Samurai Sword Basics, A Brief History

Capturing the spirit of old Japan and recognised byupwards.
its deadly curvature, the samurai sword is widelyThe craft of forging katana samurai swords
recognised throughout the world as the mostpeaked during 1190 - 1337 - many of the swords
deadly of all Japanese weaponry. Although gainingfrom this area we're assigned national treasures.
modern fame and notoriety in modern epicThousands of swords are still circulated and
cinema in such films as The Last Samurai and thecollected from more recent times; the most
Kill Bill series by Quentin Tarantino, samurai swordspopular 'collection' era's being WW1 and WW2.
have long being an iconic symbol of Japan and itseBay is a great place to find both old and new
history.samurai swords, but beware of what you're
The most famous samurai sword, the Katana, isbuying - a lot of swords sold today are machine
curved and bladed only on one side - if you havereplicas and only fit for display purposes.
seen Kill Bill, you will know exactly what I'm talkingThere were however many types of samurai
about. The Katana was developed in the 10thswords and the other often mentioned includes
century to enable Japanese calvery to carry outshorter swords, one being the wakizashi (shoto)
surprise attacks on their enemy and was wornand the tanto knife. Only the samurai were
hung from the belt with the cutting edge facedallowed to carry these as a pair.