Nihon-Tō
Swords of the samurai

Here are a few notes about all Japanese swords from ancient times throughout the political and cultural periods in Japanese history to the Meiji restoration at the end of the 19th Century… so the subtitle is something of a misnomer.

But using the word “samurai” makes it that bit sexier, don’t you think?

Daitō, shōtō, or tantō?

Japanese sword blades can be classified by length, measured from the point (kissaki) to the back notch (mune-machi) – i.e., the length doesn’t include the tang (nakago). The unit of length used is the shaku, approximately equal to 12 inches or 30 centimetres.

Swords over two shaku are daitō (long swords); from one to two shaku are shōtō (short swords); and under one shaku are tantō. The usual daitō are the tachi and the katana; shōtō are mostly wakizashi; and there are many kinds of tantō.

Nodachi are tachi of extended length (and mostly of low quality) which were used on the battlefield during the Kamakura and Nambokuchō periods. Those swords certainly had an intimidating effect on the enemy, but their usefulness is highly questionable since they were very awkward to handle.

In the transitional period from tachi to katana, at the beginning of the Muromachi period, katana were called uchigatana (strike sword), and shōtō, often quite longer than the later “standard” wakizashi, were called chiisagatana (short sword) or koshigatana (hip sword).

A daishō (literally, “long-short”) is the katana-wakizashi or katana-tantō pair that was one of the outer attributes of the samurai. Most daishō were mounted en suite, but actually any combination of long and short sword is considered a daishō.