| i do have some experience with the katana as a practical weapon. OK you hit on a point of vast interest for me so i am gonna ramble a bit.
we use a weapon that is the equivalent of the Japanese katana, that being the hand and a half, or bastard sword. when we began to tackle this particular style we were learning a lot of German technique laid down by a period master named Talhoffer (another butchered spelling). in the German style the elbows were carried way out to the side like chicken wings. the thought behind this was that tons of power could be generated by pulling the elbows in while extending the wrists, which were kept at about a mid chest level. the whole thing looked very Conan. the inherent strength with the style was the massive amounts of power that were generated from this stance. it was also a fairly defensible position considering the entire upper body could be defended by pivoting the hips. concept seemed to be smashing through the opponent's defences with strength. the problem we ran into was that the arms took a lot of damage since they were near impossible to protect. after working with the style for a while, my friend began looking into the Japanese styles and researching kendo. the first thing he noticed were a lot of strikes to the wrists, and the fact that the Japanese tend to keep their elbows in toward their bodies. when he added this modification to the style he became much more able to defend his own arms, and strike quickly at an opponent's arms. in essence the Japanese sword work is cleaner and less reliant on power.
long story short. knight vs samurai, no armor, European sword and shield (the knights standard weapon of choice) Vs. Katana (the samurai's standard weapon of choice) i give the fight to the Samurai.
if you want i can open up a thread in the weapons section and talk about sword work until the world ends. i am by no means a master (hell I'm really just barely competent) but i do have 8 years experience, and a teacher with about two decades of sword time. |