochs.  Maybe just in the German school?

Not me-  pic of ochs
Attached File

They'll slice roast beef so thin your in laws will never come back.

people still keep using this trope, as though hollywood handles all other medieval weapons realistically, and has a special category just for the katana.

Halberds and billhooks for the win.

But, I do get the point. 

I for some reason beyond my understanding bought a Paul Chen Katana after a swrod thread here on ARF
It was as sharp as any benchmade I have owned .

Thing kinda scared the shit out of me , plus I am not some werido so WTF was I going to do with a sword 
so I sold it in the EE

lol--another one.  tell me--do you know where that story comes from?  while you're furiously googling, you might want to ask yourself how the portuguese would know that the people they were dealing with were samurai.

and i'm not even going to comment on the technical absurdity of your statement, which any reader who has actual experience with those sword types is probably laughing about.  

but you were only kidding, right?

Ive fenced Epee and Sabre for a bit..

FIFY!

Best reply yet.

One of the books I read about Japanese bled techniques showed a chart that rated the difficulty of about thirty various cuts through the human body with one swing.  Easiest was through the wrist, most difficult was through the pelvis with a horizontal cut.  Cutting though both thigh bones was not all that highly rated.  The one cut that sort of creeped me out was a downward diagonal cut going from collarbone to just above the pelvis.

I cannot imagine the horror of the realization that someone just cut you in half before the top slid off the bottom part. A horizontal cut through abdomen and spine was a fairly easy cut because of the lack of significant bone.

Considering that a reasonably skilled swordsman can make about 2-3 cuts in a second, the katana is a frighteningly effective weapon.

oh sure--swordplay is dynamic and adaptive.  but if you extend out into posta longa (dunno the german name--mid-strike position), you'll note that with a lot of space between the hands, your off-arm (rear hand--i'm assuming left) is either bent substantially more than your right, or your left shoulder is a bit soft.  very often, that means you're getting less power out of your left, having to drive most of the cut from your right, and losing energy in the process.  i used to keep a good 3" between, but now that i've closed up to 2 fingers my cuts are snappier and track much better.

not saying that the way i'm doing now is the only right way, but it's something to consider.  is hand spacing dealt with in lichtenauer?  fiore doesn't cover it at all IIRC.

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A warning for anyone watching this. Antony Cummins is so full of shit, he makes the staff of MSNBC seem honest in comparison. The dude has been proven fraudulent several times over.

For real historical research, check out Seiko Fujita or Kacem Zhougari.

ok, so use this experience to explain how your drunk portuguese is going to get his straight 40-45" blade deployed from a suspension scabbard and recovered into a striking position before the katana user deploys his curved 28" blade from his tucked scabbard (meaning that the sword only has to travel ~20" in order to clear) directly into a cut.

there are only a few things that a katana does really, really well: draw cutting and deploying stupid fast.  also looking cool and getting peoples' panties in a bunch, but mostly speed.  so that's why the laughter.

This was done with a wall hanger that was not sharpened.





That's bone cut through.


Story: 70 YO man uses Samurai Sword against burglers

Thibeault does have some specific techniques to draw and thrust quickly, against an opponent with a faster drawing weapon.  As you might expect they feature steps to the rear and/or lateral displacements.  The draw and thrust are very fast, with practice, though.

There are some fantastic historical fencing, HEMA, weapons, warfare, and martial arts channels on youtube. Some of these guys study the historical manuals and all the minutia involved in fighting with edged weapons. They debunk a lot of sword myths in these threads. Check out Academy of Historical Fencing, Metatron, Skallagrim, LindyBiege, and Scholagladiatoria. There are also tons of knife and knife sharpening related channels and vids from guys like VirtuoVice. They offer dozens of hours of great content with historical context and modern science mixed it.

Saber vs katana:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYariOAVwy0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJvg_feyTrg

Academy of Historical Fencing

Scholagladiatoria

Metatron

Skallagrim

Lindybeige

Most of these channels have one or more videos addressing the Katana and various other edged weapons with historical context. It seems to me that most of them tend to prefer some form of either spear, longsword with large crossguard, or saber with a decent guard over the katana. Some like the rapier.

Katana are basically two handed sabers that lack a decent guard and that are produced with crappy materials. They do not have magical amazing cutting properties. The edge was as thin and sharp as the blacksmith/swordsmith wanted it to be for the purpose intended for the sword. They generally used convex sharpening so the edges were supported by a lot of metal and could get pretty sharp with decent edge strength. Convex grinds are pretty versatile. The sharper you go, generally, the thinner the edge. Harder edges are more brittle. Thin hard edges can chip.  

The lack of back edge and guard limit the options you have compared to a longsword and your hands are vulnerable compared to a saber. Long swords can perform back slashes and can more easily be half-sworded or reversed so the pommel and guard can be used as an impact weapon. Half-swording allowed them to more more accurately place the tip for stabbing into weak spots in armor. (yes, they actually did this).

Two handed slashes and cuts can leave you slightly vulnerable compared to one handed slashes from a saber as more of your body is exposed during a swing. Katana are generally pretty solid against unarmored opponents in close quarters in dueling 1v1 or small scale combat but a one handed saber seems to usually have the edge once weapons are drawn. Fast drawing techniques were/are trained for katana so they will probably have the edge in surprise situations where your weapon is sheathed.

Swords are best thought of as sidearms like pistols. They are more as a backup and for self defense due to their effectiveness against unarmored opponents and ease of carry while going about life. Spears, halberds, and the like are more akin to rifles used on the battlefield but not kept for every day carry. Katana are good (but imo not the best) sidearms and not the magical undisputed best weapons vs everything that hollywood and anime show.

Guns work best

i don't doubt it, but the time/distance equation is a harsh mistress.  regardless of technique, the rapier user still had to translate twice as far just to clear the scabbard, and then has to reorient into the strike.  meanwhile the katana cut begins before the kissaki has even left the scabbard.  we're talking tenths of a second from stimulus to completed cut.  iai is based on the presumption that the enemy has already taken the initiative, and the iaidoka has to catch up.

to put it another way, no matter how fast jerry miculek can reload a revolver, a g19 is just a better choice when it comes to getting fire out quickly.  jerry might even be faster with his 6gun than me with my g19, but it doesn't change the equipment imbalance.  same applies here.

this is the kind of silliness that generally ruins these conversations.  those videos claim to show "saber vs. katana", but if you read the description, it clearly states that the katana user has zero training with the katana--he's visibly trying to use it like a euro longsword--and the saber guy is actually his teacher.  and yet people believe that this is somehow a useful analysis.  it's utterly useless, and it baffles me that people don't understand this because they're too wrapped up in fanboyism to detect it.

let me put it another way.  the f-16 and the f-18 are both extremely good at WVR air combat, but they have very different characteristics.  if an f-18 pilot jumps in an f-16 and tries to fly it like an f-18, he'll lose almost every time--just ask bullf-16.  this doesn't mean that the f-16 is inferior to the f-18, merely different--a different set of design tradeoffs.  but that's what is going on in that video--a guy who has never 'flown' a sword type is trying to use it like a different type, and failing.  that tells us nothing.

and then there are the commenters like metatron or matt easton.  how are you assessing these commenters, other than the fact that they're big on youtube?  

don;t get me wrong--i generally agree with your overall assessment.  in a vacuum, the medieval/renaissance euro longsword is going to be a more effective weapon than the 18th century katana.  but as you point out, that's like paying attention to a soldier's pistol instead of his rifle.  it would be silly for a rifleman with a G3 to carry a MP7 as a secondary weapon, even though the subgun is more effective than a pistol.  that's what we're basically talking about on longsword vs katana--SMG vs pistol.  saber or rapier vs katana is a more interesting conversation--to torture that metaphor a bit more, it would be something like a fullsized big bore service pistol vice a g19.

Katanas do stupid amounts of damage to unprotected flesh. Against armor... not so much.

Modern katanas are durable beyond the dreams of the master swordsmiths of ancient japan. Here is video of a spring-steel katana cutting blocks of wood. I love the ringing sound it makes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUDjKpmoDZc

They had weapons that could split hairs, we had weapons that could split atoms... guess who won. 

. I just linked the sparring vid as the first example that popped up in related vids of that particular channel showing sparring. I was typing that post up pretty quick and going through a bunch of channels and vids to link for examples. Didn't even read the description, just tossed it in there as an example of the content on these channels. I'm not claiming it's useful and there's no fanboying here. Now that I looked into the video, yeah, it's not useful for showing quality sparring. Of course you have to take pretty much all things on the internet with a grain of salt and do more research to educate yourself properly. I was encouraging people to educate themselves and look into content on YT, not sure how that's silliness or fanboying.

Yep this is true and exactly what I was trying to get across in my post and why that specific video is a poor example. Swords are sidearms and different swords have different pros and cons. Notice I didn't say that katanas suck and that longsword > katana at all times. I should have looked closer at that example before I linked it. Not a good sample.

I'm no expert and do not personally have significant historical knowledge on edged weapons and warfare, so I don't claim that any of these guys are 100% correct on everything. If you reread my first post, I specifically stated that there are a lot of content creators out there that have interesting vids on fighting with weapons in a historical context and that they squash a lot of myths that pop up in these kinds of threads. I did not claim that they are all spreading sword fighting gospel. It seems to me that historical fighting communities are highly judgemental and critical of the spread of bad information, so I assume any of them would have poor reputations, get lots of negative comments, and downvotes if they were consistently wrong on everything. I judge each video on a case by case basis using my own limited knowledge on the subject, cross referencing with historical materials and articles, common sense, logic, and bits of info from educated comments in the comment threads. I'm just suggesting entertaining historical content that is likely more accurate that typical BS and recommend these channels as a jumping board to learning more about historical fighting.  

Yeah, it's not a bad comparison. The general argument I was trying to make in the end was that there are cool educational channels on YT that can explain some of these myths, and that, yeah, katanas are not magical wunderweapons, just solid sidearms that have their own pros and cons. They aren't magical lightsabers that cut through anything and beat all other weapons in combat.

true, but then again no one who actually knows anything thinks that.  it's the euro fanboys and HEMA guys who are constantly triggered by katana talk from people who obviously don't know anything about swords.  with a little more experience and confidence, they would just laugh.  instead, they post long diatribes "debunking" stuff that isn't worthy of any attention.  i used to be one of those guys.  then i started practicing.  it's amazing how fast actual work will change someone's opinions.  for the most part, serious HEMA and JSA guys really respect one another.  as usual, it's the kiddies and wannabes who constantly yammer about delta vs SEALS kinght vs samurai longsword vs katana.

Yes.  

Imagine your sharpest kitchen knife, 3' long.  

Also, I am given to understand that the katana is actually designed to stab (poke) more than slash.   Think about that...

I'm sorry but katana is just not as great as you think it is. Its a saber with a long handle and heavy blade.

Exactly. My post wasn't directed at "anyone who actually knows anything". It was directed at the OP who asked if the hollywood myths are true, not an experienced practitioner like yourself.

I'm not sure if this is intended to be a slight/insult at me since I posted a ridiculously long diatribe . You seem to keep implying that I'm a fanboy or whatever. Not sure I understand the hostility if so. Yeah, the euro fanboys and HEMA guys can definitely be annoying. I am neither. Hell, my favorite edged or historical weapons are spears, naginata, and similar arms. There are no HEMA/historical fencing or japanese sword fighting martial arts schools anywhere near me that I'm aware of, or I'd be interesting in getting into the sports. They're all interesting and worth studying, like different shooting sports and types of guns. I think they all fill certain niches.

You don't know much about Katana's do you?

My first wife was Japanese and I happened to purchase several of them when I was stationed in Japan, including some very old ones that were made in the 16 and 1700's, they are one of the best blades ever built and if properly built, they will hold a sharper edge than most knives.  They are fierce blades.  In the proper mans hands, they can be sharpened quite well and they don't always have the thicker edge geometry...

I would love to see even one of your sharper knives cut through bamboo, let alone a stacked pack of bamboo

My wife and 10 yr old son somehow agreed that if he practiced piano every day for 6 weeks without bitching too much, we'd buy him a katana.  I couldn't believe it.  Normally he only gets to play with edged weapons on guys camp trips and mom gets a watered down recap afterwards.  Dunno how he suckered her into this one.  We're headed off to the Eugene knife show on Saturday to try to hunt down a sword. This thread is timely.

A true classic

you're right--my tone was overly caustic, and you didn't deserve that.  please accept my apology.

Absolutely accurate.  Just like a Hollywood Hand Grenade will demolish a multilevel house, a shotgun blast will knock a person backwards out a window, and like a POS Ricer will out run a Police Helicopter.  Completely accurate.

Other than among his fanbois, John Clements is considered a wack-a-doodle.  One example, John says Rapiers only thrust and can not cut.  Yet in his 1570 Fectbuck, Joachim Meyer shows the Rappier (German spelling) to be quite effective at cutting.  He has about 50% thrusting and 50% cutting for the Rappier.  John just claims to know more than Joachim, a person who lived by the sword and Master-of-Arms at the court of the Duke of Schwerin.

FWIW, my sparing weapon is a Pappenheimer Rappier.

Just when you thought they didn't make pug face tshirts in 7XL.

Damn want a katana now

How I will feel when I have my katana.



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