Did the wakizashi have any major functional purpose?

Did the wakizashi have any major functional purpose?

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Yes, but I'm not telling.

First they were easier to make than the long sword, so lower-status soldiers used them instead of the longer sword. As time passes, pretty much every soldier could get a long sword, yet the wakizashi/kodachi is still fairly useful in very close combat, inside buildings and such.
When only the samurai can wear the daisho, wakizashi becomes basically the "it's not cool to wear weapons in other people's house but it's also not cool to deprive a fighting caste of its weapons"-weapon. It's a badge of status, but also a fairly sensible weapon inside a building of any sort.

Its debilitating for a soldier to loose their main weapon, the polearm. Incase your weapons shaft is destroyed, removed of the head or taken off you, the sidearm, in this case the wakizashi is good enough to fend off any lethal attacks to a certain degree.

Otherwise, one could use it to displace a blow and thrust into the gaps of the enemy armour. By the Sengoku Jidai, every solider was atleast equipped with the common plate armour.

Spears can be knocked to the side, but a suprise thrust to the hips, armpits or throats can and will deny them the will to fight.

Same reason why any army gave their soldiers a sword.

why not just carry 2 katana.

Most katana were too big to use effectively indoors, so that's where the wakizashi comes in.

Polearms are better for open combat, short swords are better to assist in grappling, while a long sword is ok in any situation, so you carry both specialized tools and generalist ones.
Same reason why european man-at-arms typically had a lance, sword and dagger.
Besides, two katana would be very goofy to have on your belt. They are just redundant since you don't fight with two at the same time, better to have two dissimilar weapons to cover different types of fighting scenarii and if need be you can fight with short and long sword togethe whereas you wouldn't with two long swords (in Japan anyway).

I feel like the main practical purposes seem to be

1 Katana broke or damaged (apparently fairly common) or you lost it or something
2 You want to duel wield (which basically no one could do)
3 You need to fight inside.

In only one of those situations is the wak better and in another carrying two katana would be better. I do understand the visiting another lord or something and having to give up your katana but in that situation a knife is probably just as good and realistically you aren't fighting your way out anyway.

>DUAL WIELD

One of about 10 people who was capable of it.

>You want to duel wield (which basically no one could do)
What do you mean by that, plenty of people could dual wield the daisho, knew and taught how to dual wield, doesn't mean it's always the best course of action, especially since you can do much more things with two hands on the tsuka rather than one (but of course you can do more with two blades that you can do with one so...).

People didn't carry two katana because wielding two similar long swords isn't really practical and wasn't rooted in their martial tradition. We have no records of people carrying two long swords (that I know of anyway), there are reasons for that. Sometimes, "better" is just not in line with cultural matters which will be more important in the context of the bearing of arms. The act of wearing weapons has much more parameters that what is "the best" weapon, hence why people choose to carry mouse guns instead of full-size guns nowadays. It would have been plain goofy to carry two katana.
Having a kodachi inside another's person's home isn't only to defend yourself but mostly to preserve your social status as a member of the warrior caste, meaning and use evolves.

You do know that we know of at least 10 schools who taught it? Half of those before Musashi's time. Fact is, many people knew how to dual wield, but it's just not the awesome thing it seems to be.

10 people who would actually and could do it when their life was on the line and not just as a fun gimmick to try out.

>many people knew how to dual wield, but it's just not the awesome thing it seems to be

For most people yes.

>10 people who would actually and could do it when their life was on the line and not just as a fun gimmick to try out.
And those were and it's known how?
We can trace using the two swords together thanks to the schools densho, who are this mysterious "people who didn't gimmicked" exactly?

Its not a literal ten, but musashi and some others we don't know about. It clearly happened but was extremely rare, so I wouldn't count that as for a practical reason for the wakizashi considering we have barely any evidence of people duel wielding in battle.

It should be considered that in actual warfare, samurai usually carried thick, pointy daggers, so called "yoroi doshi", that could be thrust in-between the gaps of their opponent's armour. Wakizashi accompanied the katana in peace-time.

Originally the second sword was used to take heads. It could also be used a a back up sword, a dagger, a second sword for duel wielding, or a convenient way to take your own life to avoid capture. Some shuriken schools even practiced throwing them.

Before edo period regulations they came in several different lengths, and of course some people were authorized only to carry the short sword and not the long.

Even Musashi didn't focus on two swords over one. Its a specialized technique and wouldn't be very useful on the battlefield

no retards. Wakazashi were used in battle by mounted warriors to behead other mounted samurai. They would get into close quarters with the other horsemen and then use the katana and wakazashi together to saw the head off in a scissoring motion.

Other then that swords were not used in combat by samurai.

This.

But they did so while standing on the saddle using just one leg.

This traditional Japanese music would be played in the background: youtube.com/watch?v=gqg3l3r_DRI

What is this anime bullshit? You seriously believe that it's not only possible to use two swords to scissor somebody's head off while on horseback, but that the Japanese smithed a new kind of sword just for that purpose?