Swordsmanship for Dummies

Ever since I was 12 I've wanted to write a cool-ass story starring a sword-wielding hero, and since then that story has developed fairly well. But now that I think about it, I don't know very much about swordsmanship and sword-based fighting styles in general...or any fighting style, for that matter.

So, anybody out there know some facts about sword styles that can point me in the right direction? Because it'd be just aces if all my knowledge didn't come from watching anime...

If it helps, the hero uses a Japanese-style sword (for several obvious reasons), along with a few others. Though to be fair, there are plenty of characters who use other swords - rapiers and broadswords and cutlasses and whatnot.

Can any of you Tropers lend a hand?

edited 2nd Oct '10 10:50:24 AM by Voltech44

—is seconding the question—

Flynning can only answer so much.

Obligatory Wikipedia Link

Swords may help.

Swinging a three-to-six pound chunk of steel ain't as easy as it seems (trust me, I was shown the basic basics at a convention). You use pretty much your whole body to strike - arms mostly guide the sword, but to gain power, you have to combine footwork and twisting your torso to get enough momentum. That's for starters.

Also you have to think about what the weapon was designed for.

Many Japanese weapons (katana or otherwise) are designed for slashing attacks like the Diagonal Cut first even though in some cases they make competent stabbers. Meaning you can't go around with a katana stabbing everyone. Just like you can't go around with a rapier performing Samurai Diagonal Cuts.

Also, even some of the most sturdy European swords can't cut through steel armor easily.

^ I'd rather say that none can cut through steel armour, easily or not. If you had a sword and had to use it against an armoured opponent, you grabbed it one hand on the handle and second in the middle of the blade, and used the sword as an ultra-short spear and tried to stab the opponent at the unprotected parts, like eyes or groin. Alternatively, you grabbed the sword by the blade and bashed with the pommel.

Look up fencing and kendo championships on Youtube.

it's kind of one of the reasons armor was invented...so y'know, people wont hack at you with their oversized kitchen knives.

With respect, I advise against using fencing and kendo for reference. Those are sport arts, considerably watered-down from their original combat arts. I recommend looking up some Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu videos on Youtube.

It's one style that hasn't been diluted over the centuries. There is no sparring for obvious reasons, but the techniques are purely combat-oriented. TSKSR focuses on fighting armoured opponents. For other styles, I suggest Toyama-ryu, Mugai-ryu and Yagyu Shinkage-ryu. If you want dual-wielding, look into Niten-ichi-ryu.

^Ah, I guess I should expect no less from a samurai troper...

Anyway, thanks for the good info, everyone. I'll be sure to put it to good use.

Don't forget to look up medieval fencing. There's plenty of it on Youtube, too. The buzzwords you may look for are "historical European martial arts"/HEMA, or variants of it.

Yep, don't neglect the European sword arts - in my opinion, they're probably better than the Japanese version, but that's another thing for another day.

Tut, tut, at this point we're only trying to prove they're equal.

The above tips should work as far as the style. But also remember: if there's a scene where your hero puts on armor for the first time, he should NOT be able to wield his sword as easily as he can without. He needs to adjust to carrying around the extra weight.

If I can find them I will share my stash of electronic medieval sword manuals.

European swords were a combination of crushing/shearing/cutting/ also stabbing.

Sword Combat is tiring and extremely brutal. The wounds are quite horrific. IF they don't kill you your likely to be maimed for life.

Eastern Weaponry was just as horrific and nasty inflicting nasty and ghastly wounds. I know about the stigma of the show but if you check out the gel dummy tests for Deadliest warrior you get a pretty fair idea of how nasty these weapons are.

It's worth looking at the stuff the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (ARMA) has put up, too. They cover pretty much everything from high-Medieval onward for non-firearm stuff.

^The Website: http://www.thehaca.com/ These guys are awesome. These will keep you occupied for a few years: http://www.thearma.org/reading.htm My personal favorite: http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/GSilver.htm

Just bear in mind that no one really knows how our European ancestors actually fought with swords, because the oral knowledge was lost after the invention of firearms.

edited 8th Oct '10 8:02:47 PM by DeMarquis

The manuals of the Scholas still exist and contrary to that belief black powder weapons are far older then you know. Even after the shift in combat dynamics to fire arm armies Melee weapons were still very widely used. Like Pikemen, and saber armed Calvary and countless other melee weapons that did not really fully vanish until World War I.

What we are missing is pieces of the manuals for some arms and people who can reliably read the writing that does exist.

One of the signs of an advanced civilized society is deliberate archaism. Ie the practice of sword fighting.

Nope I was right there were cannon present at Agincourt. Here

And also the Hundred Years War had black powder weaponsMore Gonne's

Fire arms have existed for a long time it took them many centuries to develop to the point where they seriously began to replace the old ways of war.

edited 8th Oct '10 9:36:37 PM by TuefelHundenIV

That's not what I was saying. Unlike, say, Japan, where there is an unbroken continuity of teaching going all the way back to the era when swords were a primary weapon, in Europe the continuity was broken, and we no longer really know exactly how swordsmanship was taught or practiced before the mid-1700's or so.

For a katana or tachi, research iai or kenjutsu rather than kendo as the latter is the stylized sporting varient that has goofy rules. Similarly, watching Olympic foil or sabre won't help. Epee bouts are close to a real small sword duel although it would be more of a duel to first blood, so arm and leg hits become more prominent than torso shots would be if you were actually trying to kill someone.

You can find video clips of SCA battles online.

@Voltech: check out "The Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Musashi; it's in the public domain so it should be easy to track down a copy BUT careful with the translation. Many of them are either exercises in linguistics or neutered discussions of strategy. A good one is Stephen F. Kaufman's version.

The book goes into extensive description of both sword-fighting technique and what Musashi felt was proper attitude for a warrior. I highly recommend it.

I used to do boffer combat; while that's nothing near the real thing I can tell you some stuff that seldom seems to make it into books with swordplay in them...

• Backstabbing. In real combat, people get stuck in the kidneys a lot. On the boffer field it a good 3/5ths of tag-outs were the results of back-stabs. Random aside; the experienced players would wear bells on their belts as a sign that they refused to engage in this "dishonorable" but highly effective practice. A good way to write a veteran warrior is to have him check his back a lot.
• People fall down. Shoelaces come undone, and feet develop insane attractions to roots, divots and each other. Even very graceful and/or skilled fighters can be done in by fate. Another aside: the worst injury I took on the boffer field was due to a spill caused by a shoelace. I twisted an ankle, suffered six patches of road rash and couldn't walk right for a week.
• Disarms are hard. Knocking a weapon from someone's hand (provided that someone has any idea of how to hold it right) is real damn difficult.

If I think of anything else I'll edit this post.

Make sure you study the history and use of the katana itself, as Tom pointed out. I personally think the daito (katana) is overrated and overestimated in terms of rigidity and durability. Keep in mind this is coming from someone who actively trains with this weapon. The katana is not designed as a defensive instrument in that it lacks a sufficient base for blocking. Just to clarify, a Scottish claymore, for instance, would severely damage a katana upon blade-to-blade contact. Fighting techniques employed by modern Japanese sword practitioners reflect a desire to kill an enemy as quickly and as cleanly as possible. Think of a daito as a bolt-action sniper rifle - one shot, one kill.

However, there were an abundance of both good and bad swordsman in feudal Japan, and historical evidence (namely from recovered swords themselves) demonstrates that many daito did, in fact, suffer from moderate blade-to-blade contact. In other words, a quick kill was the ideal but not the reality for all samurai, especially since many of those in the samurai class who carried daisho (daito and shoto pair) were swordsmen in name only. Especially after the Muromachi Period, wearing a daisho was more of a fashion statement for some. I can't stress enough how much you should avoid portraying the daito as a blocking weapon. I've seen too many broken katanas to downplay the physics behind this structural shortcoming. No blocky-blocky bash-bash please.

I would also advise researching weapon-based fighting systems used by the Greeks, Romans, Eastern European tribes, the Chinese and the Filipinos. Prankration does have a limited repertoire of sword fighting techniques, many of which actually survived as empty-handed boxing maneuvers. The sword and stick skill sets used in Eskrima, Silat, and Arnis have several uses in close-quarters combat, so I'd look up articles on the balisong and the machete for that particular group. Also consider classical Chinese fighting styles such as Tai Chi Chuan, Wing Chun, Choy Li Fut, and Shaolin Kempo. You might find useful resources on the deployment of the Chinese broadsword in both military affairs and domestic altercations.

I'm not so sure about the total disappearance of European literature regarding swordsmanship. Ironically, I can't find the manual, but I recall a 15th century German mercenary writing several published guides on basic sword use in both military combat and personal self-defense, and many of those training manuals should still be around. There should be some Adobe documents floating around cyberspace somewhere.

One more system comes to mind: Kalarippayattu. It's an excellent style with regard to its preservation of ancient sword fighting techniques, and while I've never personally trained in any of the schools, I've sparred with exponents of the various sub-systems, and it's definitely top-notch.

Edit: I fixed some grammar.

edited 29th Nov '10 10:58:30 PM by Aprilla

Fundamental rule of swordplay: when attacked, it's just like chess. You have overall three options: you either move out of the way, stop/divert the attacker's sword or attack in the same moment he does. The best swordsmen make each movement fulfill two of those purposes.

I'll give you some technical advice with the katana, since that's my area of knowledge. I'm not sure how detailed you intend your fight scenes to be, but here's a start.

You have five basic stances in most schools: jodan-no-kamae (sword over head, useful for aggressiveness), chudan-gamae (sword in front, pointed at enemy's eye level, best overall defensive stance) gedan-gamae (sword pointed at enemy's knees/feet depending on distance) hasso-gamae (sword held pointed diagonally backward over the right shoulder, good for initiating diagonal cuts) and waki-gamae (sword pointed at the ground behind you, good for luring the enemy into an attack). There are others depending on the school, but those are the basic five you see most often. You get things like o-gasumi-gamae, sha-no-kamae etc. Truthfully, you could have your fighter stick with two or three of those stances. Personally I don't use waki that much.

In most fights, you'd do best to have your character stick with chudan. It keeps your sword controlling the embusen, the centre line of the engagement. You always want to be there. From chudan, I recommend opening with a thrust. It forces the enemy back and (hopefully) off-balance. However, an experienced swordsman can either dash the thrusting sword off to the side, thus creating an opening, or step to the side, leaving your attacking swordsman's wrists/hands extended and within reach of a blade. As said though, bear in mind that too much contact between swords like the katana WILL damage the weapon. The dashing-the-sword-away thing is best done when there isn't room to move to the side.

(continued after I get some sleep)

edited 4th Dec '10 5:20:13 AM by TomoeMichieru