while much of the information here is good, and it is free of much of the misinformation, a lot of the material here is wrong. The discontinuation of tachi use was due to horses becoming disadvantageous (when they developed effective methods of removing the horses legs etc), hence the began to fight on foot. All Japanese weapons were carried blade side up, aside from the tachi, as doing so endangered the tachi to being knocked into the rear of the horse.
no mention is made here as to why differential tempering was adopted (the ability to carry the sharpest blade possible, without breaking it. In this way they avoided entirely the question that plagued European smiths. This technique is the reason for the katana's repution for being able to cut through steel - because it could in general. any steel hard enough to stop it would shatter from the impact. This is also one of the reasons for the Japanese discontinuation of heavy armor production, it was a liability against swords which could slice through it like butter.
o mention is made of damage to the blade, carrying customs (katanas which were worn while mounted on a horse were worn upside down), and the section regarding daisho is almost entirely wrong. Horsemen wore daggers, foot men wore wakazashi as their offhand weapon. 46.116.74.160 (talk) 09:39, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
Likewise numerous other small details. ##### — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.116.74.160 (talk) 09:30, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
- I am not entirely sure whether or not you are serious, but the information you provide is wrong. First of all, the discontinuation of horses had nothing to do with effective methods of removing their legs, but because 1) the Japanese, with few exceptions, never really fielded much cavalry to begin with and 2) cavalry became less important as they adopted modern warfare. Second, the tachi mount is not only more useful on horseback (where it is a must), but also more comfortable while in armour on foot.
- As for differential tempering, it is a Japanese curiosity which attempts to achieve the same thing as European blades, by different means. European blades, just like Japanese blades, had soft core/spine steel and hard edge steel. European blades were tempered, however (reheated after quenching), whereas Japanese blades were not - they were differentially hardened instead. It provides a beautiful hamon, but besides that it is not superior to European techniques. As for cutting through steel: no. No sword was designed to do this, and that includes katana. They did have kabuto-wari tests ("helmet splitting"), but no helmet has actually been split. The record is a 13 cm long gash. And the force of impact relies on the swordsman - not the sword.
- You further claim that the Japanese ceased to make heavy armour because the katana could simply slice through it. There are two problems with this claim: 1) the katana could not slice through armour (and steel armour was after all made from the same material the katana was made of), and 2) they never stopped producing heavy armour. And besides, the katana was never more than a secondary weapon, anyway. The samurai preferred yumi, naginata and yari as their primary weapons.--Tsuka (talk) 14:03, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
- I'd like to make some slight corrections to what you say:
- Europeans had differential hardening. They generally didn't use it for their weapons. All the "fabled" and over romanticised techniques of the Japanese sword-smiths, were known to the Europeans, long before the Japanese learned them from the Chinese (who also knew them long before they came to Japan). Europeans folded (and twisted and other stuff) steel, they had differential hardening (on tools, generally) they applied different metals on different parts of the blade... They did it all ...until they got better steel, and didn't have to. All of those techniques are simply to make the most of flawed steel, and the Japanese never had particularly high quality steel. Japan has never been particularly blessed with natural resources in general, and the furnaces they had were not nearly as good as later European ones, either.--ZarlanTheGreen (talk) 17:31, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
- The sword-smiths of feudal Japan were very skilled, but to claim that their skills were unique is silly. The Swords they made, were very good, but to claim that they were uniquely good, in any sense, is silly. The Chinese made swords that were essentially identical (the Japanese blades being based on them), and Europeans, Middle Easterners and others, made swords that were pretty much the same, aside from being one handed and having a different guard. All of the romanticism of the katana and it's manufacture, is purely ignorance/rejection of swords and smiting techniques of other nations, and historical revisionism.--ZarlanTheGreen (talk) 17:36, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I have seen other examples of multi-layer (varying levels of hardness) blade-making techniques, the one I can most easily cite is right here in wiki! Damascus Steel [1]. And though the wiki article about the Ulfberht swords [2] indicates "The group of Ulfberht swords includes a wide spectrum of steel and production method. One example from a 10th century grave in Nemilany, Moravia, has a pattern-welded core with welded-on hardened cutting edges. Another example appears to have been made from high-quality hypoeutectoid steel possibly imported from Central Asia.[12]". One can find additional information on the Ulfberht here :: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/secrets-viking-sword.html - 128.172.48.37 (talk) 09:03, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
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