I don't get the longsword vs katana debate I mean they both were fucking useless...

>everybody had them, worldwide
What fucking world are you living on?

They were expensive weapons, often signs of high class and honor. There sure as hell weren't any okinawan peasants wandering around with a fucking katana you retard. You won't find anyone in Europe that wasn't either noble or a soldier with a sword.

>You won't find anyone in Europe that wasn't either noble or a soldier with a sword.
Now thats bullshit right there, Swiss here, everbody had swords, all the old armories of the cities are full of them. Quality swords where expensive, yet still in high demand. Why? Because they where useless? Thats odd, because pretty much every culture that made bronze age status developed swords shortly after.
Face it, you're an idiot and your thread is shite.

Uh nope, not always, after the 1400's pretty much everyone could afford a sword in Europe (not a fantastic one mind you), but they didn't had a use of it. Same thing in Japan, in the 1500's, every foot soldier had a short or long sword.
It had more to do with weapon bans and practical use than wealth, at least past the 1400's.

user I think that you haven't actually read many history books and are just going by tidbits and factoids that you've heard online.

I think the user you're replying to didn't mean that literally everyone had swords, but that swords have been used in every part of the world, which is true. Even among peoples who didn't have metalwork, the principles of a sword's design carried through (the trend was to call edged ironwood clubs made by Australian Aborigines "sword-clubs" when I was studying but I think it's fallen out of favour now)

>You won't find anyone in Europe that wasn't either noble or a soldier with a sword.
Moreover, you're quite wrong. It's true that in some periods in some parts of the world, swords were quite expensive and a status symbol. But in some other parts of the world in different periods, swords were easily attainable. In England in the latter half of the 14th century, you could buy a sword for a penny. A sword was cheaper than a pair of shoes. It wouldn't be a very good sword, but as with nowadays you get what you pay for.

Or to further illustrate the point, In the 16th century Kongo, swords were considered to be a King's weapon and apart from the royal guards, nobody else would have used them. Meanwhile, in the 19th century Kongo, so many smiths were making so many swords that they were practically worthless and axes were now considered status symbols.

>History was High medieval and Edo Japan forever after

Making swords was neither hard nor expensive after a while.

Any remotely organized society could pump out blades for its armies, that knowledge wasn't lost with Rome.

now I'm going to go by this tidbit and factoid

>that knowledge wasn't lost with Rome.
Rome is not the best example, roman swords where rather poor iron constructions especially the early ones, but back at the time only Indo-Persians where actually able to make high quality steel swords.

longsword has more weight more heavier genetically superior armies/opponents likewise their armour compared to the more technical and finese aspects and elements required for smaller mongoloid dynasty users. as the middle ages dawned (like modern day) the man of the west was more economically averaged where as in the east you'd have more slaves-citizen ratio (or poor people whatever). so mass produced armies in the west on average (number of people x value mark) is higher equivocally to the ratio that west > east & east full of shogan warlords and shit dualing where as west full out sperging through centuries of heinous years of all out war v one another and still had more to spare..

guns are infinitely fallible due to a number of factors (munitions, complexity supply, tech tiers etc)
blades are not. you could pass a sharp well made blade through centuries of hands. and still be a relevant (albeit) backup (yet) dependable side arm

likewise handguns are more manoeuvrable in tight spaces, secondary loaded munitions on hand and arguably greater accuracy under certain situations

rifle and no sidearm
vs
rifle and sidearm
no brainer

2 handed vs 1 handed etc

am i responding to a troll thread i dont even know anymore nor care

Both katana and longsword weight around 1kg retad. Why are all namefags idiots?

You are right with the namefags are idiots part, but a longsword was closer to 1.5-1.7kg, but they where considerably longer than a Katana.

no fucking way you autistic spastic loser.

longsword easily double weight of lighter katana

u spastic disinfo shills should go eat a bullet

>t. fat guy that never ever held a real sword, studied something related or had formal training

user he is obviously being facetious

my bottle of water weighs 2 kilograms LOL

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longsword

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katana

Source would be nice retard.

hroarr.com/longswords-and-their-data/
thats a good place to start, but reading a book would help more.
One question, if you obviously know jackshit about swords, why do you think you are an expert when it comes to a discussion about swords on the internet? Just curious.

youtube.com/watch?v=03HIYgLWGu0

end your life

There is a fuckton of variety within both longswords and katanas. To categorize either as lighter or heavier is silly.

>normal size
like op said the ones doing the actual killing were 3-5-10kg

did you guys fail statistics twice or something? fucking retarded

It was more 30-100kg actually.

You're thinking of yari, you pleb. Naginata are poleswords

go pick up an olly sized lifting bar at a gym and hold it out in one hand (or even two) from the "hilt" infront of yourself see how you go champ

>taking Easton seriously...

>taking random user posting some literally who site seriously

English please, negrito!

You know that there are other legit instructors besides Easton right ?
Who do you think write at HROARR ?

>Naginata are poleswords
Reaping swords more precisely.

Does anyone else find it weirdthat the katana is such a strong image of the samurai at war?

The Bow and the GUN were far more important weapons of war for the Samurai. They were relatively heavily armored missile troops with relatively better close combat skills.

That samurai looks like he dropped the smuggest bomb on Benkei.

You can thank edo period for that. Literally Japanese equivalent of European 19th century romanticists going ''muh swords''.

whats the greatest weapon in existence, surely nothing can equate to ones own mind, then body, then control of the environment between the synthesis of the two, descartes church funded self evident based cartesian dualism aside, mind being attributed to individual and thus individuals body owned by such entity as property & the extended decisions that body makes. in a day and age where infrastrucutre is reading the human mind & destroying worlds, muh rifle arguement next to muh capital use whilst living seems irrelevent af

I don't know too much about katanas (I've heard it's more of a dueling sword) but longswords were practical weapons with use on the battlefield. It could slash, thrust and use the crossguard and pommel for blunt attacks.

Thanks for telling us how a fucking sword works.

Your welcome. Now you know why a sword isn't useless.

It is. Halberd can stab, cleave and hook while also being much longer.

And length isn't always useful, especially if an enemy is very close. It's precisely why people carry sidearms, if things go down the shitter.
There's also the fact that you could carry your longsword with you anywhere really, while a halberd is unwieldy.

Good thing people didn't tend to go up close to hug halberdiers then.

Battle's were chaotic. It wasn't two blocks of guys smashing into eachother and keeping at arms lengths, all kinds of events could transpire. Having a weapon for closer encounters would be useful.

>I don't know too much about katanas (I've heard it's more of a dueling sword)
Very reductive. Obviously you could use it in a duel but it isn't optimized for dueling like other swords.
youtube.com/watch?v=8aeWU8CYl5M

Chaotic doesn't mean suicidal either. If two groups of guys have polearms why would one of them suddenly close the distance?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_of_pike
Momentum mostly, pikes and halberds were often used charging, it became a very deadly game of chicken sometimes.

Its called a glaive They were certainly more common than spears before the sengoku

They carried one everywhere, So you start identifying with it. warfare was only a part of samurai life, even before the edo period

>I've heard it's more of a dueling sword

It was a jack of all trades sword, those for battlefield use were often heavier and longer for obvious reasons

youtube.com/watch?v=XLWzH_1eZsc

I know we cant bother to learn about Japanese history because weaboo but he clearly does not know what he is talking about

Nah, yari took over naginata in the 14th century, right before the Sengoku era, so you actually got it backwards.
Spears started to replace naginata after the mongol invasions.

People glorify revolvers and wild west shootouts despite rifles being a weapon of war.

Duelist weapons will always be glorified over weapons used en masse by soldiers.

they became considered a womans weapon because most samurai women trained with one as they were expected to defend the household in the husbands abscence and a weapon with reach was considered better suited than anything else, and the tradition was kept up after warfare stopped and the samurai stopped practicing except as a art/sport.

however when samurai still fought naginatas were still feared weapons

>Spears started to replace naginata after the mongol invasions.

Actual combat records at the time do not bare this out. There were a few notable examples of yari use during the nambokucho conflict (the kikuchi zenbon no yari) but while this was a proof of concept, it did not become the norm until the Onin conflict, before which yari are responsible for only about 2% of casualties, less than swords during the siege of Osaka

>naginatas are women weapons
>yuris are not

After, not necessarily "right after", this kinds of things takes time. Nevermind I do agree with you, but then again you cant' always perfectly deduce how people were armed according to the casualties. Most people had a sword either short or long and only some had a bow, but I suppose the swords casualties are lower than the bow casualties. I could point out that a siege is a specific encounter, it doesn't really surprise me that a sword would be more efficient in such a scenario compare to a spear.
You would have to compare that with a battle report.
Now I realize I wanted to say 1400's, not 14th century...

nips used mainly yari (=spear), not naginata

There's a little bit of spearplay (starting at 3:30) from one of the most influential style of bujutsu regarding their use, and then more stuff about naginata techniques, both with and against.
youtube.com/watch?v=gaDBi8mZtSE

Again it depends on the era

yari became popular during the muromachi period but before that they were not very significant

I wrote that confusingly. Spears still killed more people during the Osaka conflict, but swords were responsible for more casualties during the late sengoku than spears during the nambokucho

But maybe (wild stab) there was more people involved during the late Sengoku era than during the Nambokucho ? Mostly playing devil's advocate here...
Anyway would you have an online source for this ? Not that I'm trying to say you're wrong or anything, I'd just be interested in reading these kind of numbers.

"[The sword] is such a weapon that all the people use it; the one who knows [how to use it] and the one who does not, young and old are protected by it everywhere. And it [the sword] is [such] a good brother that it does not become inactive in wide or even narrow places. One needs it on the sea and on the land and in crowd. On a very windy day the lance becomes a burden for its possessor, but this [the sword] never becomes useless. And on that day the archer can not shoot his arrow straight, [therefore] no one can do without the sword."

"Although they have many weapons, they would never be able to do without the sword, but those who have swords can do without all the other weapons."

Muhammad Ibn Yaqub Ibn Ahi Hazzam al-Hattali, Kitab al-Furusiyya va'l-Baytara, 14th century

>ay would you have an online so

Look up Thomas Conlan's work. And yes, battles during the nambokucho involved smaller number, usually much smaller