I'd like to know anything you'd like to tell me about Japanese swords (and any other weaponry), please! Swords are awesome.
Okay so I wasn't expecting even one ask about this but I ended up getting two, so I guess I'm sharing my absurd amount of Japanese sword and dagger trivia now.
Also I'm just dumping everything I learned here, so I'm adding a read more so if you don't want to see me dump a bunch of random facts I learned looking things up then you can skip this.
So this all started because I was looking for a sword to give Link in Surface Too Soon. And my thought process was basically that the sheikah are very much based on the Japanese and ninjas, so they'd be using Japanese weapons. This is actually pretty much canon, since Impa uses a kodachi in Age of Calamity, and the sheikah weapons in Breath of the Wild are all based on Japanese weapons as well. So, was there a Japanese sword that looked like the western swords that Link would be familiar with?
The answer is yes.
Wow that picture is bigger than I thought it was. Also I just stole this from Google, so.
But this is a tsurugi/ken sword. It is the only Japanese sword I found that was both double-edged and had a straight blade. It's a bit thinner than most western swords, but that's more whatever.
Tsurugi swords were only used from the 5th century until the 9th century, one of the oldest Japanese swords, and they continued to be made until the 10th century but they were usually dedicated to Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples at that point. They're also usually about 100cm long, which amused me because I went looking into the specifics of the Master Sword a bit later and someone put that down as ~108cm. So that amused me.
The only other straight-edged Japanese sword was a single-edged sword, the chokutō. This came from the same time period, and stopped being made some time in the 9-10th century. Some straight-edged swords are still made in Japan today, for ceremonial purposes, but while they're called chokutō they aren't the same as the old swords. These were probably based on Chinese swords that ended up in Japan.
Also, Japan separates swords by time period, and both of these swords are known as Jōkotō, which are the oldest swords.
I also learned that katanas come in two slightly shorter forms. Japanese swords are measured in shaku, which is roughly 30cm. A katana is any slightly curved blade longer than 2 shaku (60.6cm+), and there are two shorter versions of it. A tanto is actually a sword, but is used as a knife and I've seen it described as a dagger since it's never longer than 1 shaku (30-ish cm), though at one point were made up to 40cm long. They also don't have the ridge that most katanas do. They were usually carried by samurai for self defense. Samurai also tended to pair it with a tachi, which I'll get to in a bit. Katanas were usually paired with a wakizashi, which were anywhere between 1 and 2 shaku (30-60cm). They were more suited to indoor fighting than katanas, which is probably why.
Katanas (and from what I can tell, tantos and wakizashi as well) stretch through almost every sword era, from Kotō (which came right after Jōkotō at around year 900 and ended in 1596) right up until the modern day Gendaitō (which is everything from 1876 to today).
Katanas were created slightly after a similar sword, the tachi. Tachi are older, beginning production shortly after the tsurugi and chokutō began to phase out, with katanas only showing up at around the 14th century at the earliest, which is also when the tachi started falling out of style. Tachi were roughly 70-80cm long and more dramatically curved than katanas.
Like katanas, tachi also have other swords that were basically it but shorter/longer. I mentioned above that Impa in Age of Calamity used a kodachi, which is a slightly shorter tachi. It's a little shorter than 2 shaku, and might have been a primary sword, unlike the similarly sized wakizashi, which was a secondary blade. But one source told me no one actually knows exactly what they were used for, so. An ōdachi (or nodachi) is a really big tachi. They're roughly around 3 shaku (90cm), but as usual there's no set size. The ōdachi were really popular around the 14th century for some reason but fell out of style around the Edo period.
Also, I'm pretty sure that the Windcleaver and Eightfold Longblade in Breath of the Wild are probably both based on ōdachi, considering the size of them. I want to assume Impa using a kodachi is a point in my favour in this sense, but I have no proof of this theory. They look similar to ōdachi/tachi and are big, that's all I've got.
There's also the nagamaki, but all I know about that sword is that sometimes it's handle is as long as the blade. It has a long handle. That's it's defining feature and that's all I know about it.
Moving on to dagger, because I did some looking into those as well when I decided to give Impa a dagger in Surface Too Soon.
Yoroi-dōshi were extra thick tanto, made for piercing armor and close-quarters grappling. They're usually between 20-22cm, though some were shorter than 15cm. And that's when I stopped looking into them.
Kaiken were actually very commonly carried by women, and women who married samurai where expected to carry one when she moved in with her husband, and were typically used for self-defense or ritual suicide. Between 20-25cm, and usually single-edged and very rarely double-edged, they had a little pocket sown into kimono where they were kept. They're actually still used as a traditional accessory for some kimono today!
Which left me with the two daggers I flip flopped on for Impa, the kunai and the kabutowari.
I'm pretty sure most people know what a kunai is. It's in most media with ninjas. What you might not now is that they aren't throwing weapons, and actually weren't originally weapons at all. They're repurposed masonry and farming tools, used to shape stonework and for digging holes and prying. The sides were left unsharpened for bashing soft materials like plaster and wood. Only the tip was supposed to be sharp.
Ninja actually did use kunai, since it's a repurposed farming tool. Most ninja weapons were repurposed farming tools, since they were easy to acquire and not particularly suspicious if you got caught with one. I mean, if you've got a garden spade on you most people aren't going to assume you're going to use it as a weapon. They were meant to be hand-to-hand combat weapons, meaning that any media depicting it as a throwing knife is incorrect, since they're actually hold-it-in-your-hand-and-stab-someone weapons. (Amusingly? The only media I've seen use kunai for their actual purpose is the original Hyrule Warriors. Sheik uses kunai as hand to hand weapons in that game.)
Also, Wikipedia made it clear that they can be confiscated by airport security. Like, I could have guessed that but thanks? It doesn't say this for any other weapon, I don't know why.
Kabutowari I'm pretty sure most people don't know about. Also called 'hachiwari', they were carried by samurai and resemble a jitte (a blunt, baton like weapon. I didn't do much research on jitte so don't ask me about them). They're usually about 35cm long but could sometimes be around 45cm.
There are two types of kabutowari, the dirk-type and truncheon-type. The only thing you need to know about the truncheon-type is that's nigh-identical to the dirk-type but blunt, and so not meant for stabbing. The dirk-type was sharp, and was used to parry an opponent's sword, hook the cords of armor or helmets, or separate armor plates like a can opener, and could be used to pierce the unprotected or weak parts of an opponents armor, like the armpit area.
I gave Impa this dagger for the simple reason that it looks cool. That's it, that's the whole reason. Also, it looks like the Eightfold Blade in Breath of the Wild:
See the hook? I couldn't find any other blade with a hook like that, so I think the eightfold blades are at least a little bit inspired by kabutowari, but made a lot bigger so it could be a sword. I have no proof for this outside of that hook though, so.
Kohga teaching an unconfident new Blademaster the correct way to hold a windcleaver cuz I live for wholesome content. <3 (I started drawing this before that trailer happened which immediately made drawing it so much more enjoyable lol.)
Yiga Windcleaver references.
I think maybe the bottom part of the scabbard is covered with straw?
I see an “I” and a “G” in the Sheikah lettering, so I’m just going to assume it spells YIGA.
Need more BOTW references? Here’s the master post
I’ve been running around the Yiga Clan Hideout grabbing reference shots for my comic, A New Calamity. This and THIS:
...are the best ones so far. It just reminds me of a really dramatic murder scene in a movie. Link’s all slumped up by a wall. We’ve got a first-person view of the murderer. So drama.
