Also known in China as "Joo Luk-ing Hat Mi".

Also includes training in clubs (Real ones, along with Chairs, billiard cues, midgets) and blades (Knives, broken bottles, broken bones from midgets.).

an interesting sharing of ideas, showing it isn't just off the top of the head but backed by experience.

BUT the key difference between a sword jab and fist jab is penetration. A solid body shot/jab is going to hurt but almost certainly not going to be fatal or cause 'system failure. a sword thrust to the vitals will do just that, also if the blow goes how as the asian swordsman is still pumping for his strike, the power behind the strike- the muscles having to reverse direction-is going to drop dramatically. The rapier was developed because of it's leaality. Yes it came along inresponse to the need to probe weak points in heavy plate, but the sword further developed in the 16th and 17th centuries long after full plate had disappeared, because the rapid thrust was found to be more effective than the bone cleaving strokes of heavy swords or ages earlier.

Okay, but answer me this. If we can shoot someone with a handgun in 9mm, or a carbine in 5.56, and have situations where the target takes multiple hits but can keep fighting, how can you be sure the same thing might not happen when you poke someone with the point of your sword?

tweo fold. the sword thrust carrys through and has the weight of the arm behind it which can flex, a bullet has only the power of the charge behind it, nothing else. also the bullet is only a couple of centimenters long at most, a sword blade can project much more into the hole.
As for keep going, is that with someone attacking with a sword or just squeezing off shots?
I won't argue that it is impossible for a swordsman to keep going with a blade in him, but I am saying it would not be common-ok and yeah I'd hate to be there when you find the exception to the rule.

The fact is that long before the idea of setting rapier against katana came up, europeans had disgarded broadswords in favor of rapiers. Considering the talent Europeans have for slaughtering each other, had cleaving swords been better, they would have still been using those and not rapiers.

Well, the reason I'm suspicious is because in combative sports the paradigm of using only long-range pokey attacks is essentially fallacious, but it is still advocated by people who don't know any better. For example, if someone only does point sparring where the fight is stopped after a single hit, he is going to end to use a lot of long-range tappy kicks since that makes it easy to get the first hit. However, in real life, a long range tappy kick might be meaningless if the opponent just absorbs it, gets real close, and proceeds to grapple you or pound the tar out of you with hooks and uppercuts.

So having a longer pointy blade seems nice in theory, but in a real combat situation where you've got lots of adrenaline and chaos, I'd be very skeptical at the idea that you can just keep your distance and quickly poke someone, and that therefore he won't be able to just absorb the trauma, run real close, and really try to carve you up.

In other words, the "rapier always wins due to pokiness" idea seems to parallel an idea in combative sports that's espoused by some TKD and JKD people that I know is fallacious, i.e. "long straight attacks from far away always win due to pokiness". Again, I acknowledge that physiologically speaking blades are going to interact with bodies differently than fists for feet, but I'd suggest that adrenaline in combat situations could easily let a person ignore being poked, at least for a little while. To quote a study on small caliber lethality in CQB ( http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-158733704.html ),

Untrue in many aspects.

Firstly, the rapier was a "dress sword" meant to be worn by civilians going about their day-to-day business. It was, in fact, a clothing accessory. It was never intended for use on the battlefield. The military contemporary of the rapier was the side sword, a shorter stouter cut-and-thrust blade. The rapier's use as a dress sword made it the most common weapon for self-defense and dueling, but it eventually proved inferior at these tasks because its extra length made it slower and more difficult to wield than a shorter blade, which is why it was eventually replaced with the small sword.

Secondly, the permanent wound cavity created by a firearm will usually be far larger than the channel created by a thrusting blade. A modern sidearm is far more likely to incapacitate than a sword is. But it is simply very difficult to instantly incapacitate a human being with center-mass shots. Head shots tend to be incapacitating more often than not, but a bullet is far more likely to penetrate the skull than a thrusting sword is.

A thrust is far more likely to kill than a cut is, eventually. In order for a cut to kill it has to slice deeply into something vital but it is far more likely for a cut to simply graze the flesh. In order to kill with a thrust, you have to stab deeply into something vital, which is fairly easily accomplished. A thrust is likely to be deep enough to kill by internal bleeding or infection. But, a cut that is deep enough to be fatal is also more likely to be instantly incapacitating as it will do a great deal of severing.

In war, it is actually better to stab someone in the gut and wait for him to die of sepsis than it is to cut him because you'll end up killing more people more reliably. This is one of the reasons roman gladius formations were so effective.

Just in case anybody is interested this is an excellent article on the rapier http://swordforum.com/articles/ams/char-rapier.php

Having roughly 28 years of progressive experience in hand to hand combat I have a couple points to make. The debate of which weapon or technique is best is a circuitous affair that can have no true resolution. The weapon and technique matter far less than the warrior employing them, his overall experience, fitness, and warrior spirit are going to be the deciding factors. We can discuss the hypothetical "equal warriors" with different weapons, and at best we can arrive at a most likely scenario, with few guarantees. Mobility/maneuvering, deception, speed of attack, and lastly the effectiveness of the attack are going to determine who wins. All of these depend on the confidence engendered by experience, the ability to think on a intuitive level (more training and experience), overall fitness (this will affect your speed, endurance, and the effectiveness of your attacks), and lastly you willingness to inflict or commit to inflict permanent damage on another human being (your warrior spirit). Of these the last is the most important single factor in hand to hand combat. Most people hesitate in spite of training when it becomes necessary to break someones nose, rip an ear off, break any of a multitude of joints, break ribs, dislocate joints, or savage your opponent in any other way available at the time. Without it you will be the one bleeding, and screaming in pain, assuming you still live.

The mistake in most of the scenarios described is that there was no follow through. The continued motion the full execution is what takes you out of harms way. In the video we clearly had two "sportsmen" engaging. Based on my more limited swordfighting knowledge the fencer would have continued the strike closing to zero (moving him in too close to be affected by the swing), of course the practitioner of kenjutsu would never have attempted an overhead strike against an experienced foe, preferably going with a side to side attack or a diagonal attack from on high both would have limited options for the fencer. In other words if they are both good at real fighting expect the fight to go on much longer. During the attack or defense however remaining mobile is key to avoiding a debilitating counter attack.

I know it's fun to make fun of the ancient Irish martial arts and all, but to be fair/honest, they did cook up some really mean boxing tricks, and had a reputation as wicked stick-fighters for a while. Like someone mentioned with the old Greek stuff earlier -- it doesn't have to be Eastern to be a martial art.


Or to be much, much, shorter.

Yes it could be much shorter, in which case someone was not as good as they thought.

No, things certainly don't have to be eastern to be effective. In fact boxing, and wrestling are very effective basic starting points for hand to hand combat, mostly because the training is full contact, full speed, with heavy sparring, teaching both good hitting skills and grappling skills.

I agree about the TKD flaws, the idea of one take down blow is not common. but with a thrusting sword, it is not just a long range pokey pokey but fullow up and thrust home. Like I've pointed out before, the fact the rapier flourished while the broadsword dropped out of sight. That historical point seems to trump theory.

I though the rapier came in use only after gunpowder made armour obselete, thus the crushing anti-armour capabilities of the broadsword and claymore was no longer necessary. Why exhaust yourself cleaving when you can poke someone to death more easily?

actually rapiers came out because of plate- stuff to heavy to cleave through, a slender blade could slide home through the weak points.

Again, the rapier was a civilian weapon. Hacking weapons persisted in many forms right to the beginning of the automatic weapons era: cutlasses, boarding axes, backswords, sabres. There are innumerable tales of duellists being run through with smallswords and rapiers and continuing to fight. Carying on after a katana thrust and sidecut has spilt your guts or a cut has taken head and shoulder is somewhat more problemmatic. Rapiers really couldn't defeat a decent harness; they grew out of the Estoc which could, but armour didn't go away because of the rapier. It went away bacause of firearms.

Rapier/foil/epee has the range advantage against a katana held in both hands. The katana has the power advantage. Modern sport fencers are going to be impeded by their own instinct keeping them on "the piste" even when turning isn't going to lose them points. Kendo is not swordwork. You wouldn't catch me opening with a shomen cut, even against another katana/bokken. Generally, the one who attacks first is going to lose, however they start.

I noticed someone mentioned Anglo-Saxon sword making. Unfortunately I will not go into details, however if you have some questions on your mind, please do send me a PM. I am currently writing a journal article on the construction of swords and metallurgical knowledge from the Anglo-Saxon period using literature of the period and archeological evidence.

As to wearing swords in public, I guess common sense says yes. Same way that navy cadets are not arrested for carrying ceremonial daggers. It really depends if you think Japan is really anime. I find that Shadowrun is a world of crime and action movies and not of realism. So if you want Edo to be a Meiji restoration city with skyscrapers, cyberware, freelance ninja, and corporate samurai go ahead.