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Sword Customs
Associate Professor of History at the University of Georgia, Karl Friday,
Ph.D. wrote the following in response to a question about samurai military
training posted on the Budo conversation site, E-Budo.com. The original
and much more can be seen at http://www.e-budo.com.
Dr. Friday can be reached through his office:
Karl Friday
Dept. of History
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602
ph. (706) 542-2537
kfriday@arches.uga.edu
--Are their any styles that wear their blades edge down?
None that I've ever come across. Katana are always worn thrust through
the belt, edge up. Tachi are hung on slings, edge down. This isn't a
matter of ryuha preference, it's a general custom--just like always wearing
the sword on your left hip. Besides, there would be no particular reason
to train in drawing techniques with the tachi, because the likelihood of
having to do quick draws on the battlefield is minimal, and, in any case,
drawing techniques developed for the katana could easily be used with the
tachi--all you have to do is rotate the scabbard. In fact most KSR draws
involve first rotating the scabbard outward, so that the blade is parallel
to the ground, before the blade is pulled; it would be no trick at all to simply rotate the blade inward instead.
--What was the big jump in Japanese history and sword making that made katana
--(as different from tachi) be worn edge up? Is it because of armor, lack
--of cavalry popularity? Why was there a switch over to katana from tachi?
Katana were originally much shorter than tachi, and were carried as a kind
of back up blade--kind of the same function as the wakizashi in later years. This is why they were carried in the belt, rather than slung like
the tachi. My guess is that the reason katana were carried blade up and
tachi blade down was a matter of simple physics: it's awkward to sling a
blade with the curve facing up, and even more awkward to carry of draw a
blade thrust through the belt with the cutting edge up. The popularity of
longer katana worn instead of tachi coincides with the shift in armors away
from the old oyoroi to haramaki and domaru, which were lighter, fit more
closely at the waist, and were better-suited for fighting on foot. This
began in the late Kamakura period (the 14th century). At about this same
time, the custom of carrying tachi (slung) when wearing everyday clothes (i.e. when not in battle) was gradually supplanted by a new custom of
carrying katana (in the belt).
The custom of carrying tachi in battle never completely died out, however.
Many high-ranked warriors (who generally didn't actually fight, just
commanded) continued to wear oyoroi throughout the medieval period, and katana were never worn with oyoroi, only tachi were. And some warriors
just seem to have preferred the tachi-style of carrying the weapon: you can
see lots of examples in paintings of battles of warriors in haramaki,
domaru, and even gendai gusoku armors carrying tachi. The choice of tachi
or katana was probably largely a matter of personal taste and preference.
My guess is that many warriors liked to carry katana in battle because they
were used to carrying it that way when dressed in civies.
BTW, contrary to the received wisdom on this, it is VERY unlikely that
tachi were developed for cavalry use per se. There are absolutely NO references in documents or literary sources to swords used from horseback
prior to the late 12th century. Swords seem to have been used only when warriors were on foot.
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