New Article: Longsword and Katana

[Webmaster]

Just in time for the hot part of summer we have a new article that's sure to provoke some heated discussion:

Longsword and Katana Considered
http://www.thearma.org/essays/longsword-and-katana.html

[Shane Smith]

Pretty good article. An interesting read too. I largely agree with the reasoning and conclusions. I do think it odd that the katana is characterised as the shorter blade in the discourse when certainly, shorter-bladed longswords with blades of comparable length were in use beside longer-bladed longswords. In fact, there were much longer versions of the curved Japanese sword too. That being so, this one passage struck me as odd;

" As has been known since ancient times and shown by fencers since the mid-16th century, the geometry of a straight weapon means its thrust hits more quickly..."

I don't see how two swords of similar length and weight being accelerated at the same rate linearly would strike the targets surface more or less quickly than one-another because they are shaped differently along their length. What's the reasoning I'm missing? I can see how a straight blade is more suitable for the foyning fence and how it may find the place quicker through the skill of it's user, but mechanically in a vaccum inherent to the weapons shape I don't see how "it's thrust hits more quickly".

[CalebChow]

Great article; next time my friends make a "uberkatana" comment I'll redirect them to this article.

Shane, my guess about the thrust advantage is in the shape of the point that appears in double-edged blades.
In other words, I'm thinking "Faster" here means "faster to do damage" than actual aerodynamic velocity.

But I can't say I really know what I'm talking about, might wanna just ask John about it

[Ryan Woo]

I do think it odd that the katana is characterised as the shorter blade in the discourse when certainly, shorter-bladed longswords with blades of comparable length were in use beside longer-bladed longswords. In fact, there were much longer versions of the curved Japanese sword too.

There certainly were longer versions of each sword type, namely tachi and great sword. But I believe John was talking about katana and longswords of the average and common lengths. Traditionally, when you hold a katana with one hand and swing it on the side downward so that the tip of the blade marginally misses touching the ground, it was deemed to be the ideal length.
Not so for the longsword.

[Jonathan_Kaplan]

I was always under the impression that the Katana would not do well on more heavily steel-based armor. This article mentions that there are versions of the katana that are made for overcoming armor. How were those made differently?

[Grant Hall]

I was always under the impression that the Katana would not do well on more heavily steel-based armor. This article mentions that there are versions of the katana that are made for overcoming armor. How were those made differently?

Why would you think a Katana would do well against "heavily steel-based armor"? Katana are cutting and slashing weapons primarily, two attacks that are virtually useless against sturdier steel armor, especially plate.

The most effective attack against steel based armor has always been the thrust, which is probably the single biggest reason that Western Swords tend to be stright trhusting swords, more often the curved slashing swords.

Also, on the lengths of the swords, Katana's are an average of 80 cm long, as opposed to the Longsword's average length of about 110cm, thats a 30cm (or 1 foot) difference, not bad for a sword that pretty much weighs the same.

[Grant Hall]

I was always under the impression that the Katana would not do well on more heavily steel-based armor. This article mentions that there are versions of the katana that are made for overcoming armor. How were those made differently?

[Sal Bertucci]

[quote= That being so, this one passage struck me as odd;

" As has been known since ancient times and shown by fencers since the mid-16th century, the geometry of a straight weapon means its thrust hits more quickly..."

I don't see how two swords of similar length and weight being accelerated at the same rate linearly would strike the targets surface more or less quickly than one-another because they are shaped differently along their length. What's the reasoning I'm missing? I can see how a straight blade is more suitable for the foyning fence and how it may find the place quicker through the skill of it's user, but mechanically in a vaccum inherent to the weapons shape I don't see how "it's thrust hits more quickly".[/quote]


I've thought up a possible meaning to that quote.

If you had two equal weights of metal and made a straight sword with one and a curved sword with another the straight sword will get to the target "faster" b/c more of the metal in making the blade is dedicated to reach. In the curved sword, a portion of the blade has to go to going out, decreasing the overall reach of the blade.

It kind of a stretch, but it's AN answer.

[Jonathan_Kaplan]

Why would you think a Katana would do well against "heavily steel-based armor"?

You misread, I said a Katana WOULD NOT do well against heavily steel based armor, which was rare in Japan, which is why that style of sword didn't fade out. But this article mentioned there was a type of Katana that did *better* against armor, and I wanted to know more about that.

[PA Schaeffer]

First, hello all, I'm new on this forum. I'm sorry for my bad english, but It's not my language.

I discovered ARMA website some month ago because of the essay on 'European knight vs Feudal Samourai', which was quite similar to this one, the katana being the main reason for the popular belief that samourai were the best fighter in the medieval world.

I have been practicing fencing for years in my country and I recently started the japanese Kendo, because of a friend. Of course, I tried to get some information on the history of this sport and on the art that was at its roots. I had never heard of association like ARMA and the quality of the essay lead me to conduct some personnal research, and I found what I think is some not too uninterresting informations:

I started by searching some comong ennemy of both of our warriors...

1) The common ennemy:

It's clear that there never was any battle between large groups of european and japanese warriors during the middle age, but they had a common ennemy with the mongols, that reached both eastern europe and japan.
In fact it's quite a bad idea to compare their battles against mongols because of numerous facts:
- Mongol troops attacking Japan were mainly Korean and Chinese warriors,
- Eastern european (Bulgars/Hungrian) were not really fighting with european martial art, because they were themselves descent of people coming from the center asian plains

But I found some interresting information:
- it's well known that mongol armies crushed both russian and hungarian troops, but who knows that during the battle of Legnica the order of the temple reported only 3 knights killed!, showing that heavily armored knights were not easy to kill.
- the common perception that light cavalry was superior to heavy cavalry and infantry is clearly false, according to a lot of historical battle that opposed them: Frank/Britons crusader against mamelouks and arabs, German knights against hungarian,... the most impressive is the evolution of Byzantine army as she faced Turks. Their response to light Turk cavalry was not to develop some light cavalry but rather to go back to heavy infantry supported by cataphracts, the heaviest cavalry they knew. As they opposed the Turks successfully during numerous battles before their final collapsing, we can suppose that this was the good answer. The same behavior was observed in Hungaria:
After the first invasion of their country by Mongols, the Hungarian shifted from their former asian martial organisation to the german/french model. The second invasion of the mongol was a disaster and their army was destroyed,
- Mongols never managed to take by force the european modern stone fortress and castle, but were able to take chinese/japanese and arabic castle.

let's compare to what happened in Japan:
- the mongols were attacking from the sea
- they had a very small army compared to that of the Japanese
- their invasion were repelled but mainly because of luck and the two battle that occured clearly showed that without the tremendous numerical superiority they enjoyed, the japanese samourais would have been defeated because of their lack of adaptation to other threats than theirinternal ones.

As one can see, this comparison didn't lead me to any real result, because there was too many differences between the mongolian invasion of Europe and Japan. So, I tried to search for a common commercial partner.

2) The common commercial partner

I knew that China had been in commercial relationship with both european and japanese worlds since the middle age. I found that Chinese warriors were buying japanese Katanas, considering them better than their chinese-made swords. But when they prefered over japanese swords arabic ones, because of a superior quality. You probably know that after their defeat at the battle of Tour and during the crusades, arabs tried to buy frank/german swords without success, because Charlemagne, emperor of the Frank empire had passed a law that remained in both french kingdom and Holly Roman Empire to forbid exportation of frank swords. Without being too entousiastic about european sword, one can say that if they were superior to weapon that were considered by chinese as superior to katanas, they had to be superior to katanas.
That's not a definitive statement, but I tend to like this kind of proofs, because they are based on historical and easily verified facts.

That's what I found after some personnal researchs, it's not fantastic but I would be happy to have some feedback of people having a better knowledge of history/western medieval martial art.

--- A reply to this:

" As has been known since ancient times and shown by fencers since the mid-16th century, the geometry of a straight weapon means its thrust hits more quickly..."

As an enginer, I would tend to say that I don't know why it would hit more quickly but it certainly will hit more deeply, as with the same cinetic energy, the straight weapon will have a far better penetration capacity, unless the strike follows a trajectory that as the exact form of the curved balde, which I think is totally impossible in fighting conditions, but I have absolutly no knowledge about that.

[Martin Lysen]

I think your conclusion is faulty because it seems to be based on the sole assumption that Chinese warriors preferred to import katanas in lieu of using domestically produced swords, and then going off on a tangent about how 9th century moslem warriors wanted to procure Frankish blades. There are way too many other factors in play here that you fail to take into account, the least being the 500-year gap between the battle of Tours and the 14th to 15th century longswords and katanas that seem to be mr. Clement's main focus. Another problem is your not presenting any kind of source supporting your claim that Chinese warriors preferred katanas.

Also mr. Clements builds his article on some practical experimentation and comparison between the two types of sword, as well as an understanding that they were each developed in their own historical contexts, rather than making wild extrapolations and generalizations across the span of centuries and continents.

So I find your argument faulty, and not backed up by any sources. Please feel free to elaborate further if you have any source material I am not aware of.

[PA Schaeffer]

So I find your argument faulty, and not backed up by any sources. Please feel free to elaborate further if you have any source material I am not aware of.

You are perfectly right, and the intend of my post, (maybe it was unclear), was more to see if their was some better documented people that would either confirm or counter what I wrote. All my sources were from internet and that's why I did't trust them.

On the Chinese buying foreign swords:

The fact that Chinese were influenced by Japanese weapons (not only katana but also former sabers) is well known and easily verified. -> Wo dao chinese sword.

As for the middle east influence, it's harder to proove, but pei dao and yanmao dao are said to have been influenced by commercial relations with middle east (after Jose Carmona, a Taiji Quan specialist). I have absolutly no idea of the timeline behind these exchanges.

The time gap you mention destroys all I said, unless I find precise sources on all the Chinese commercial relation with Japan and Middle east, but I doubt I will. It seems I have made my conclusion without taking the whole problem in account (even if the gap could be reduced to only 100 years from your 500 years - it's still a huge gap).

Thank you for this precise answer. I'm not at all a specialist of reenactment/ sword history like lot of people seem to be here, and I just wanted to confront some internet informations that I could not juge by myself, having too few knowledge with people knowing more and able to point out obvious errors in my conclusions.

[RayMcCullough]

PA ,

I noticed you said you just started Kendo. I can tell you from experience sparring with Kendo/Kumdo practitioners that you will not learn Swordsmanship from Kendo/Kumdo. These were not beginers at Kendo/Kumdo. They were teachers and one has at least 10 yrs at it. I think it is closer to 20 yrs. I easily walked over them.

I have been in ARMA only 2 yrs and I suck. Just ask the guys who attended the IG 07.

[Vance Osterhout]

There are a lot of articles on CHF about CHinese swords and their development. From the pictures and historical examples I saw there i don't buy the dominance of the Katana over the Dao. one of the final stages in sword development in China was the Yan Mao Dao and Liu Ye Dao. Both of these, especially the Liu Ye Dao closely resembled western Cavalry Sabres.

You'll probably notice a similarity between many different culture's swords although from what I've seen Eeurope has the most interesting variety.

[PA Schaeffer]

PA ,

I noticed you said you just started Kendo. I can tell you from experience sparring with Kendo/Kumdo practitioners that you will not learn Swordsmanship from Kendo/Kumdo. These were not beginers at Kendo/Kumdo. They were teachers and one has at least 10 yrs at it. I think it is closer to 20 yrs. I easily walked over them.

I have been in ARMA only 2 yrs and I suck. Just ask the guys who attended the IG 07.

I can believe it, kendo is a sport, and the fact that they don't even take in account legs and arms as possible target is quite bad for them. I may stop it very quickly because of the lack of possibilities. I have practiced sport fencing with Epee as main blade for 10 years at a quite high level and I'm not convinced by Kendo even if it's a fun sport.

@Vance Osterhout
As for the chinese swords, I don't have any particular knowledge about it, but a (european) master of Taiji quian told me this:
- chinese adapted their weapon to counter katanas after a long period of viking-like japanese raids on their shores.
- more amusing: he advices his students to follow old european martial art courses for efficient sparring rather than actual Taiji quian because he thinks it's more realistic than actual chinese martial art, that are for him pure sport and spectacular but not at all efficient. But after all, it mainly depends on what you are searching for.