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A tachi is a type of sabre-like traditionally made Japanese sword worn by the samurai class of feudal Japan. Tachi and uchigatana generally differ in length, degree of curvature, and how they were worn when sheathed, the latter depending on the location of the mei (銘), or signature, on the tang.
The Kogarasu Maru was designed with a curved double-edged blade approximately 62.8 cm long. One edge of the blade is shaped in normal tachi fashion but, unlike the tachi, the tip is symmetrical and both edges of the blade are sharp, except for about 20 cm of the trailing or concave edge nearest the hilt, which is rounded.
By the end of the Kamakura period the tachi was superseded by a shorter weapon in a new form, called katana. [2]: 13 It was with the general widespread use of the curved sword mounted and worn as a katana that classical Japanese swordsmanship for infantry applications really begins.
The dachi here (太刀) is simply the voiced compounding version of the term tachi (太刀, great sword), the older style of sword that predates the katana. The second character in tachi, 刀, is the Chinese character for "blade" (see also dāo), and is also the same character used to spell katana (刀) and the tō in nihontō (日本刀 ...
From around the 16th century, many Japanese swords were exported to Thailand, where katana-style swords were made and prized for battle and art work, and some of them are in the collections of the Thai royal family. [76] Mounting for a sword of the itomaki no tachi type with design of mon (family crests). 1600s. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
When a tachi was worn in the style of a katana, with the cutting edge up, the tachi's signature would be facing the wrong way. The fact that swordsmiths started signing swords with a katana signature shows that some samurai of that time period had started wearing their swords in a different manner. [25] [26]
The nagamaki was a long sword with a blade that could be 60 cm (24 in) or more and a handle of about equal length to the blade. [3] The blade was single-edged, resembling a naginata blade, but the handle (tsuka) of the nagamaki was not a smooth-surfaced wooden shaft as in the naginata; it was made more like a katana hilt.
Katanagatari is the story of Yasuri Shichika, a swordsman who fights without a sword, and Togame, an ambitious young strategist who seeks to collect 12 legendary swords for the shogunate. Shichika is the son of an exiled war hero and the seventh head of the Kyotouryuu school of fighting who lives on the isolated Fushou Island with his elder ...