From When And Where Ninja Sword Got So Popular?

Summary: The fact that ninja had just a very few chances to have their swords made by master swordsmiths of the top class.

Though it is a tough weapon used by the Japanese Ninjas, it has evoked a lot of arguments and discussions like Ninja-to and Shinobikatana, a ninja sword This sword is one of the most sort after tool of martial arts. This sword was used by the Nihonto and the Ninjutsu. So, why did it raise so much of questions? It is because, either they were straight or curved, now the question was, how to use it perfectly?

The film industry is one of the prime reasons on why we are exposed to Ninja sword with so much but also it has its pros and cons. Great to know about the perfect martial arts, but did actually the film industry give the right information which now has the imprint in our head. Yes, even in modern Japanese books, the authors of which generally do not care much about studying the history, we found drawings of ninja-to with straight blade, square tsuba and saya with removable end.

So, What Is The Actual Truth About The Shape?

While, studying the history of Nihonto, you can find several types of swords with straight blade. Ken being one of them,it has a with double-sided edge and it connected religion and mythology rather than ninjas. Another one would be Chokuto, available with cutting edge blade only on one side and ending with a skew cut of the tip and these appear with hardened part which is Hamon. All of these swords were usually mounted in Tachi style of koshirae and worn hanging on two stripes under the belt on the left side with the edge facing ground. Chokuto used to be a part of the gear of Japanese nobility and therefore it has nothing to do with ninjas.

The swords with straight blade were general for the period around before the 9th century. Swords with big curvature of the blade followed. The reason for using curved blades in Ninja sword and the curvature is that the curvature gives the swords longer durability and better ability to cut in comparison to the used strength. Swords with big curvature lasted up until 16th century but got replaced with sword with smaller curvature of the blade. The blades again got straightened out the most in Kanbun period (1661 – 1673). Swords of that period only consisted of minimum curvature suppose for a few millimeters.This trend soon went aside and the blades were again produced with bigger curvature, around 15 mm and more.

With a deeper study on Ninja sword, we find out that the blades of Ninja-to differ in many ways from the swords of common shape of that time. It was much shorter than blade of classic Katana, its design and production was by far not that precise. With swords, ninja got the attention mainly on their practical use in fight, disregarding the aesthetic side of the weapon as an artistic and spiritual object.

Chan is a China’s martial art expert he wrote most of his article about the weapon technology, the making, uses and about many others.