Yep, the people who marketed Katanas and Samurai were straight up liars. It was eye-opening to see how much they were shilling. It was the old equivalent of “clickbait” back then, and definitely fake news. I remember reading that they only folded the metal something like 10 times usually because folding it too much would just make the sword brittle.
I was also surprised that Katanas weren’t that strong and couldn’t really be used to block and might snap if used against bone too many times. And could be stopped by stuff like thick wooden armor. It’s why Samurai didn’t carry handheld shields. Since Katanas couldn’t penetrate their armor, they just used parts of the armor to block.
Then again, most swords weren’t useful against strong armor. That’s what spears and hammers / maces were for. The more I learn, the more I realize medieval fantasy (and historical fiction) tropes are so incredibly wrong.
Generally, speers are being done dirty. Like close up sword battles and duels are just cooler, in a way, but the spear was the backbone of many armies. Perfect for even simple formations, it gives range edge, spears are cheaper to produce, easier to train untrained people in and so on.
In some time periods there was actual dueling. People of rank would call out their name and position and duel with someone of the same standing.
This ended after the mongol invasion. They tried calling out the mongols for duels and the mongols didn’t know what that was and didn’t give a shit and just cut everything down.
At that point the Japanese dropped that for actual war.
Whenever you actually see a spear in a movie or TV show, they always start twirling it and dancing around like a majorette. Which is pretty legit against a single opponent who manages to close the range, but still pretty unrepresentative of the weapon they don’t call Pokey McPokeface.
Most slashing swords are stopped by thick armour, that’s not unique to katana. Katana were plenty sharp enough, brittle metal tends to take a sharp edge, their weakness was mostly durability.
Heck, in Europe, if your opponent was wearing armour, it wasn’t rare to grab your sword by the sharp bit, and bludgeon them with the cross-guard.
Or fight half-sword (Halbschwert), you grip the blade with your free hand around the middle to deliver stronger and/or precision strikes against weak points in your opponent’s armor.
Folding something 10 times results in about 1000 layers, 11 times is about 2000 layers. So you get to “thousands of layers” with low double-digit folds. But I don’t think most people think about the difference between layers and folds; when they hear “thousands of layers,” they think many more folds than it actually is or they just use them interchangeably getting it totally wrong.
Yep, the people who marketed Katanas and Samurai were straight up liars. It was eye-opening to see how much they were shilling. It was the old equivalent of “clickbait” back then, and definitely fake news. I remember reading that they only folded the metal something like 10 times usually because folding it too much would just make the sword brittle.
I was also surprised that Katanas weren’t that strong and couldn’t really be used to block and might snap if used against bone too many times. And could be stopped by stuff like thick wooden armor. It’s why Samurai didn’t carry handheld shields. Since Katanas couldn’t penetrate their armor, they just used parts of the armor to block.
Then again, most swords weren’t useful against strong armor. That’s what spears and hammers / maces were for. The more I learn, the more I realize medieval fantasy (and historical fiction) tropes are so incredibly wrong.
Generally, speers are being done dirty. Like close up sword battles and duels are just cooler, in a way, but the spear was the backbone of many armies. Perfect for even simple formations, it gives range edge, spears are cheaper to produce, easier to train untrained people in and so on.
Yup, even in Japan, the general weapons of choice were the spear and the bow. The sword was mostly ceremonial.
If a samurai had their sword out in a battle, they had probably fallen off of their horse and were in a lot of trouble.
In some time periods there was actual dueling. People of rank would call out their name and position and duel with someone of the same standing.
This ended after the mongol invasion. They tried calling out the mongols for duels and the mongols didn’t know what that was and didn’t give a shit and just cut everything down.
At that point the Japanese dropped that for actual war.
It just makes sense. Why would you go in with a sharp piece of metal when you could just shoot a sharp piece of wood/metal from a safe distance?
Whenever you actually see a spear in a movie or TV show, they always start twirling it and dancing around like a majorette. Which is pretty legit against a single opponent who manages to close the range, but still pretty unrepresentative of the weapon they don’t call Pokey McPokeface.
Most slashing swords are stopped by thick armour, that’s not unique to katana. Katana were plenty sharp enough, brittle metal tends to take a sharp edge, their weakness was mostly durability.
Heck, in Europe, if your opponent was wearing armour, it wasn’t rare to grab your sword by the sharp bit, and bludgeon them with the cross-guard.
Or fight half-sword (Halbschwert), you grip the blade with your free hand around the middle to deliver stronger and/or precision strikes against weak points in your opponent’s armor.
Folding something 10 times results in about 1000 layers, 11 times is about 2000 layers. So you get to “thousands of layers” with low double-digit folds. But I don’t think most people think about the difference between layers and folds; when they hear “thousands of layers,” they think many more folds than it actually is or they just use them interchangeably getting it totally wrong.
Crossbows are best. Easy to learn and doesn’t require the arm strength of a conventional bow.