A sword so technologically perfect in structure, so beautiful in creation...

The katana continued to kill people well into the 1940s. And if you want to talk about how long it was used as a mainstream weapon in combat, it lasted at least until the 1700s. The bastard sword/hand-and-a-half was only around from like the beginning of the Crusades until the 1300s or so when it was replaced with the longsword.

I'm sorry OP but you appear to be a massive faggot

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>the katana is from such a backwater place that they did not advance their killing techniques and equipment for 500 years.

>Japan
>backwater
As the kids would say, "lmao at ur life."

>so backwater that they got big dicked into opening up for trade without the west even firing a shot

Living like its the 13th century in the 19th century is backwater bud

the arming sword was in use as the serious front line combat weapon from ~1000AD to 1500AD where is was superseded by the musket and relegated to cavalry use as the strait bladed Calvary sword where in it lost its cruciform hilt in favor of basket hilts. i.e. the Scottish broadsword. it remained in use in combat well into 1942 where an English serviceman "mad-jack" used it to kill Nazis on the Normandy landing.

the arming sword can trace its use well before 1000AD and into 1000 BC used by northern European groups such as the Celtic, German and Scandinavian. these swords are so similar many early arming sword were in fact these swords with new hilts. the Romans had a similar sword that they used from around 300AD to their fall that many legions in northern Europe picked up and used.

the Japanese Katana was a knock-off of a Chinese sword that was superior. the early Japanese swords were strait bladed and had a different manufacture method.

the "magical" properties of a katana comes from the fact to overcome the inferior metal the katana is one of the thickest swords, making it cheap and durable. its European equivalent is the cutlass.

>katana
>1940s

You mean when they fucking LOST THE WAR LIKE LITTLE BITCHES?

I have little hope for this thread but I will jump in anyway.

the Japanese sword was not a knock off, as far as we can tell its manufacture process is the result of Japanese development, though it was based on Chinese and Korean straight blades that were imported.

The katana is thick but by the same token pre modern European swords were broad. If you actually look at the weight inch by inch it compares very favorably with arming and long swords.

Nor did the Japanese have "inferior metal" tamahagane is comparable to bloomery steel from other parts of the world. They had poor iron sources, though it was never a huge problem for them, they were exporting swords for a good deal of time.

which made all the difference, the blade is inferior to European designs the only thing Europeans liked about the katana, making it popular with Europeans was the grip. the grip of nearly every other sword was made to slip over the tang but the Japanese katana was make to close around the tang, meaning you could get a firmer grip. European broad bladed swords took less time and skill to make with less thought involved meaning you could make a superior sword with less time, training, and materials. the European sword also had the ability to improve more leading to the bastard sword which uses both metal folding techniques and the channel fluting that makes arming swords strong.

modern katana often feature this fluting but it was not common in older katana.

> the grip of nearly every other sword was made to slip over the tang but the Japanese katana was make to close around the tang, meaning you could get a firmer grip
wat
> European broad bladed swords took less time and skill to make
No

>yes

>a weapon who's legacy in the 20th century revolves around killing pows and being taken as trophy
The funniest part is when Japanese culture was absolutely wiped clean at the end of the war.

>literally sealed off the country until America forced them to trade
Katanas didn't work against gun boats and they didn't work against nukes.

No. Katanas took so long and so much skill to make not because they require it, but because the autists who were buying and commissioning them demanded it, because Japs fucking love that shit. Swords made for wealthy European nobility were similar.

Mass produced European swords took less time and skill to make because mercenaries and men at arms could afford swords, but not ass huffing retarded ritualized showpieces.

Attached: Sword of Maximilian I.jpg (1069x1708, 169K)

I wonder if they went on public forums and talked about poorfags.

Fucking hell people still katanapost?

The grip was sometimes praised particularly in later sources, though I have seen no source 19th century or earlier calling Japanese blades "inferior" most I have seen are either neutral or praise it for various things (usually its cutting ability)

As for sword production both Europe and Japan had both very cheap swords as well as expensive blades for the well to do. I won't speculate on which took more time but the Japanese in the sengoku were coming pretty close to mass production of cheap swords both to give foot solders a side arm and to export. Europeans of course were also mass producing arms for similar purposes, my point is that unlike modern collector pieces a Japanese sword did not necessarily take a long time to produce.

You realize 10 to 1 op was trolling to get a visceral reaction from people who love European swords right?

deal with what?
what am i dealing with here

I've noticed most of the people who talk shit about Japanese blades (and people who praise them, for that matter) have never read any contemporary sources that talk about them. All of the Europeans that visited Japan spoke very highly of Japanese metalwork, and Japanese swordsmanship. I'm not saying that a katana is inherently "better" than a European sword (that's a fucking retarded comparison to make considering they were designed in two entirely different environments, with different requirements and different natural resources available to them). I'm just saying that contemporary Europeans who visited Japan from the 16th-18th centuries viewed Japanese swordsmiths as being very capable of producing a fine blade, and Japanese swordsmen were often praised as being at least comparable in skill to good European swordsmen.

All the katana vs. longsword shitposting on this board is retarded as fuck. Go read a book nigger, and get it straight from the horse's mouth.

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>not because they require it
A katana inherently takes longer to complete than a contemporary European sword because Japanese iron was too poor to be used without their extensive manufacturing processes. In addition, the form of the blade itself is more complex than most European swords (that doesn't inherently make it better, so don't get butthurt yet).

Furthermore, the belief that every Japanese sword was somehow a Herculean and spiritual effort that took months is false. Samurai and the aristocracy were not the only ones that needed swords and blades. Entire armies, especially in the Sengoku Period, had to be armed with spears and swords. The katana was the symbol of the Samurai class, but the wakizashi was permitted to be used by both ashigaru footsoldiers as well as traveling merchants who needed protection from bandits.

I can guaran-fucking-tee you that a Japanese ceramic merchant did not have the same money to spend on a sword as a daimyo. We only see the super high-quality swords make it into the modern era because the cheap shit was not preserved and cared for like a relic. They were tools meant to be used and discarded.

I fucking hate the katana threads on Jow Forums. They're filled with so much misinformation and straight up lies, on both sides of the debate.

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>the form of the blade itself is more complex than most European swords
No, it's not.

>They're filled with so much misinformation and straight up lies, on both sides of the debate.

yeah like the idea that only samurai could carry katana, that was an edo period thing, and in no way absolute.

Foot solders were often armed with cheap katana, and in fact there are many of these cheaper types of swords that survived.

The Japanese iron manufacturing process was not that special either, they used bloomery steel, the folding process might have taken a bit of time, though I am personally not sure how much was done on cheaper swords, they certainly did not use the more elaborate lamination processes used on nicer models.

Yes, it is. Buddy, I'm a blacksmith. I've been working with steel my whole life. I do not make swords because swords are very complex and require very specialized forges, tempering equipment, etc., but I am thoroughly familiar with the process and have seen it done in person, by traditional smiths, both Western and Japanese.

A European sword does not have the same shape as a Japanese blade, with the exception of yari and their more "standard" shaped blades. The shape of a katana, both the cross-section and the overall curvature of it, is more difficult to make then a straight blade with a more or less consistent cross-section throughout.

I'm not saying that makes them better or more lethal or whatever retarded qualifier people want to use for comparing two completely different weapons designed for different types of warfare. But some things are simply "easier" to make than others.

People on both sides of this debate are completely blinded by either weeb delusion or desperate contrarianism. I don't understand why it's so hard for people to just agree that nihonto and European swords are two entirely different things designed for different environments, utilizing different techniques because of limitations based on natural resources. If you want a "fair" comparison, you should be comparing swords used by opposing European powers, or the different Japanese smithing schools that made blades for different daimyos. Comparing a nihonto and a European blade is apples and oranges.

Attached: Battle of Rocroi.jpg (1650x1017, 362K)

That is a very reasonable view. Too reasonable for this place.

And before anyone says "hurrrr it's fair because we BTFO'd the Japs" or something, by the time we forcefully inserted ourselves into Japanese society, we were on a technological level far surpassing them. They could have had swords forged by the Almighty himself, and protected by a curse that would shoot lightning bolts into the eyes of enemies who viewed it. It wouldn't have made any difference against a cannonball fired by a ship half a mile offshore.

Just so you guys understand the Japanese were still living in the iron age but with printing presses and whatever tech the shogun admitted into the country when Commodore Perry showed up.
>Less than 100 years later they were fighting the US and other allied nations toe to toe in the greatest naval war in history

Modern Jap society is objectively superior to Western society as well. Probably one of the only places on Earth I've been where the streets were clean, you didn't have to worry about crime, and the trains ran on time. A lot of that probably has to do with being a nearly 100% homogeneous culture as well.

No, it has to do with the strict community-based culture that is present in most of East Asia. Individualism is stifled in the East. It's precisely the reason why Japan's workplace culture is so toxic.

>you didn't have to worry about crime
You know just... don't have debts.

so thats why their birth rate fell off the edge of the world

>I went on a trip to Japan once the post
Japan has a garbage bootlicking culture that eats you up and spits you out.

>t. Worked in Japan for years and still work with Japanese all the time.

No, that's because they abandoned their traditional employment-for-life model in favor of American-inspired employment at will, which increased efficiency but when coupled with the cultural emphasis on not being a burden to others, causes people to avoid marriage and children because they're not certain they can provide for their families for life.

Isn't Natgeo the ones who put out the transgender children thing?

Yep.

boots should be licked

it looks beautiful, i'll give you that, but it's effectiveness in combat is vastly overstated.

Its shit. You are shit. Your opinions are shit.

>A European sword does not have the same shape as a Japanese blade, with the exception of yari and their more "standard" shaped blades. The shape of a katana, both the cross-section and the overall curvature of it, is more difficult to make then a straight blade with a more or less consistent cross-section throughout.

The Japanese have trouble making straight blades due to the exact curvature being determined by the bending occurring during hardening.
Keeping a hardened and tempered blade straight is harder than accepting the variability of a curved one, and it is almost impossible when using clay hardening to keep most of the blade unhardened on a long double edged blade.

Folding is identical for European and Japanese blades, lamination on pre 1000 AD European blades is however much more complex. Stuff like Shohu-kitae is fairly simple compared to some types of pattern welding.
The "simplicity" of more modern European swords is due to manufacturing methods similar to those in japan being discontinued, as they no longer technologically made sense around 500 years before the typical Katana made its debut.
tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/index.html

Someone skipping the folding, using modern steel and modern equipment:
youtube.com/watch?v=vyUkYJeZtW4

Examples of replica using folded steel:
templ.net/english/weapons-antiquity_and_early_middle_age.php#156-seax

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no, that was rice farming techniques imported from China

What is special to Japanese sword culture is the attention to detail ind the preservation of old blades.
NHK documentary on sword polishing, if you're into drinking games, I recommend getting wasted by when they talk about the fragility of the blades:
youtube.com/watch?v=2x5WzIu5iXU

claymore was used in WWII baka senpai desu

What type of hardness's did they achieve?

Problem is that the hardest surface layer tends to be completely corroded away on old examples (the area of highest hardness is gone for the most part), and quality varies drastically from smith to smith.
books.google.de/books?id=FW5FaeZEVAsC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=hardness
On later period swords, tempering is the norm, and maximum edge hardness not the main point of heat treatment.

Attached: pic_mow_bladehardness01.jpg (800x600, 68K)

>isolated from the rest of the world for the better part of a millennium
>not backwater

But it wasn't, the Tokugawa isolation lasted for perhaps 250 years and was not absolute. Before that they had regular contact with other east Asian powers.

One issue I have with this chart is that modern replicas should not be conflated with period pieces, but other than that it is interesting to know.

>getting assraped by chinks constitutes as interaction

>Yes, it is. Buddy, I'm a blacksmith.
Ok pal
> European sword does not have the same shape as a Japanese blade, with the exception of yari and their more "standard" shaped blades. The shape of a katana, both the cross-section and the overall curvature of it,
Jesus fucking christ is that really the angle you're going for here? No. That's just not how any of it works.

The symmetry required for a double-edged sword is significantly more difficult to achieve and requires more quality steel and a better blacksmith than a Katana. Curving isn't some mystical difficult step, it's a natural part of the Japanese tempering process. The katana's cross section is utterly simple, the kind of cheapo garbage seen on European utility knives. Laminated steel and a sabre grind isn't some mind blowing technology, it's the kind of shit you would see in cheap European utility knives.

>historians
>knowing shit about actual combat