JAPANESE WAR FANS

[Jason Anstey]

Originally Posted by asomotif

Hello Jason,

To be frank,I have no knowledge on martial arts except for 10 lessons in Kendo I once followed.
I have no doubt that the video's you show us are ancient techniques.

But personally I also feel it hard to imagine that a serious stroke with a katana can be effectively stopped by a metal rod of approx 30 cms, without hand guard.
That is probably also David's point of view on this.

Also the technique where the katana is fixed by the fan and the tanto looks rather scary to me.
The katana is only 40 or 50 cms away from the defenders private parts.
If the attacker would step foreward I can imagine that he would cause some serious damage while still keeping out of reach of the fan and tanto

But then again, I can easily be wrong as I do like collecting edged weapons, but normally stay very very far from using them.

No problems. The thing to understand from the clips posted is that these are "embu" ie demonstrations of the art. THey are showing kata. THe kata consists of various principles and techniques. THe vids are not demonstration 'how to do this if someone does this' Normally demonstrations of this nature are for dojo only.

I understand that this site(which I am a big fan of for its knowledge and absence of wannabe ninjas) is for ethnographic weapon discussions. If I posted a picture of a weapon like the attached image and said this was based on reality - I would get smashed down - and rightly so.

Now, I have seen this thread - and I thank the OP for this, that I have a great deal of interest in both martial and collecting and I merely sought to show examples of accepted good form.

Hiroi Sensei who David mentioned as "comical" is actually one of the most respected martial artist in all of Japan regardless of school, he was a legend. So I though people would appreciate seeing something different without the Youtube martial arts $$ signs.

What I would like is for people to watch the embu again and see the angles shown in the slo-mo of the jutte and tessen in regards to the sword - one blocks and the other deflects the follow through of blade so the blocking hand is not cut off.

THese weapons were used primarily by the edo period police who did not wear swords (generalisation for the purpose of a short discussion)

Anyway it is a discussion that could go on way too long - and I apologise if I have ruffled feathers - my intention was to add to the OP not to take away the value of Vandoos post.