Are JAPANESE swords SHORTER than EUROPEAN swords?

Japanese swords were so short compared to European swords, except for the mighty Tachian Nodachi. Is this correct? Let's look at it. Hi folks, Mattyson here, Scholarly Gladiatorian. Now I'm perhaps partly guilty of perpetuating this piece of information. I won't say a myth because we're going to unpack whether it is or not. So first of all there is the assertion that Japanese katana, or sword perhaps more correctly called uchi katana, are short compared to European swords. Well we're going to look at some European swords in a second. Is that true? Well first of all the length of a katana was specified by law at different points in time. Okay so in reality they tend to, I'm going to use inches here, they're going to vary generally speaking between about a 25-26 inch blade at the minimum, up to usually about a 31 inch blade at the maximum. This is an original antique Japanese katana with a fairly old blade, probably 16th century, and this is around a 29 and a half inch nagasa or length of blade. And that's considered fairly long for a katana, but the main reason for that is because uchi katana or katana were shortened in the Edo period. Okay so and that was for various legal reasons but you know perhaps also other considerations as well which we won't get into here, this isn't a specifically Japanese sword video, but the fact is that the uchi katana tended to be about 28 inch long in the blade, but later ones are sometimes shorter for other reasons. Okay now is that particularly sure? We'll come to other Japanese swords in a second, let's carefully put away this antique, keep it safe. So first of all is that true compared to European swords? Well it depends which European swords we're looking at and what people tend to compare it to is the European long sword. Now the typical type of long sword replicated in the modern world like this albion ring-eck here has got about a 37 inch blade, but here's the news flash folks, if you've been watching some of my auction videos where I've actually been looking at originals and giving measurements of originals, you will see that so-called long swords or bastard swords or hand and a half swords can have blades as short as 30 inches, obviously they can have blades up to and in excess of 40 inches as well. So while the modern HEMA world tends to like about a 36, 37, 38 inch blade, in fact a lot of originals are really quite short and in fact very often the blades are not particularly longer than a one-handed arming sword. Now when we get into one-handed arming swords and we look at originals, this is one of the Royal Armouries replicas so this is exactly same statistics as the original, they often have about 30 inch blades but all the way down quite often to 26 or 27 inch blades which is now in the realm of katana. So what we actually find is there's a crossover, certainly if we look at arming swords they can often be about the same blade length as a katana, however just to play devil's advocate I have to point out there are arming swords such as this is an LK Chen one based on one which is currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a collaboration I did with LK Chen, and this has a big blade I think it's 36, 37 inches off the top of my head, these are long blades but this is a type 19 blade, humongous reach on these things and it is a particularly long reaching sword. So in fact we have an arming sword here which has the same blade length as a long sword here about 37 inches, however obviously we have shorter long swords than that and we have arming swords which are generally speaking shorter but in addition to that there are other types of European sword around which are shorter, so here we have the Cinque Dea which again is from the Royal Armouries line exactly and that's actually quite a large Cinque Dea, and then we've got also things like this Krieger Langmesser and these are clearly shorter. Now if I just do a side by side comparison, if I carefully get that katana out again, there we go, you will see that actually the katana has a notably longer blade than this particular Langmesser. So to simply state that a Japanese katana is short compared to a European sword is clearly not correct, I mean what do you mean by European sword? We could be looking at the Bronze Age, a Bronze Age leaf bladed sword is going to be considerably shorter than the katana but even if we're looking at steel bladed swords then the katana is not particularly short and a lot of people will go, ah but what about the longer Japanese swords? Well here I have from RVA Katana, we've got a Tachi here which has been sent to me to review and the review of this will be coming up. Now the Tachi is, you will notice, bigger but I want to point something out, some people have said, ah well you know the katana is the later from late 15th century onwards kind of samurai sword and that is shorter for various reasons whereas the earlier Tachi was longer. Well that's not always true, as always there were many different sizes of Uchi Katana and there were many different sizes of Tachi as well, so very often we do find Tachi in their unaltered, unadulterated full length state which have blades of 32, 33, 34 inches but that's still not huge, bear in mind that that is still shorter than medieval, many, some anyway, medieval arming swords and it's still shorter than most medieval long swords so don't think that the typical Tachi is hugely bigger than a Katana because in many cases a Katana can be the same size as a Tachi and also there's a misconception here, very often we find earlier Tachi blades used on later Katana so a lot of what you think a Katana are actually earlier Tachi, if it predates the 15th century it's pretty much got to be a Tachi and in fact the way that we define a Tachi is quite complicated and in fact different people would actually have slightly different definitions for them, it can be as subtle as which side of the Nakago or Tang the signature or Mei is on and it can be to do with the exact shape of the blade and things like this but overall really Tachi and Uchi Katana aren't like completely distinct types of sword and you'll often find the blade from one mounted on the other so yes it is true that generally earlier Tachi, so pre-15th century Tachi are a little bit longer than let's say 16th century and later Uchi Katana or Katana, it's not remarkably longer now some of you will say ah what about the Okatana or the Odachi or the Nodachi, well fundamentally they are quite specialized and not particularly common swords so when we get into the realms of those we're really talking about the Japanese equivalent of things like the Swai Handa so they are specialized swords they weren't the type of sword usually worn or usually carried by a standard samurai, standard samurai usually wore either the Katana edge up part of a Daisho with the Wakasashi or they wore the Tachi by itself with the edge down from slings and bear in mind that these two swords were worn at the same time as well so in the 16th century you could find Tachi being worn and Uchi Katana being worn in different situations, so Japanese swords are it has to be said generally speaking not as long as the longer European swords okay so if we're looking at a particularly long bladed arming sword or we're looking at a long sword above a certain length so when we're talking about the 37 inch kind of range the typical range of long swords that people are used to now but when you actually duck into museums or antique auctions and you get to handle originals you'll notice that a lot of arming swords and a lot of long swords are shorter than that and are actually only a tiny bit longer than a typical Katana and very much kind of the same blade length as a typical Tachi and I think what a lot of people also forget is we also have very abundant European swords which are shorter and these are more the length of a Wakasashi maybe a little bit longer than a Wakasashi a little bit shorter than a Katana anyway so that's really all I want to say about this subject today but I hope it will give you something to think about when trying to avoid making sweeping statements about Japanese swords are shorter than European swords which Japanese swords which European swords which period are you talking about we need to be a bit more specific and remember that whether you're looking at Japan or Europe or indeed and I almost forgot to mention this China okay remember that the Jian for example or the Dao for that matter come in various sizes and shapes you'll often find a range of blade lengths between 20 inches all the way up to 40 inches and there are a whole variety of swords whether it's Japan, China, Europe or indeed Africa or India there are a whole bunch of different sword types which fall within this range and making sweeping statements about Japanese swords are always shorter than European swords is clearly not a fact and not true we need to qualify it and be more specific anyway thanks a lot for watching and I hope to see you back on the channel really soon cheers folks