Then you can pick it up and put it back in the scabbard. Most of the time, when a sword falls out, people will just back away and let it come to rest. As you grow more experienced it will become second nature.Įven with all of this, accidents may happen. What if you need to carry something with two hands? In many cases it may be best to just put your sword down until you can come back for it, or at least adjust its position so it is more vertical. To prevent this, you should get used to having your left hand on the sword, grasping the scabbard near the hilt, and having at least one finger-usually the thumb, but sometimes the index finger-holding the sword guard to prevent it from slipping out. Most common is when people are bowing or bending down to pick something up and they forget about the sword, which can then come tumbling out. However, as we start to move, run, or do other things, that position can change. That way gravity does all the work for you. When worn properly, the sword should fit so that the hilt is either forward or slightly up, and the back of the scabbard is down. So never trust that the weapon will simply stay in its scabbard. Furthermore, the fit will change over time-even a change in humidity can make a difference as the scabbards are made out of wood. While a new sword should be pressure fit to its scabbard, it is often the case that modern swords are matched to generic scabbards, and therefore the fit will not be great. You should always have positive control of your weapons. This goes for wooden training swords as well. Even though we are largely talking about dress swords, every sword should be treated as though it is a live blade. It probably doesn’t need to be said, but swords are weapons, and should be treated as such. Otherwise, you can usually assume that blades from before the the Sengoku period were meant to be tachi and anything later was probably meant as a katana, with some notable exceptions. If the sword is signed, you can sometimes tell what the smith intended, as the signature is supposed to be facing out when worn, even though it isn’t seen. In fact, it is primarily the fittings and furniture that determine what a sword is, as many tachi were later put in katana mounts. When we speak of tachi-mounts or katana-mounts, we are referring to swords with furniture specifically designed to suit one or the other way of wearing. The most striking difference between tachi and katana is that the former is worn suspended from the waist, edge down, while the latter is thrust through the sash and worn edge up. This second blade later became longer and became the wakizashi, the companion sword to the katana, which was what the longer sword metamorphosed into. They would often tuck a second, shorter, blade into their sashes. Remember Mifune's character in the film Seven Samurai? What a sword!ĭuring the early period, warriors and courtiers alike wore a single long sword, called a tachi. In point of fact, just about anyone during those anarchistic days of the end of the sixteenth century could carry or wear anything that they could get away with. It wasn't really till the Edo period that such sumptuary laws came into enforceable effect. At least, it was not true for the most periods. Although it is frequently stated that carrying two swords is a mark of the samurai, this is not true.
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