Jitte, Edo period

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by kronckew

a tsuba is not much hand protection. then that begs the question why do waks and katana/tanto/tachi not have decent guards? they obviously had seen spanish/portugese rapiers for centuries. even a more primitive extended 'd' guard like they finally used in the 20th C. would be better & still allow two handed use. ah, well, they had many weapons weird and wonderful for the western collector. .

More of a guard than the typical shashka, Philippine sword, dha, stiletto, kukri, and in some ways, better than a Medieval European cruciform sword. Sometimes "better" isn't better. (But sometimes it is; I should post a photo of interesting battle damage on a kukri.)