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Post by Dalaran1991 on Jul 24, 2017 8:26:01 GMT
Hmm... my issue with blocking with a wakizashi closer to the tsuba is that it is incredibly dangerous, with the tiny tsuba. Margin of error is much smaller than if you have a blade-catching guard. Almost all companion weapons historically have very good hand protection (parrying dagger, main-gauche, buckler) The wakizashi doesnt really fit in that niche in that it is a companion arm but it is used differently.
To be honest I really do wonder if people actually used daisho katana/waki. As discussed above there's advantage in dual wielding katana against another katana, maybe even against a nodachi / yari. However using a daisho, supposed the swordman is good enough to be able to use it effectively, then he is certainly good enough to just stick to the katana. Two swords better > 1 sword, but two-handing a sword is better than dual wield a same length sword and a shorter sword. You will be faster, stronger and more accurate with the katana than you would be using daisho. This disadvantage is negate somewhat with dual katana due to the better range.
Let me put this in simple terms: say you are good enough to dual wield katana/waki. Why cant you dual-wield katana-katana then, given that you've developed proper wrist muscle to control both. Is there any advantage a waki offers over katana? (and we re not talking about things like fighting in a confined corner)
@kyoshi: that makes a lot of sense now. At 186cm one lunge /tai sabaki is enough for you to close the entire striking distance of a longsword, even if the opponent sidestep / step back to compensate. At 1m55 my lunge brings me to just near the crossguard, and when the opponent reposition we basically restart in chudan, or it devolves into grappling. That's like a billionaire telling people "I never find it hard to make money"! LOL! :D
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Jul 24, 2017 9:39:28 GMT
Hmm... my issue with blocking with a wakizashi closer to the tsuba is that it is incredibly dangerous, with the tiny tsuba. Margin of error is much smaller than if you have a blade-catching guard. Almost all companion weapons historically have very good hand protection (parrying dagger, main-gauche, buckler) The wakizashi doesnt really fit in that niche in that it is a companion arm but it is used differently. A typical parrying dagger has quillons curved towards the tip, which are good for trapping the opponents blade, or at least making it harder/slower for the opponent to disengage. But quillons like that don't offer much more protection against direct hits to the hand than a disc tsuba (i.e., if you miss your block, and the opponent's blade comes right into your hand). Some off-hand daggers have quite small guards:  and various daggers not specifically designed as off-hand daggers, like naval dirks, Scottish dirks, rondel daggers etc. were used as off-hand weapons:  Some off-hand or twin weapons have substantial guards, Chinese butterfly swords, Chinese hook swords, Spanish "sail" guard parrying daggers, Indian katar, Indian saintie, bucklers (as you noted). Others have much less protection, including plenty of specialised parrying daggers, off-hand knives in arnis/escrima/kali, Chinese twin jian, scabbard as off-hand parrying weapon, sticks. Yes, less margin for error with a wakizashi than with many other parrying weapons, but it isn't incredibly dangerous. Train with a wakizashi-length bokken with light hand protection only, and you'll get quite good quickly. Two swords better > 1 sword, but two-handing a sword is better than dual wield a same length sword and a shorter sword. Depends on how easy it is to use the sword with one hand. I think that a lightweight smallsword might be faster one-handed than two-handed. However, if it's a 1.5kg sword, I think two-handed will be better. Solution: choose a lightweight katana if you want to use two swords. The same sword used one-handed instead of 2 can give you up to 4" more reach. |
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Ifrit
Member
More edgy than a double edge sword
Posts: 3,284
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Post by Ifrit on Jul 24, 2017 9:48:49 GMT
If you use two medium-heavy swords, it is easy to land a powerful, hard to block, blow, without having to over commit. But this is something light contact sparring could never teach a person
Using momentum with a heavier blade makes it much harder to block. Having a sword in the other hand compensates for the sluggish nature of heavier blades too
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Post by Kiyoshi on Jul 24, 2017 19:09:17 GMT
Hmm... I may be tall but I still was able to use a single wakizashi to close the distance on taller people when I was younger. I had to take a larger step but it was not too hard. Back then, I was maybe 5'4" and my tall classmate was about 6'2". That should be quite the difference but even at 5'4", one hop forward was enough for me to close the gap between a jo/bo and wakizashi and definitely a katana. The trick is to ease forward and advance forward quickly after receiving an attack. If you just lunge in willy nilly I couldn't image even someone with my height getting far. You don't have to be touching them, even as tall as I am, that takes multiple steps, you just have to be close enough to cut while making it tough for them to disengage your long sword.
I also pretty strongly disagree that two swords of the same length are always better. They are better at some things but can't be used well in the ways I discussed above. How I said above, the katana is used basically as before and the wakizashi punishes defense by closing. With two katana, the range they can disengage is the same range you'd try to punish, making it harder to fight like I describe.
As for blocking with wakizashi, I have no tsuba at all on my bokken. When I do use one (say I'm fighting a tougher opponent and I want the option to tsuba catch) I don't mind it's size. I got my fingers hit a lot when I first started because I couldn't seem to get a grasp on the things in my hands being extensions so I'd reflexively guard like I would at empty hand distance instead of the distance and angle I should with the weapons in my hands.
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Post by Cosmoline on Jul 24, 2017 19:13:28 GMT
Are there sparring videos of dual wielded katana by people who know what they're doing? It's a strange concept to me. I've seen long and short blades work well together. It's not unlike sword and buckler or sword and shield. There's a division of responsibility between right and left. With two equal length long blades, though, I can't see how they'd coordinate without running into each other.
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Post by Kiyoshi on Jul 24, 2017 19:14:49 GMT
Not that I know of. Lol
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Post by jammer on Jul 24, 2017 19:21:55 GMT
Funny you should mention "practice", cause in the police academy you DO get tested on the 21 ft scenario. You have 2.8 seconds to unholster (again, a level 3 retention holster) draw, and fire TWO shots mid torso. Join your local police academy and you can run the drill to your hearts content. Besides which, this Indiana Jones scene is "smoke and mirrors" anyways. Real life situations aren't as "flashy" and clear cut. It is going to sound odd, contrived even, but in a lot of koryu paired kata, the opponents start 3 steps each apart, plus one step to strike. Each take 3 steps and then there is one step from either to attack. Each step is about 3 ft, so 3 step each is 18 ft, the extra step to kill is 21ft. We are engrained to start off the kata at about 21 ft apart, maybe a coincidence, but an interesting one. |
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Post by jammer on Jul 24, 2017 20:05:48 GMT
Are there sparring videos of dual wielded katana by people who know what they're doing? It's a strange concept to me. I've seen long and short blades work well together. It's not unlike sword and buckler or sword and shield. There's a division of responsibility between right and left. With two equal length long blades, though, I can't see how they'd coordinate without running into each other. Doesnt seem right to me either. I find no schools of kenjutsu that advocate wielding two long swords in my books, and I know of none, so it would seem that the practice was very rare. |
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Post by howler on Jul 24, 2017 20:45:44 GMT
Duel wield answer is large for reach, speed, power in your strong hand and shorter (so you don't tangle/bind yourself up) in weaker hand to block and cover weak side. All sword types show this as the common way, and for good reasons.
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Post by zabazagobo on Jul 24, 2017 21:31:19 GMT
This could be due to how the daisho was the acceptable equipment of the warrior class. Since having a long sword and a short sword was what was decreed as 'proper', styles likely evolved around government regulation.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2017 22:07:45 GMT
I really want to redo that scene with someone who actually knows how to attack with a sword. Indiana would have been dead in a second. this should be around 21 feet of distance... you know that rule? I really would like to see you try... ;-) ...no, dont try it, please, cosmo. rethink. |
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Post by Cosmoline on Jul 24, 2017 22:33:28 GMT
We just discussed it at length, but it's OT here.
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Jul 24, 2017 22:36:04 GMT
Are there sparring videos of dual wielded katana by people who know what they're doing? It's a strange concept to me. I've seen long and short blades work well together. It's not unlike sword and buckler or sword and shield. There's a division of responsibility between right and left. With two equal length long blades, though, I can't see how they'd coordinate without running into each other. Not katana, but sabres: I think these are the Purpleheart synthetic sabre trainers. 33"/85cm blades, 730g. |
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Post by Cosmoline on Jul 24, 2017 22:43:27 GMT
That is interesting. Of course one advantage of a saber is it has hilt protection for the hand, so you can hold it out in the classic guards while the second saber is in a supporting role. That gets more dangerous to the hand with simple hilted weapons--as I've found out getting thwapped a few times.
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Post by Kiyoshi on Jul 24, 2017 22:45:46 GMT
Not katana, but sabres: I think these are the Purpleheart synthetic sabre trainers. 33"/85cm blades, 730g. The duel saber guy here seems to run into the pitfall I was talking about earlier where he was negating the advantage of having two weapons in the first place for a good chunk of the video. He was either not using his second at all, following up in the same place so his opponent didn't have to move to block, or was colliding/crossing his swords. The couple times he did use his two weapons as two weapons he seemed to land hits, but those were few and far between and often repeated three times after in the same combo only to be learned from the first time by the single sabre guy. I also didn't see much in the way of covering attack recovery with his off hand. Is this typical of duel sabers or is it more likely this guy is still newer to that specific setup (seemed he had fairly decent fundamentals but the single sabre guy seemed more solid)? |
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Post by howler on Jul 25, 2017 3:02:20 GMT
This could be due to how the daisho was the acceptable equipment of the warrior class. Since having a long sword and a short sword was what was decreed as 'proper', styles likely evolved around government regulation. But the long sword (strong hand) and smaller blade (weak hand) are the norm in all other blade cultures. Big sword is just too heavy and clumsy for the weak hand ON AVERAGE (as you always have a few exceptional exceptions). Not only the strength needed, but the skill to not get in your own way and be your own worst enemy. I suppose it would be a potential tactical advantage if someone had never dealt with an individual with two large blades went against a fighter who was somewhat skilled/practiced at wielding them. |
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Jul 25, 2017 6:26:20 GMT
[Is this typical of duel sabers or is it more likely this guy is still newer to that specific setup (seemed he had fairly decent fundamentals but the single sabre guy seemed more solid)? I think he's experimenting. Part of it is trying to apply stuff from Chinese twin dao forms in sparring. It isn't an example of expert two-sword fighting. For sabres like this, with a purely one-handed grip, you don't have the trade-off of going from two hands to one hand. Going from single sword to two swords, you just gain an additional sword. If you don't make much use of the 2nd sword, and just fight largely as you would if you had a single sabre, what do you lose? Ideally, you use both. |
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Post by Kiyoshi on Jul 25, 2017 7:40:34 GMT
I see. That does make sense. So long as you don't let the second sword distract you, you don't really lose anything by negating the second sword (aside from punching, is that allowed in hema?). And if it is a modern wushu dao form, needs more whirlwind kicks.  On a more serious note, do you know many twin dao forms that use both sword from different angles? I think there are some taiji dao forms that have some decent techniques where both are utilized but I don't know much about dao (and have never used twin dao) tbh, I was more of a jian and gun guy when it came to kung fu. :\ |
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Post by Dalaran1991 on Jul 25, 2017 7:58:19 GMT
In my Shinkendo dojo the only time Sensei showed Niten, it is with two bokkens and not with daisho. He and the advance students do this, even for tameshigiri. You set up 3 targets and alternate cuts with the two swords.
For tachiuchi most of the katas involve the niten guy in a gedan / chudan guard. The details have been discussed above. As with almost all kenjutsu kata, the guy who "win" started out defending, then do a lightning riposte. The forms I have seen mostly involve checking the attacking sword while exiting the line of attack AND entering opponent's guard simultaneously.
Sensei can easily fend off 2-3 advanced students dual wielding. He usually couldn't do it with single wield. So there must the advantage. Mushashi also said that the extra sword usually is handy when fighting multiple attackers.
Then again most people would not consider Shinkendo as "orthodox". We are forbidden to take any video unfortunately, otherwise I would go to class basically as a cameraman :D
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Post by Kiyoshi on Jul 25, 2017 8:15:36 GMT
As far as taking on multiple people, it depends on the group. A well trained to work together group will beat a single person virtually 100% of the time. Beating multiple people relies a lot on good positioning. Teams used to working together know how to move together and attack during periods that are not able to be responded to reasonably. Not to mention, if the team aims not to kill right away but to wear down the lone person, they will almost assuredly outlast the long person due to total amount of stamina. I find it difficult to believe in general that a lone person of nearly any skill level could beat a group of advanced swordsman who have had some training as a group consistently, two swords or not.
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