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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2012 16:40:33 GMT
This is all getting quite amusing because people are making the mistake of attempting to defend the indefensible, what underpins a lot of these discussions is the myths of 'Japanese superiority', all of which are patently false, and which originate from who else but the Japanese themselves... :lol: Regrettably for them, history shows they are quite lacking in a lot of areas and left wanting!
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Post by FernandoP on Apr 5, 2012 17:30:28 GMT
Read Musashi's book of the five rings. He states that no weapon is superior and the supreme warrior is the one who uses them according to the situation, those who bind themselves to the use of one specific weapon wont prevail, it is one of the reasons many koryu taught different things, like TSKSR taught naginata, bo, spear, sword, shuriken and so it goes..
the german Zweihander was supposedly used to knock people off their horses. how could a katana go against something like that?
scotish claymores were used against heavy armored english soldiers (lol braveheart)
Considering these models were all 2 handed swords, how do you expect a thinner, lighter, narrow blade to stand against a much heavier weapon?? Japanese are short, usually light weight people, they had a tool that worked for them... Europeans are taller, heavier, being able to wield heaftier weapons.
a matter of having the right tool for the job.
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ecovolo
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Post by ecovolo on Apr 5, 2012 17:51:20 GMT
The zwiehander was more likely used by doppelsoldners to strike down opposing pikes: www.thearma.org/essays/2HGS.html"One source tells us that among 16th century armies the adoption of the two-handers was very limited and in comparison with the pike or the halberd did not play a meaningful role. “In the infantry unit, the German and Swiss Landsknechts positioned the Doppelsöldner (Soldiers who received double pay for wielding the two-handers) in the front ranks for a long time to strike down the opposing pikes and to hack out breaches into which one's own soldiers could penetrate." As for this part: "The Swiss and Germans made their own two-handed swords. The Italians made a basic two-hander that they exported throughout Europe. Two-handed swordsmen were perimeter shock troops, trained to lay into approaching knights or infantry and break their stride." -- The author doesn't state that the knights are mounted, so I'm assuming they're not. (Edit: Added more) Interesting article about zwiehanders, with katana mentioned as well: www.ejmas.com/jwma/articles/2004 ... e_1004.htm --Edward
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Post by u02rjs4 on Apr 5, 2012 17:58:59 GMT
Right tool for the job sums it up quite well. Someone earlier said look at who conquered the most ie Romans mongols etc and look at their weapons. Assuming wikipedia is correct the British empire was the largest by area and people within it. The sword being the sabre. The sabre isn't the best sword in history it was a good sword for the style of warfare and in combination with firearms and little armour. The right tool for the job. Like a lot of people have said, i believe unless the sword is badly made the man behind the sword is more important than the supposed advantage or disadvantage of the weapon. I have to agree with Blackthorn i do hate the nonsense regarding Japanese superiority. I wonder why or how this seems to have become common in the non Japanese in regards to swords etc? Seen to many samurai movies maybe?
I noticed on this months newsletter that the american video katana vs longsword was video of the month which was personally a bit disappointing seeing as neither sword appeared traditionally made so any results being irrelevant. It basically seemed a test of a curved piece of modern steel made by one cheap company versus a straight piece of modern steel by another cheap company and judging all historical versions on that.
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Post by Lukas MG (chenessfan) on Apr 5, 2012 18:46:39 GMT
SECOND THAT!! I too was really disappointed. Why would Paul pick one of the worst vids I have ever seen regarding katana and longsword as video of the month?? Way to pass a wrong impression on newbies? Seriously, that sucked.
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Post by Jussi Ekholm on Apr 5, 2012 20:48:33 GMT
Well back to quarreling... I admit I might be bit biased as I mainly collect Japanese swords, however I haven't in any post said that Japanese swords would be superior, infact quite the opposite. Unfortunately I don't have my books in my parents house, some of my babbling might be more wrong than it usually is. As I saw few posts during the bus ride here, I just knew I couldn't keep my fingers off the keyboard tonight. However there are many mysteries shrouding both Japanese and European weaponry. And it works in both ways, every culture has spread tales about the superiority of their swords and warriors, and some tales reached other cultures and created an image. And the modern pop-culture is being worse than anything in the past. Hollywood movies, anime series, (Internet forums), you'll get my point, eh? Japanese sword is good thrusting weapon, likewise is the curved sabre. And when facing armored enemies thrusting would be far more beneficial than cutting, for obvious reasons. I believe the beginning of the Tokugawa period and the ending of continuous battle was the reason that odachi was no longer needed. When all the bigger battles had ended and the final peace begun c.1615-1620? There was no more need for the battlefield sword. And odachi was never hugely successful sword to begin with, or that's how I believe. Similar to Landsknecht zweihander, only a weapon of minority but what would be somewhat legendary. I personally wouldn't want to be facing either Samurai with an odachi or Landsknecht with zweihander. I remember reading that horses in Japan during medieval times were shorter than those living in Europe. Kage-ryu is one of the few remaining ryu that practice with odachi, they call it Choken. Swords in their ryu range from 2 shaku 8 sun to 4 shaku. www.hyoho.com/Nkage2.htmlNow I'm not going to go into details as it would take me far too long to explain that not only length is added when sword is made longer. I'm no engineer or physicist and I don't know about moment of inertia or any of that fancy stuff, and I'll leave them in their own value. But there have been plenty of scientific research and computing made by even the japanese themselves. I'm not going to go into bushido vs. chivalric code argumenting, for obvious reasons... You like knights, some like samurai, people are people, people do horrible stuff whether it's in the name of some god or their own well being. [Removed, per request of the poster.] (Sorry I just couldn't resist it, mods feel free to remove that last line or 2 if needed, but I'm trying hard to obey the rules, sometimes the cup just flows over...)
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Post by Vincent Dolan on Apr 5, 2012 21:15:02 GMT
Funnily enough, against all common sense, anime is one of the least perpetrators of this myth. Out of all anime featuring swords, few actually feature katana; in anime, they prefer a fantasy styled sword that is vaguely reminiscent of a European sword or a two-handed saber that is quite different from a katana. Those few shows that have katana usually involve characters with super-human abilities, where it's almost explicitly stated that the awesome cutting abilities are the swordsman's, not the sword's.
The few that have a katana (that I know of) where the characters aren't superhuman (or aren't superhuman enough to do ridiculous things with their swords), they're shown to be swords. One in particular, Psyren, the katana is the preferred weapon of one of the protagonists, Amamiya Sakurako, and she actually owns dozens of them; this is mostly because she could need one at any given moment, but also because they keep breaking. Doesn't sound like a super sword, does it? Another, Rurouni Kenshin, the titular Kenshin's sword is broken once during a confrontation (the other sword was damaged beyond repair); later, he breaks the swords of an opponent using a double bladed katana (a katana with two blades side by side). I believe Saito's unnamed katana also got broken at least once, and I know for certain that a shikomizue he used while undercover broke in use.
Anyways, you get my point. Most anime & manga series don't portray the katana as being a super sword; they portray the swordsman as being super, who just happens to wield a katana. Primarily, I think the blame lies with Hollywood and with katana fanatics who are convinced that their sword is the best thing to ever happen and everything else is trash.
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Talon
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Post by Talon on Apr 5, 2012 21:33:51 GMT
this is starting to get silly (as it always does when japanese vs euro comes up) as has been posted and said,there is no best sword,the katana and longsword never met on the battlefield,they were designed for different purposes,with a different philosophy,and were used in a different manner,i prefer the longsword,for its link to my ancestry,for its durability,its elegant simplicity,and for its versalility,it however does not make it the better sword there will come a day when we debate the curved vs straight lightsabre :roll: the katana has many followers and thats fine,so does the european sword,at the end of the day they're both swords and we should all embrace the fact that its still a sharpened piece of metal,both have advantages and disadvantages,but they're both swords and as a sword loving community there's space for both i have a lot more trouble swallowing the trend for PERFORMANCE swords,seriously what were swords designed for if not to perform a task (when that mattered in real life or death situations) that troubles and quite frankly p$££%$ me off more thinking that a traditional sword edge is somehow inferior to something we can produce now when the sword as a weapon is obsolete :roll: it reminds me of those gillette adverts (the sharpest shave yet) if it got that sharp we'd be shaving our skulls do we honestly know more than our ancestors who staked their lives on their weapons
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Post by Hackenslash on Apr 5, 2012 22:22:18 GMT
Not to nitpick, but there are far more East Asians than afro americans in the top ranks of powerlifting.
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Post by ineffableone on Apr 5, 2012 22:34:39 GMT
wow, I can't believe this thread is still going I stopped visiting it a long time ago.
Blackthorn I would like to see you stop continuing a myth. The concept of different races is not accurate. There is only one human race not multiple. So in true accuracy, which you seem to want to have, you should stop using the term race to describe different ethnic groups of the same race. If you want to be accurate it is ethnic groups not races. To continue the myth of different races is to feed old concepts of ethnic superiority and incorrect belief that other ethnic groups are not true humans.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2012 1:00:50 GMT
Bodybuilding and powerlifting are seperate categories, I lumped them in together for the sake of brevity, considering how much I wrote! Powerlifters are all large frame Caucasians, and the big Nordic/Germanic types feature prominently, whereas bodybuilding features more Afro-Americans, because these are two pursuits favour different body types!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2012 1:15:46 GMT
Ok, if you need specifics, the human race originates from one origin and has evolved into various genetic lines, or subgroups over the last 200.000 years, defined by not only genotypical, but phenotypical and distinct morphological differences - to put it in simple words, they differ genetically and physically - science has documented differences in brain sizes, skeletal structure, muscle density and distribution, speed, strength, endurance and obviously, appearance. This is current science, not myth or opinion, if you want to see what cutting edge science is discovering about the human race and its genetic origins, best look into the field of Evolutionary Biology. Plug that into a search engine and you'll have weeks of material to read. Preferably, look at the real research sites that publish current research papers, complete with all the data. All this has been growing out of the Human Genome Project, which mapped the human genome, and now they're able to trace the origins of the genetic groups which constitute the various races, and at a deeper level, determine the attributes genetically favoured in particular genetic (and hence racial) groups. This field of science is undermining a lot of the pseudo-academic nonsense that's been coming out of the social sciences that has the agenda of artificially equalising humanity, both in terms of race and gender. Evolutionary biology has hard evidence in genertics, anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, whereas the social sciences are based on opinion, conjecture and -isms driven by political and sociological ideology with no sound evidence. Hope that is sufficient.
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Post by ineffableone on Apr 6, 2012 1:30:28 GMT
The different ethnic groups are still the same human race not different races. They have found that humans all come from the same genetic bottle neck of African decent with the Genome project. Science backs up the fact that humans are not different races just different ethnic varieties of the same race. So please for the sake of dispelling myths stop trying to justify the use of the term race for ethnic variety and use the proper terms. from anthro.palomar.edu/ethnicity/ethnic_1.htm
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2012 2:10:36 GMT
Jussi, you can't let opinion stand over historical facts! :lol: The odachi didn't fade at the time of the Tokugawa (Edo) peacetime period, it happened during wartime! Let's get the dates correst here! Nanpokucho Era (1334-1393) - the rise of the odachi or nodachi Early Muromachi Era (1394-1466) - late in this period is the dominance of the shorter uchigatana, decline of odachi/nodachi Mid Muromachi Era (1467-1554) - swords shorten to around 24-26", and worn edge upwards - the katana makes its debut. Late Muromachi Era (1555-1595) - katana completely replaces the tachi as samurai sword. the Portugese introduced guns, armour became heavier against bullets, swords became wider, heavier and less curved to beat the armour. Edo Era (1596-1867) Tokugawa peacetime period - katana used as dress-swords. Moment of inertia is easy to explain. its an object's resistance to changes its rotating motion. Imagine you have a thin steel rod, and you walk up to a waist height brick fence, and strike the centre of your thin steel rod against the top of the brick fence. The impact may damage the bricks a bit, but the rest of the thin pipe will not want to stop, but to continue in its path of motion, and the weight of the part hanging past the wall will bend at the point where it hits the wall, bending yout pipe into an "L" shape. Now imagine if you have a long tapered steel rod that is springy, thick at the base, thin at the end, like a fishing rod. If you strike it similarly on the wall, the tip will flex and bend, but because it's much thinner, it doesn't carry the same momentum and will bend the tip less, and being more flexible, it will spring back. Basic physics, and the real reason why a Euro sword design is fas superior to the Japanese katana when you want to scale up the blade to huge lengths. The tapering of the blades with, along with a good distal taper, is important for any long structure to be able to hold up its own weight without collapsing. Next time you see a constrcution of a high-0rise building, look at the shape of the crane, same shape as a very long Euro sword, isn't it? This is basic engineering and physics, and the katana shape is an inferior design for scaling up by the virtue of its shape. With the promulgation of Japanese misinformation, I agree with Vincent, it's not anime and manga that's to blame, as it's obvious this stuff is high fantasy and make-believe. It comes out of the deliberate mythmaking during the peacetime period from Japan in their stories and books, as they struggled to come to terms with a national identity to unify a desperately fragmented society. Best explanation from "The Historical Foundations of Bushido" by Dr Karl Friday Much of the code of conduct for samurai prescribed by early modern and modern writers, then, was at odds with the apparent behavioral norms of the actual warrior tradition. By the same token, much of the "bushido" preached by the government and the militarists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was at best superficially derived from the "Way of the Warrior" espoused in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Modern bushido is closely bound up with the notion of a Japanese "national essence," and with those of the kokutai, or Japanese national structure, and the cult of the emperor. It was a propaganda tool, consciously shaped and manipulated as part of the effort to forge a unified, modern nation out of a fundamentally feudal society, and to build a modern national military made up of conscripts from all tiers of society. Bushido was believed to represent much more than just the ethic of the feudal warrior class. The Imperial Rescript to the Military of 1882, proclaimed that it "should be viewed as the reflection of the whole of the subjects of Japan." That is to say, warrior values were held to be the essence of Japanese-ness itself, unifying traits of character common to all classes. The abolition of the samurai class thus marked not the end of bushido, but the point of its spread to the whole of the Japanese population. So, no, you can't compare the mockery, farce and complete fabrication that is the code of bushido with the chivalry codes of the European knights! From the examination of history, to simplify the research, its clear that code of bushido didn't exist until the samurai ceased to exist, and what they claim may have been practiced in the past without being written wasn't practiced at all, history shows quite the opposite. The modern fabricated lie that is the code of bushido wasn't meant to be an ethical system anyway, it was mean to be "the essense of Japan", the source of its national identity because they didn't have one after all the drama and tumultous history that shook their nation up badly. It's just an empty trite piece of propaganda that was meant to tell the Japanese people "we are all of the samurai spirit" and that ideal samurai character who was honorable and protected women and children was obviously a fabricated ideal that never historically existed either. This was an attempt to create a false national identity based on non-existent historical characters to unify Japan. It's an insult to the real and practiced western ethical systems to even draw a comparison! Even with the false gacbricated code of bushido in modern Japanese society, it didn't make much odf a difference. I won't even mention the "Rape of Nanking" or the documented extensive mistretment and execution of prisoners of war in WWII either...
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Post by Vincent Dolan on Apr 6, 2012 2:35:41 GMT
A good example of this is the swords put out by Windlass Steelcrafts. It's well known that they have little in the way of distal taper and many of their longer swords are known to be rather whippy; that is, they bend under their own weight (at least, if I'm remembering the discussions on the topic correctly).
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2012 2:41:41 GMT
Hi ineffableone, That article you quoted is a perfect example of the nonsense that was being put out by the social science over the last few decades, with not a shred of evidence to support these opinions, which has totally been discredited. It's just a blend of opinion and political correctness, which is all these people have as they struggle to hang on to their academic posts as their whole worlds are being shaken up and tipped upside-down by the findings of science in the last decade or so. What they're claiming is totally absurd, they are actually making the idiotic claim that a person can't tell the difference between an Asian, a Western European, and a Sub-Sharan African! This is really pushing the boundaries of credibility... Incidentally, we don't class genetic origin by blood type, we sort by haplotypes, of which races contain a very uniqu proportion of very specific ones, can look at the maternal genetic lines of any race by looking at the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the paternal genetic lines from the Y-chromosome. Here's what you're looking for, notice the very obvious Y-chromosome haplotype distribution - yes, the races are VERY distinct from each other! Attachments:
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2012 2:54:09 GMT
I think the trick here is to come to terms with the fact that the Japanese aren't who they really claim to be in their literature, and are just as imperfectly human as any other race, and in fact they are inferior in many respects in terms of historical achievement and innovation, having never invented anything to change the course of human history like the real great empires, and having never innovated anything culturally for themselves, heavily borrowed from their neighbours, to whom they are genetically related to but hate to admit it, so the myths of superiority, cultural or in respect to sword manufacturing, just don't hold water.
The moment we let go of all this, we can objectively look at Japan and their swords in the same way that we can every other nation and culture, and get a real appreciation of the skill of the swordmakers and they strengths of their designs, and a respect for the real history that led to their creation.
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Post by Hackenslash on Apr 6, 2012 3:07:58 GMT
Slavs, East asians and Turkic types dominate powerlifting
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Post by ineffableone on Apr 6, 2012 3:22:02 GMT
[/attachment][/quote]
Still clinging to your false myth of multiple races, yet denying myths of Japanese katana LOL. I love your selective look at science and history.
from wiki def for Race (classification of humans)
Again I ask you Blackthorn in the interest in accurate myth disillusion to stop using the incorrect term race for human ethnic groups. If you wont you are continuing a myth of division in the human race that does not exist.
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Sébastien
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Post by Sébastien on Apr 6, 2012 3:22:58 GMT
I'd hate to sound blunt, but I will anyway ...
Gentlemen. Please stop this debate about race(s). Now.
I have seen this kind of debate only a very few times on SBG. Each time it ended on a very sour tone and with a thread lock. Races and the socio-political themes around them (whatever the scientific or non-scientific evidences) are incredibly sensitive subjects. I suggest we drop 'em then leave them for scholars and scientists in universities.
I hope I've been clear enough.
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