[Philip]

While getting the photo issues straightened out, I'd like to just point out at present that many writers put too much emphasis on Japanese influence on Ming saber design. True, the disc guards and cord-wrapped guards prompt a casual association. True, Qi Jiguang had a thing or two to say about Japanese arms and tactics because a lot of his career was focused on dealing with the coastal pirates (who BTW also included as many Chinese ne'er-do-wells, and quite a few Malay and Portuguese adventurers in their overall number). True, the Kango trade brought shiploads of katana blades to China during the Ming. But also....

People tend to forget that for most of the Ming, China's security issues focused on Inner Asia -- the regions to the west, and north of the Great Wall. After all the dynasty came to power after the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty was overthrown, and the Mongols didn't just slink away without a whimper. Military conflict continued, and armies tend to crib their enemies' good ideas to boost their chances of winning.

The peoples of Inner Asia, being steppe nomads, had limited manufacturing resources and for things like swords, obtained things from neighboring peoples, especially those ethnically related and not openly hostile to them. The Mongols for a long time had close relations with Turkic and Iranic peoples of Central Asia, who in turn were cousins of those further west who had established great empires of their own and who were skilled armorers in their own right -- Khazars, Timurids, Seljuks, etc.

If you look at the population of existing Chinese sabers of the Ming and the transition period into the Qing, and examine the stylistic elements of the blades, you will find that they have more in common with the sabers of the late-medieval and early-modern Middle East, (especially the Seljuk/Ottoman Turks, Iran, the Mamluks) and later during the Qing, Mughal India. All of these cultures weren't slouches when it came to making sabers, and it's debatable whether the Japanese katana is necessarily "better" than any of these continental sword types in terms of functionality.

When Qi Jiguang was battling the coastal pirates, China was just beginning its transition away from the double-edged jian and the straight single edged zhibeidao as the dominant military sidearm, so it is no wonder why China's late imperial saber types have so much variety in the style of their blades. The 15th-17th cents. were a period of experimentation and evolution, with favorite forms maturing in the 18th and then declining into decadence in the 19th as the empire decayed.

Oh, another thing. The Qijiadao in this post has a blade that would be recognizeable on any number of Korean sabers as well, but we can save that story for another time. This subject is far more complex than the simplified narrative that one can deduce just from reading the works of Gen. Qi. In this case, it would do well for collectors to perhaps step back from the traditional Chinese fixation on texts, and include an exhaustive hands on study of the objects themselves in all their variety.