What is a Katana?
Katana is a curved, single-edged blade and Japanese sabre/sword. It is thought that is creation took place between Xth and XIIth century as a weapon to fight against the heavy cavalry. We can consider the most famous Japanese sword from History used above all by the samurais.
Most important parts of a katana
Tsuka: It is the katana's handle, we will always see it surrounded by ropes. Most traditional models are made of ray's skin.
Tsuba: Ti is the katana's guard, which is normally round and very well decorated.
Ngasa: It is the katana's blade, normally rounded and single-edged.
Saya: It is the katana's scabbard.
Martial arts in which katana is used
A huge number of martial arts use katana taking into account its particularities:
- Aikido: It is the classic sabre/swords fight between samurais.
- Iaido: It is a practice which consists in sheathing and unsheathing the katana.
- Kendo: It is a discipline which shows how to fight with katanas, either made of wood or bamboo.
- Jiujitsu: It is a fight discipline whose main goal is personal defense, sometimes against other weapons, in this specific case against katanas.
- Karate: It is the martial art where we only show the use of katana to most experience students, those who are more skilled. Karate freestyle, it is a spectacular combat in which the karate practitioner is able to prove how skilled hi is, in front of some judges and on a musical background.
- Tameshigiri: It s a martial art where the slash with the katana is practiced.
Sorts of Katanas
We divise the katanas in three categories:
- Decorative Katanas: They are only designed for being exhibited or hanging on the belt. The will never be double/single-edged. We strongly recommend them to those who want to get a katana for its place.
- Basic practice katanas: They can be used as decorative items but also as swords for unsheathing practice. Some of them are double/single-edged, but they are not balanced. We recommend them for beginners.
- Standard practice katanas: It would be suitable to use them for first training, unsheathing and other soft mouvements. Skilled beginners will make a good use of them.
- Intermediate practice katanas: They are highly recommended for training without making extreme or complicated mouvements. Somme of them can be used for slicing os slashing. Those are the best considered by the experts.
- Superior practice katanas: It is said they are the ideal katanas for training the slash and practicing mouvements without taking huge risks. Martial arts masters strongly recommend them, given that they usually are single-edged blade and very well balanced. There are katanas which belong to this category are masterpieces.
Cleaning Ritual
Katana's weapon cleaning was a real ritual, warriors usually wasted several hours to get an immaculate blade. Katana was mainly used to kill the enemy (sometimes the warrior hurt himself, by means of Harakiri). During the battle, samurai cleaned the katana's blade with its sleeve's jacket (Uwagi), but once the combat finished they took the following steps to clean its sword properly.
- To sit in Seiza position, on its knees with heels touching the buttocks for unsheathing the katana very slowly.
- Cleaning dirt and dry oil with rice paper.
- Apply the Uhicomori, using the pompom over the blade.
- Apply oil over the blade in a uniform way.
- Unsheathing the scabbard.
We have a huge variety of katanas:
Specially for professionals, related to anime or movies, decorative ones...but also cleaning kits. You must take account that our prices are incredibly competitive, besides, are products keep a quality price relation hard to equalize. If you are looking for a katana, we could be very helpful showing you the most appropriate option for satisfying your needs.
