Fox12 said:
It really depends. The fencing rapier is meant to be a lighter, more maneuverable weapon that emphasizes swift movement and sudden stabbing lunges. It grew in popularity during the advent of firearms. As a fencer, I can say it has the obvious reach advantage. It was often popular on ships and with light soldiers. However, it doesn't have a lot of weight behind it, and it can't really slash. It's meant to quickly pierce weaknesses in your opponents defense. If you're fighting a massively armored opponent it's effectively useless, since armor was becoming less useful, since gun technology was obviously making heavy armor more of a liability than an asset. As a fencer your priority isn't really pushing your way through their defense, it's getting around it entirely in order to deliver a killing blow. That's why a lot of fighting is done mentally before anyone even moves. You rely on your own movement to avoid their attacks as your main defense.
A Katana was more of a legitimate war weapon used in heavy hand to hand fighting. It's primarily a slashing weapon. I haven't used one, so in this case my knowledge is purely academic. My friend described it as death by a thousand cuts. However, a shorter blade is not necessarily a disadvantage. Most people don't realize this. If a katana user can get close enough to a fencer, past the point of their blade, then the fencer has no defense other than to try and desperately retreat. In that case the Katana, which is shorter, putting the fencer in range, and which is also a slashing weapon, would probably have the obvious advantage. The Katana will have more power behind it as well, relying on large broad strikes to deliver killing stroaks.
Neither weapon was better than the other, they were both perfect for what they were meant to do.
Exactly. Weapons should not be assumed to be so directly comparable. This is like comparing a rubber mallet, a sledge hammer and a claw hammer. They're all hammers, but they're specialized to be super effective at drastically different things.
That said, in a fight between hammers, a claw hammer would win.
But you see how nonsensical it is to actually make the comparison in the first place, right?
You've hit the problem for the rapier on the head. A katana has the power, speed, and control to break the defence of a rapier wielder with ease, and then it's just a flash 'til the katana wielder is inside the rapier's bubble and too close for the rapier to effectively attack.
It -would- purely be a fight of the rapier user desperately attempting to stay out of the katana's reach.
Of course, there is this:
Unfortunately, that actually fairly irrelevant to the question at hand.
As you must know, a rapier has a SIGNIFICANT weight to it that makes it far harder to control/recover than a foil.
A shinai vs a katana presents a similar problem.
The difference, however, is that a katana and shinai are two-handed weapons, meaning the weight difference really doesn't have much impact on control and speed between the two.
The same is not remotely true for a rapier compared to a foil. One-handed a foil is absolutely simple to control and lightning fast to swing. The huge weight difference of a rapier without the benefit of a second hand means the increased angular momentum of a rapier will cause the rapier to be DRASTICALLY slower and harder to recover with than a foil.
If you were to imagine katana user as the video's Kendo practitioner, and then pit him against an opponent who fights similarly to the fencer....except much slower and with less control....it's pretty simple to see who'd win.