"Confusingly, in Japan, "katana" is sometimes used as a generic term for "sword", regardless of type."
So this trope exists to point out that westerners are wrong to refer to all Japanese swords by the Japanese word for sword?
Hide / Show Replies
like a gun can be a gun, or shotgun, or sxs shotgun, or express gun its a catch all, that can be defined further, is that what your geting at?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure the point he's making is that complaining about perople thinking that "every Japanese sowrd is a katana" would be like complaining about people thinking "every American firearm is a gun."
Yeah, this trope page seems a little misinformed. The word "katana" (also pronounced "to") just means "knife" and isn't specific at all.
I don't know enough about Japanese swords to weigh in on the various types, but "tsurugi" (other reading: "ken") is a generic term meaning "sword" and may refer to any type of broadsword, including non-Japanese ones. Kusanagi's original name, Murakumo no tsurugi means "Sword of Gathering Clouds," and its later name, Kusanagi no tsurugi means "Grass-mowing Sword" because that's what Yamato Takeru did with it, cutting grass. (Among other things.) The word "katana" tends to refer either to sabres (again, not only Japanese ones) or to Japanese swords in general.
Btw the correct term for "Japanese sword" is "nihontou" which means exactly that. This is the umbrella term under which various Japanese sword types such as katana, tachi, etc. belong to.
Edited by Barano Hide / Show Replies
You Could Always Edit It Yourself. Maybe you're not an expert but you certainly know a lot more basic information on this topic than I do.
See you in the discussion pages.
The article mention the Kusanagi blade with a few pot holes to so, "no not that one from that anime you're thinking of." One of those is for Naruto, and the situation's a bit more complex than that.
Orochimaru's Kusanagi is rendered as a katana in the manga but as a tsurugi in the anime, meaning it might very well *be* the original blade or a copy of it in that setting. Sasuke has a chokutou he calls kusanagi, but it's a different sword.
Just FYI since there's no examples section for this article to place this clarification in.
Could we please have examples of this?