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I have been reading The Japanese Sword Column and thought it may be of niche interest to other Soylentils. It is written by Paul Martin, a noted British expert of Japanese swords. From the introduction:
Along with cherry blossoms and Mount Fuji, the Japanese sword has become one of the enduring symbols of Japan. It has experienced centuries of warfare, evolved through Mongol invasions, survived the introduction of the musket, the end of the samurai era, modernization, and confiscation and destruction by the Allied forces following World War II. They are an anachronism in modern society, yet they continue to be made. They are an integral part of Japanese culture.
Today, I feel very fortunate that we have access to Japanese swords and can observe the artistry of blades that were previously only accessible by Japan's ancient military and social elites.
I particularly enjoyed the July 25th article, The Changes in the Shape of the Japanese Sword. The articles are short, update infrequently and have plenty of pictures of museum-quality swords. A good fit for those with a casual interest in the subject.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hartree on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:58AM (40 children)
It's a bit of dissonance that swords are sometimes held with near reverence by those who are utterly revolted by guns. Both are designed for killing and little else unless they are just ornamental version.
It's a bit like some of the people on my FB friends list who decry religion, but give great deference to Shamanism or Buddhism. I wonder if they've decided they are sciences. ;)
Humans are weird and will rationalize almost anything to square it with their beliefs (or perhaps more importantly, the beliefs of their peer group).
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:09AM (21 children)
Actually, depending on precisely what guns you're talking about, a sword is worse than a gun. A gun may have a genuine use in hunting for food. A sword on the other hand only has human warfare as its use.
In modern society there shouldn't be a need for either to be carried by the common person on a day-to-day basis, but people being dicks makes it seem like a reasonable idea at time.
(Score: 5, Funny) by takyon on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:14AM
I killed some deer with an ebony sword in Skyrim.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:19AM (7 children)
Sorry to disagree, swords have a ceremonial value, i.e. the coronation of a Queen of King [wikipedia.org]. I do own a sword for ceremonial purposes and I have given as a gift a katana, not with the intent to kill a human being, but because my friend collects such things.
Now guns, ¿in what ceremony is someone presented with a gun, other than military ones?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:20AM (3 children)
You think the King/Queen things aren't military?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:30AM (2 children)
Really, I forgot about Queen Elizabeth serving in the armed forces...
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:24AM
Mechanic for the Brit army, wasn't she?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:57PM
You are being sarcastic, and may not appreciate a few facts thrown at you. But, here ya go, just the same - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service_by_British_royalty [wikipedia.org]
There is a tradition that the male members of England's royalty will serve. Some have actually served, others have sheltered behind ceremonial titles and functions. But, we can equate the Queen to our Commander in Chief. She has ceremonial functions to serve, and she is senior to all the admirals and generals.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:58AM (1 child)
And just what do you think a sword symbolizes in such ceremony? It sure isn't kittens and daisies.
You're off on a tangent here though - we're discussing the actual, primary use of these weapons. Anything can be symbolized and ceremonialized. There's no difference between giving a collector a gift of a sword or a gun, if that's what they're collecting. Guns are used for celebratory reasons too (e.g. weddings). Doesn't change what they're designed to do.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday October 11 2017, @04:03AM
It symbolizes the cross, obviously.
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(Score: 2) by t-3 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:10AM
Guns are fired off on the Fourth of July and New Years, at military funerals, presented during ceremonies for heads of state etc. Weapons have always had a place in ceremony, because our modern societies are still tightly linked in memory to the feudal past, and strength=violence to the animal brain.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:19AM (11 children)
Right, because when seconds count the police are only minutes away. This civilized society everyone's so proud of is no safer than any other throughout history. The strong still prey on the weak. I'm disinclined to remove equality of deadliness from them even were there not other extremely good reasons to have an armed populace.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:14AM
Do you have a reference for that?
The first link I came across directly refutes that claim.
https://www.vrc.crim.cam.ac.uk/vrcresearch/paperdownload/manuel-eisner-historical-trends-in-violence.pdf [cam.ac.uk]
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:48AM (1 child)
Note that I wrote "shouldn't be", as opposed to "is". People are still assholes.
To quote Dark Helmet - "I'm surrounded by assholes!"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:56AM
Indeed [soylentnews.org].
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday October 10 2017, @12:42PM (7 children)
You seem to be stuck in a nature documentary. Most armed criminals are weak and need a weapon to level the playing field with the truly strong. Why do you think guns are so prevalent among them?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:34PM (4 children)
Because they're extremely efficient and because your prey, and the competing predators, are also fairly likely to have them. Throwing away a more efficient means of violence isn't anything but foolish for either predator or prey.
I know many a mother tried to teach us that violence never solves anything. They lied though. It has been proven so many times throughout history that it can solve things quickly and efficiently that the statement itself can only come from those who place wishful thinking above observable fact.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:59PM (2 children)
My argument was against your wording: "The strong still prey on the weak." My argument is the criminal is weak because they steal the hard work of others. They are opportunists. They aren't fearsome warriors whose combative skills outmatch their prey/victim. No. You usually have some scrawny little shit with a gun or knife going around looking for drug money. Their strength comes from the weapon.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:20PM (1 child)
Fair enough. I can appreciate a good bit of pedantry.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:19PM
The wording bothered me as it portrays armed criminals as fearsome warriors when it's almost always the exact opposite. It takes work to become a strong person which runs counter to the criminals opportunistic nature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:24PM
Or, said another way and in the spirit of TFR
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:05PM (1 child)
You are an idiot. Even without a weapon, most violent criminals are stronger and faster than their victims. A weapon just makes it easier,
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:14PM
LOL! Citation needed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:20AM (12 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:16AM (1 child)
To be fair, the axes, spears, and arrows used in combat were very different from their hunting-use counterparts. You wouldn't want to try chopping wood with a battleaxe, the blade is optimied for cutting armor and flesh.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:15PM
This change does mean they are no longer ideal for chopping wood - but you can still use them for that. You say "you wouldn't want to try chopping wood with a battleaxe" but in fact I've done it, it works just fine in a pinch.
And of course many times the axe that appeared on the battlefield really was a woodsmans tool, not a specially built battle-axe.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:55AM (7 children)
IIRC, the weapon of choice when hunting bears was a sword. Don't know what kind, but that also makes a sword a hunting weapon.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @10:57AM (1 child)
Ref? I think mostly a spear was used.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:18PM
Spears were the primary weapon ("boar spears"), short swords to close in and finish the animal.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:30PM (4 children)
They're kind of on the line of even being 'swords' though. They're spears for men who think they're too noble for a spear, relatively late along in the medieval period, and they're what you would get if you took a boar spear to a swordsmith and said "I want this, but all steel, no wood."
They're more like steel spears than swords. And as spears, they aren't that great. Short and heavy and oddly balanced. Still, as a sword, they're worse. Sort of like a very thrust-centric late period rapier, only shorter. But not lighter.
I don't think these things were really tools. They were status symbols, expensive toys for some rich man who was so obsessed with displaying his wealth he didn't want to touch wood.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday October 10 2017, @11:23PM (3 children)
I didn't say "boar". I said "bear". I agree that I always heard of the weapons being used against boar as spears. (Whether they were heavy metal or not depends, among other things, on the time period.) If actual swords, even highly modified ones, were used against boar I didn't know about it.
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(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday October 11 2017, @12:42AM (2 children)
I've never heard of anyone using a sword to hunt bear outside of fantasy rpgs. Nor does it make any sense at all. Swords are typically optimized for use against unarmored or lightly armored humans. Bears are fearsome giants with natural armor tough enough to hold against weaker modern firearms. Slicing through that hide with a typical cut-and-thrust sword would be slow and tiring work, assuming a dead bear. A live one wouldn't stand there and let you try it. There are specialist swords that *could* work, like the boar sword, but it would be even less of a sane choice against a bear than a boar.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday October 11 2017, @05:04AM (1 child)
Possibly I'm wrong... I know that that's what the thing I read said, but I don't know how accurate it was. (And I can't check since it just "something I read a decade ago".)
OTOH, there's all sorts of "recent" history in the US where people ended up fighting a bear with a long knife, which was essentially a sort of sword. I believe both Daniel Boone and David Crockett reported doing so. Of course Davy Crockett was a liar and spinner of tall tales...so you can't really trust what he reports.
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(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday October 11 2017, @05:27AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:04PM (1 child)
You do realize that swords predate any sidearm by thousands, and more likely, tens of thousands of years? Firearms are only about 500 or 600 years old, I believe. Hmmm - how 'bout 650 years?
http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/technique/gun-timeline/ [pbs.org]
1364 - First recorded use of a firearm.
1380 - Hand guns are known across Europe.
1400s - The matchlock gun appears.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:28PM
side·arm
ˈsīdärm/
noun
noun: sidearm; plural noun: sidearms; noun: side-arm; plural noun: side-arms; noun: side arm; plural noun: side arms
1.
a weapon worn at a person's side, such as a pistol or other small firearm (or, formerly, a sword or bayonet).
Swords were worn as sidearms for millenia before firearms were invented, and even for centuries after firearms were being used as the early versions were single-shot affairs with little power and considerable reload times, so the need for a sword (or similar melee weapon, long knife, hatchet, etc could fill the role) as sidearm was greater than ever. Firearms only started to be worn as sidearms after reliable repeating models developed, and even as late as the Phillipines-America war, at which point they were being issued revolvers as sidearms, it was commonly reported that they had emptied their weapons and been forced into melee without time to reload, and so the men often supplemented the official kit with a melee sidearm. A sword, if they were lucky enough to get their hands on one.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:40AM (2 children)
The crossbow was decried for a long time for the same reason as the gun is.
You need to take the sword to your enemy, and defeat him. With a gun or a crossbow, any weakling can kill an experienced trained warrior or 59 innocents.
There is little honour in the kill, when you just pull a trigger from a distance. There is no fun in the battle, and too many die.
Ancient battles didn't systematically kill thousands. Play chess with a few humans. Lose as many as the bad harvest requires or the other side will bear. Claim victory and resume next year.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:58AM (1 child)
That's a really whitewashed view of history. Attila wasn't the only example to prove you wrong. Of course, his troops also went through the armored Christian knights like grass through a goose, so that's more about tactics than about weaponry, but it sure wasn't "only a couple of thousand got killed".
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:17PM
There were orders of magnitude more battles between counts, dukes and other locals chiefs, than major invasions on the Alexander/Rome/Attila scale. The fact that you could list the big campaigns demonstrates that.
And a lot of the really big conquests' battles turned into either sieges or quick shows of overwhelming force by one of the sides.
Yes there were plenty of battles with thousands of dead or dead-soon to process afterwards. But that wasn't anywhere near the majority, because losing thousands of soldiers is a desperate and consequential move (Pyrrhic victory).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @09:22AM
I see nothing wrong with romanticizing the process of killing. humans or animals.
you do have to admit though that it's a lot harder to slaughter (either people or animals) with a sword than it is to slaughter with a machine gun.
you can probably decide on the distinction, and then you can decide whether sword lovers are hypocrites or not.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday October 11 2017, @04:00AM
Swords are used more for ceremony than for warfare. Remember that swords weren't actually very common weapons compared to polearms, and for the past few decades have been carried almost entirely for ceremony.
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