Ieyke said:
Samurai were somewhat equivalent to the knightly class of Europe - they could afford armour.
As for that video - I've seen it many, many times, and I'm far from the only person who's realised how full of crap it is. The two swords get swung in different ways (because the guy using them doesn't know how to use either), the longsword looks like a cheap replica that hasn't been sharpened properly, for that matter the armour looks like cheap LARPing armour rather than proper plate. It is not a good test at all and we shouldn't draw any conclusions from it.
If you want good videos, here;
In fact, watch his whole series on katanas. This is a man that knows what he's talking about, and gives a nice balanced review.
By 'poorly forged' I didn't mean that the Japanese didn't know what they were doing - but their forging techniques were designed as damage control for the shitty iron ore they had. This has been addressed time and time again in this thread.
I don't exalt Damascus steel or Wootz steel and so on, because as you say, they are the exact same thing - but the thing is that the Celts and so on were doing it very early in their history (~700 AD) and it was then abandoned when they could create good quality mono-steels (in particular spring steel), because
they were better in almost every way. I have no doubt in my mind that, if they had access to mono-steels, the Japanese would've been making their swords out of them. The thing with the softer core in the katana is that it means once the sword bends, it stays bent. This is not true of the spring steel used in later period European weapons (of which the rapier was definitely one of).
The other thing is there's this myth that katanas are somehow sharper than other weapons - they did have harder edges, so it's possible they held an edge for slightly longer (when they didn't break off because they are also brittle due to said hardness). This makes them unsuited to use against metal armours. It's also important to note most modern katanas people are using are optimised for test cutting, and so have a thinner sharper edge than the historical katana.
The point is that they are definitely not suited for metal armour (but then, no sword was ever designed for cutting through metal armour), and leather armour still poses a problem (hence the samurai's own lamellar armour) for katanas, as it does with most other swords.
EvilRoy said:
Very interesting discussion.
I've heard mixed things about whether or not the katana parries with the edge or the flat, because I was aware of the brittle edge it has. It's worth noting though at least for the guy with the rapier that, really that encourages parrying with the edge, because you want to ruin the katana's edge.
Tuxedoman said:
Ah, I see. Any chance you do re-enactment also? Because I have seen the argument for flat parries crop up in re-enactment circles. Still, I'm a little surprised at this popping up in NZ. My school (Stoccata) is based in Aus (y'know, the mainland

), and the only real proponents I've seen of flat parrying have been from the US.
Very interesting indeed!
And yeah, the Poles are kind of nuts...