How good of a sword was the katana, actually? I know that spears were the best melee weapon back in the day, but compared to other swords.
>>64773426How do you define good?
>>64773426You get a +20 damage increase and 15% greater critical hit chance when you wear a Fedora and black trench coat when wielding it
All things have a specific purpose OP.The katana is the best sword able to do what a katana can do.No more, no less.
>>64773426Not very. They're short, they're heavy for their length, their handguards are small, they aren't very flexible, and they're fragile, their blade materials are not usually elastic and will take a permanent set easily. They are good at cutting. But there were contemporary European swords that would have been better in basically every way.
>>64773426I’m going to effort post here like I do in every katana thread because I can’t help myself. I have a local HEMA group I participate in that doesn’t really care about the E part, and a couple of people have brought katana and various other Japanese weaponry. I myself have done so on occasion, and I did iaido for several years while living in Japan, so I guess I’m about as reasonably experienced with one as someone could be in the modern day. Samurai and cowboys get compared a lot, and the katana is absolutely analogous to a revolver. As is increasingly understood, it’s not a primary weapon, it’s an open carry piece for day-to-day life. Comparing it just to other swords is similarly tricky because a great deal of European swords were primary weapons of various degrees. A lot of its effectiveness hinges on where you set the cut off point for a sword that you would carry day-to-day. A katana against a long sword lost almost every fight I witnessed or participated in unless the katana user was considerably more skilled, and even then an extremely skilled katana user picking up a long sword for the first time generally did better with it than with their native weapon. I wouldn’t say a long sword was a day-to-day weapon, though. The katana is about as long as you can make a sword while keeping it easy to draw from a standing position affixed to the hip. The katana sheath is almost universally superior to European designs because it doesn’t dull the blade and does a better job keeping it dry and is easier to clean. In many ways that you would measure it as a every day carry weapon, it performs extremely well compared to European counterparts, and in many ways you would look at it after it has been drawn, it loses to larger weapons. 1/2
>>647736072/2Discussions on metallurgy aren’t particularly productive in my opinion. Japanese metal was not so bad that they would break absurdly faster than European counterparts, and they were not expected to be used for extended periods of time. It’s entirely likely that many European swords were produced better, I just don’t think almost anybody in Japan would have benefited from having European swords. we have very detailed accounts of much of Japanese history and the number of people that died because their sword broke under any circumstance is insignificant. It’s just not a problem they faced, which I think is a quick way to prove that either by design or by the manner in which they were using their swords, it was good enough. You can pull a katana out really fast, it doesn’t make any noise when it’s on your hip, you can sheath without looking at it, there are many practical niceties about it that led to its design. Go watch old Knight movies and watch the actors take like 20 seconds to put a sword back on their hip. different tools for different jobs. Sort of like the 32 my pocket carry when it’s really hot out, I would probably rather have something else in a firefight, but I would much rather have it than not have it, or have an even smaller gun. The Japanese had direct access to European swords from the 1500s onwards and even reproduce several, and none of them caught on. European produced swords made with European steel were not a hot commodity in Japan, even as a display item. This was a period of time where ancestral traditions of archery were being readily replaced with matchlocks and ancestral shipbuilding techniques were being thrown out for western ones, they were not a sentimental people in the 1500s, and yet they looked at European swords and said “no thank you”. The katana was simply good enough, and all of the theory building about why it isn’t as good as other things seems kind of pointless to me.
>>64773556It’s interesting that you mentioned the hand guards, because I think a lot of westerners are misinformed on this. The hand guards used in battle on katana used in periods of time where people went into battle could be quite large. They would be very crude pieces of replaceable iron. the swords we see today, though are a mixture of old swords in beautiful display fittings, and swords manufactured in the. that we’re not designed for any type of serious combat. I know I didn’t do a perfect job, lighting the blades holes here, but these are roughly to scale with each other on the far left you see the ornate, fragile, small tsuba, then probably the most recognized in-between style popular in the edo period, and then the types that you would have seen on more serious fighting swords in the 1500s and earlier. The Japanese definitely didn’t enjoy losing fingers, but you could essentially set your hand guard size to whatever you wanted, small ones just became popular later because they were easier to do martial arts with, lighter, and usually prettier.
>>64773634Deeply sorry for all the typos, I’m phone posting on the bus ride home i just love swords
>>64773426>spearfag in 2026let me guessNOBODY EVER USED SWORDSTHEY WERE STATUS SYMBOLS
european swords were generally better performing, but the katana and wakizashi were good for carrying around and worked fairly well against an unarmored opponent. a lot of the romantisation around it stems from the edo period where there was less wars therefore samurai fought duels on the street with katanas and not in fields with yaris and bows.i would say a smallsword or sidesword is the closest analogue. they would perhaps have an advantage over a katana in a duel, but also came into fashion much later chronologically.also notable, there existed much longer ones that were indeed viable weapons on a battlefield and not just sidearms.
>>64773426Gives a -1 needed to hit on attack rolls otherwise fairly mediocre.
>>64773644Yep. Swords were performative for most of human history.
