The Katana

Gooood afternoon, my friends

Il mio studio dell’inglese procede a rilento e così anche le mie pubblicazioni, spero però di recuperare sia per l’una che per l’altra cosa. Intanto partiamo con un proverbio, in inglese naturalmente: Money makes the world go around.

Oggi invece vi voglio parlare di un oggetto che io non conoscevo e che imparato ad apprezzare grazie ad un appassionato collezionista. Vi dice niente il nome Katana?

The Katana is a type of Japanese sword.

This term is used to describe a blade that is around 70-80 cm. long with a curved blade. As Japanese doesn’t have separate plural and singular forms, katanas and katana are both acceptable plural forms in English. Katana, was a term generally used for single-edged sword, as opposed to tsurugi which is double-edged sword.

The Katana is different from Chokuto which is a straight blade. More common Japanese war swords were the Wakizashi, the Dait or the Tachi. Although it allowed to stoccare, it was used mainly in order to hit with of cleaving, appealed to one or two hands.

This last one became the more common way, although Musashi Miyamoto, in the Book of Five Rings, recommended the technique to two swords, that it presupposed the single grip.
It was worn with the concave part of the blade turned towards the bottom, so as to be able it to draw one's sword fast with skilful movements.
Thia arm was used from the members of the fighter class with the wakizashior that was a short sword. The combination of the two swords was called daisho, and represented the power and the honour of the samurai.

See you later, have a nice day.