Post by Devlen Del-Arshu on Nov 19, 2005 21:57:09 GMT
alright then. buh-bye spence! 
From Wikipedia:
Wakizashi is a traditional Japanese sword with a shoto blade between 30 and 60 cm, with an average of 50 cm (between 12 and 24 inches), similar to but shorter than a katana and sometimes longer than the kodachi. The wakizashi is usually worn together with the katana by the samurai or swordsmen back in feudal Japan. When worn together the pair of swords were called daisho, which translates literally as "large and small"; dai or large for katana, and sho for wakizashi. The katana was often called the sword or the long sword and the wakizashi the companion sword.
Wakizashi were made with different zukuri shapes and sizes, and were generally thinner than katana. They very often had much less niku (literally 'meat' or 'flesh', the measure of how convex the edge is) and therefore cut softer targets much more aggressively than a katana. Its hilt is normally of a square shape but on rare occasion it had none.
A wakizashi was used as a samurai's weapon when the Katana was unavailable. When entering a building, a samurai would leave his katana with a servant or page who would then let it rest on a rack called a katana-kake with the hilt pointing left so that it had to be removed with the left hand, passed to the right, then placed at the samurai's right, making it difficult to draw quickly, and reducing suspicion. However, the wakizashi would be worn at all times, and therefore, it made a sidearm for the samurai (similar to a soldier's use of a pistol). The samurai would have worn it from the time they awoke to the time they went to sleep. In earlier periods, and especially during times of civil war, a tant¨ (dagger) was worn in place of a wakizashi. For particularly strong samurai like Miyamoto Musashi, the blade was sometimes used as an off hand weapon while the favored hand wielded the katana in order to fight with two weapons for maximum combat advantage.
From Wikipedia:
Wakizashi is a traditional Japanese sword with a shoto blade between 30 and 60 cm, with an average of 50 cm (between 12 and 24 inches), similar to but shorter than a katana and sometimes longer than the kodachi. The wakizashi is usually worn together with the katana by the samurai or swordsmen back in feudal Japan. When worn together the pair of swords were called daisho, which translates literally as "large and small"; dai or large for katana, and sho for wakizashi. The katana was often called the sword or the long sword and the wakizashi the companion sword.
Wakizashi were made with different zukuri shapes and sizes, and were generally thinner than katana. They very often had much less niku (literally 'meat' or 'flesh', the measure of how convex the edge is) and therefore cut softer targets much more aggressively than a katana. Its hilt is normally of a square shape but on rare occasion it had none.
A wakizashi was used as a samurai's weapon when the Katana was unavailable. When entering a building, a samurai would leave his katana with a servant or page who would then let it rest on a rack called a katana-kake with the hilt pointing left so that it had to be removed with the left hand, passed to the right, then placed at the samurai's right, making it difficult to draw quickly, and reducing suspicion. However, the wakizashi would be worn at all times, and therefore, it made a sidearm for the samurai (similar to a soldier's use of a pistol). The samurai would have worn it from the time they awoke to the time they went to sleep. In earlier periods, and especially during times of civil war, a tant¨ (dagger) was worn in place of a wakizashi. For particularly strong samurai like Miyamoto Musashi, the blade was sometimes used as an off hand weapon while the favored hand wielded the katana in order to fight with two weapons for maximum combat advantage.
