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A kaishakunin (Japanese: 介錯人, lit. ' assist mistake person ') is a man appointed to behead an individual who has performed seppuku, Japanese ritual suicide, at the moment of agony. The role played by the kaishakunin is called kaishaku.
Executioner's sword (16th century) A decapitation scene as shown in Cosmographia universalis of Sebastian Münster (1552). An executioner's sword is a sword designed specifically for decapitation of condemned criminals (as opposed to combat). These swords were intended for two-handed use, but were lacking a point, so that their overall blade ...
On occasion, if the sentenced individuals were uncooperative, seppuku could be carried out by an executioner, or more often, the actual execution was carried out solely by decapitation while retaining only the trappings of seppuku; even the tantō laid out in front of the uncooperative offender could be replaced with a fan (to prevent ...
Japanese illustration depicting the beheading of Chinese captives. First Sino-Japanese War Sgt. Leonard Siffleet, an Australian POW captured in New Guinea, about to be beheaded by a Japanese soldier with a shin guntō sword, 1943. In Japan, decapitation was a common punishment, sometimes for minor offences.
Wazamono (Japanese: 業 （ わざ ） 物 （ もの ）) is a Japanese term that, in a literal sense, refers to an instrument that plays as it should; in the context of Japanese swords and sword collecting, wazamono denotes any sword with a sharp edge that has been tested to cut well, usually by professional sword appraisers via the art of tameshigiri (test cutting).
Archaeologists have uncovered an 8ft-long iron sword in Japan’s largest circular burial mound built in the fourth century. The weapon was discovered at Tomio Maruyama Kofun in Nara alongside a ...
Japanese swords were often forged with different profiles, different blade thicknesses, and varying amounts of grind. Wakizashi and tantō, for instance, were not simply scaled-down versions of katana; they were often forged in a shape called hira-zukuri, in which the cross-sectional shape of the blade becomes an isosceles triangle. [130]
The hundred man killing contest (百人斬り競争, hyakunin-giri kyōsō) was a newspaper account of a contest between Toshiaki Mukai (3 June 1912 – 28 January 1948) and Tsuyoshi Noda (1912 – 28 January 1948), two Japanese Army officers serving during the Japanese invasion of China, over who could kill 100 people the fastest while using a sword.