• someone told them to go there
• who can build a katana / iaito better than the Japanese ?
• the big players on the iaito market (in Japan) let you choose your ideal length of blade/tsuka or you can build one from scratch
• made in Japan = good quality stuff

I the last, let’s say 6 years, i met a lot of practitioners and i’ve noticed  that a lot of them (do i dare to say most ?)  are really ‘uneducated’ when it comes to the sword itself. Something that rather surprised me as a non practitioner.

They mix up or even don’t know the names of the basic parts. The length of their blade need to be xx shaku but when asking if that’s the nagasa or measured from tsuba to tip they look at me like they have seen a ghost, etc

In other words, they know how to use the sword as a ‘tool’ but that’s about it and there’s very little interest to know more about the when, why,where …

They’re also the first to say that the ‘Chinese made iaito’ are rubbish

And while i need to agree in big lines on bullet  2 & 3, point 4 is something i want to talk about today.

I’ve seen a lot of poorly build iaito’s coming out of Japan. Not to say that while some of them  has a label that says “proudly made in japan”, they have never been in Japanese (workers) hands at all. Or most of the parts are bought in China and than assembled in Japan.

Few days ago, a client dropped an iaito of one of his students because the tsuba was a bit loose. The overall finish of the iaito looked ok (nice tsukamaki, good balance, ..)  and besides the moving tsuba there wasn’t anything else to be noticed until…. i took the sword apart

Ok looks like someone stuffed the habaki with some wood to get it tight…

Ow ok…if you need a piece of wood like that, you defenitely have a problem with the fit of the habaki

That doesn’t look like a ‘traditional’ construction as well to me…

As soon as i started to remove the tsuka there was another ‘ohno’ moment :

The tsuka was filled up with a lot of ‘supportive’ elements In fact, whithout those , the tang is dancing like a rockstar in that tsuka…

I’ve also noticed something ‘weird’ on the way the tsuka is constructed :

Looks like it was cut & glued from the side…

Anyone else noticed a tsuka construction like this or have a proper explenation that i don’t know of ?

Like said in the beginning, this iaito had an ok overal finish and was good balanced but if this was an iaito sold by a Chinese manufacturer, people would defenitely label it with  a “see i told you a  Chinese katana is rubbish” stamp. “That’”s why a Japanese made is more expensive..it’s all in the details..”

Where i want to go with all of  this : it’s not because it’s coming from Japan that it is superiour to a Chinese or Western made…

The whole e-mail conversation started with the question if i could ship the Tsunami katana to his country… just you have the context.. and for both of us, English isn’t our native language

This is what followed :

Me :

Thanks for your interest. We could defenitely ship to XXX but i need to check for the shippingcosts. Could you provide me with the city & postalcode where it has to be shipped ? At the moment, the tsunami is out of stock, need to look when it comes back.

If anything else, just let me know !

He :

You are welcome Dave, you got plenty of really good samurai sword and after that i read your useful book i decided to choose the best samurai sword that i can cut heavy things with, is Tsunami that has no ” Hi ” so  i guess i’ll be always waiting for it to comes back to buy it, but if there is any strong samurai sword than Tsunami that has no ” Hi ” to cut heavy thing i like to know, cause in generale i wanna take the  best sword you have in cutting heavy heavy things.

Me :

Hi,

Even the strongest sword can not cut rocks  We do have a few alternatives. This one here is a very good one (and cheaper) :

http://www.samurai-sword-shop.com/higo-katana-409-prd1.htm

I also have another one here that is not on the site yet but it has a bit of a long blade..

He :

Haha, i know that i can’t cut rocks, but i like cut some ice man and ice is strong to cut, if you wanna know my purpose to why even i wanna buy a katana because i’m a martial and i want to have a katana for protection that’s why i always ask for the strongest sword to cut heavy things because i don’t want to fail me in a battle someday !

Me :

No problem, the tsunami is coming back in stock end of next week, beginning the week after that. Do i keep it aside for you since that’s the only one coming in..

He :

Yes sure, but i really need to know is it the best sword you have for protection body and fighting ?

Me :

In theory it’s one of the strongest swords we do carry but you can never look into the steel of the blade

Me :

Hi,

Just to let you know that we have the tsunami available again 

He :

even real samurai can’t break rocks , right ? so go fuck yourself with your bla bla , next time talk well with your clients , you don’t sell your items for free IDIOT !

Me :

Go ahead and try to cut some iceblocks with a ‘super duper non breakable’ katana … Let me know when you found some, defenitely need to buy some

Dave
PS: love you too my friend…

He :

well , katana is a sword of a samurai and a samurai is a worrior , so if a REAL katana could not break some iceblocks , well it’s not a real one , cause katana sword is so famous with the power of cuting things like humain bodies :p

And this is the part where i have to let this conversation go…some people just don’t want to learn/understand things. These kind of similar conversations does happen from time to time so it just reflect the myths and ‘mis education’ people have. And the influence of movies

As far as ‘ a real katana is super duper strong’, just watch this video too see how easy you can break a ‘real’ one with a bad technique

So who has a similar situation he/she want to talk about…