European swords outclass katanas due to steel quality but how would a katana made with modern high quality steel hold up?
Probably still worse. European swordmaking is also very good. But since the european swords tend to be thicker and harder they will probably still beat katanas, all other things considered equal
Cool, so different smithing techniques wouldn’t make much of a difference. It comes down to weight and thickness etc.
I suppose it could also come down to how you look at the situation at hand. If dexterity and speed of swing are paramount, maybe having a lighter thinner blade would give the advantage. Euro swords definitely have a leg up in raw durability though, that’s for certain.
That’s the thing, though, European swords cover the whole gamut from ridiculously light foils to nutso zweihanders.
I get that Japanese swords are the same and there are ridiculous nodachi and tiny little wakizashi but the difference is of size more than form.
There’s much more variation in European swords so it’s hard to say ‘the Japanese sword is better than the European one’ because there’s almost definitely a European sword specialized for whatever use case you’re comparing the swords for.
I have fought with many kinds of European blades, from longswords to zweihanders to sabres and foils. Some of these can be very light and thin. In fact, the average longsword weighs the same as the average katana: between 1.1 and 1.5 kg. But I’ll take the length, cross guard and double edge of a longsword over a katana every day.
Source: I practice HEMA
I once saw a video talking about how the katana isn’t the right sword to compare with a longsword. Longsword was a battlefield weapon; katana was more of a decorative sidearm. Kind of like an officer’s sabre. Another weapon, called a “tachi” if I recall correctly, was more common in an earlier era when Samurai spent far more time on actual battlefields. It was a longer and heavier blade.
Well, how does a professional sport player fare when they are given high quality equipment versus the low grade stuff they became a pro with?
In a melee battle, it doesn’t really matter all that much the quality of a weapon if both are highly trained on how to use the weapon. A single mistake on either side could just as easily decide the battle one way or the other. I guess you could say whichever side won was just lucky the other side had an equipment malfunction, hesitated, or chose a bad tactic, etc.
Well yes obviously in a fight the better trained soldier is more likely to win. My question was more aimed at whether the the smithing techniques used for a katana would result in a noticeable difference if using the same materials.
You seem to be under the impression that having “higher quality steel” would somehow make a sword “better”, that’s not how it works. Japanese smiths usually had access to what’s called Tamahagane steel, it historically had a low carbon content which made it softer than desirable, so they’d fold the steel to rid it of impurities and obtain a higher carbon content for the core of the blade, leaving the edge side softer to be sharpened. Having access to steel with a higher carbon content would only accomplish in the smithing process being more straight forward, with the end result being essentially the same.
The reality is that Katanas (and other Japanese blades) were already as good as they’d get and you can’t really compare Japanese swords to European swords objectively because they were made with different purposes, in different contexts with different results in mind. For instance, a Katana is a single-edged sword with a slight curvature and a somewhat rounded tip, it was made for slashing and it did that really well, but a typical Arming Sword is a double-edged, straight blade with a very pointy end, it doesn’t really slash as well, but can cut in both sides and the point can be used to pierce armor gaps in an adversary.
So you see, “steel quality” has a minimal baring when it comes to the actual usefulness of a weapon, what really matters is how it’s used in combat given it’s characteristics.
Katana is cool, European swords are cool, all swords are cool.
And the best old weapon is a spear. (or advanced poking stick if you will)
