True Combat Value of Wootz

[tsubame1]

Originally Posted by Chris Evans

With Japanese blades we do know that the best were superb, but those produced in quantity for their feudal armies were nowhere as good . ...OMISSIS...However this may be, steel quality is one factor and sword shape and dimensions another. ...OMISSIS...In this regard, it is worth remembering that on all accounts the Japanese sword made for a very poor mounted weapon (they never understood cavalry).

Hi Chris. You're right about mass-produced swords (Kazuuchimono) made in certain periods of japanese history, and I agree about the many different
variables that are into the equation to make a good sword, being the swordsmith, material, shape and dimensions the most known.

But what is really far by reality and by serious studies is the statement that japanese blades were poor mounted weapon. The reason of the curvature of NihonTo is exactly the use from horseback. Japanese switched from straight blades (Chokuto shape inherited from China) to curved swords during the fightning against Emishi in the very early of unifing the nation. These populations of central Japan (Kanto plains) weren't influenced by chinese culture and had developed an horseback fighting style with bow and curved
swords. Tactics and weapons proved to be so good that the chinese style of fighting in footsoldiers formation was replaced by the Emeshi's one following the military principle of counter-response and symmetry in order to achieve victory against these populations. Warabite-To (ancestral Tachi) and bow (that later begun the Yumi, disaxed japanese bow) were the heritage such populations left to early Samurai. see "Heavenly warriors - the evolution of japan's military a.D. 500-1300" by William Wayne Farris, Harvard Univeristy Press, ISBN 0 674 38704 X.
A compromise to maintain some stabbing function in a curved cavalry sword was made for centuries putting the curvature in the very first part of the blade, leaving the upper part almost straight.
Japanese way to use cavalry was different from alòmost any other outside Japan but sthis doesn't mean they never understood cavalry. This is a simplicistic statement that forget historical and geographical conditions in which japanese horsefighting evolved. Japanese understood cavalry according to their needs, that's a lot different then stating they didn't understed it at all.