Kawakami

Now, I've been seeing a lot of hype over having an extremely long tsuka. I'm used to about twelve inches for my big hands, but some people demand fifteen! Having a tsuka that big is actually very awkward for me. While there is historical evidence that some standard sized swords with extremely long tsuka were used during the Edo period, I'm not entirely certain that it served much of a purpose besides fashion.

Now, from all I know, the modern love of looong tsuka comes from four things.

1) Leverage. People think that extra leverage will help them cut better. While that is true in concept, in practice, people concentrate too much on the leverage and not the cutting. If a person focuses too much on the leverage aspect of a sword, they tend to use said leverage to generate power to do the cutting. Power is good...but there has to be balance. Often when there is a lot of power, technique is sacrificed. While one can still cut, it would be just as easy, if not easier, to cut using pure technique.

2) Balance. The extra length of the tsuka does for a Japanese sword what a pommel can do for a European sword...only it still looks Japanese. To me, this is a pretty acceptable reason. A lot of modern-made production pieces are terribly unbalanced, especially when they are made as "heavy cutters". This could be avoided, however, by heat treating the swords better which will allow for better overall shaping, by properly shaping the nakago to bring the balance point to where is should be, by adjusting things like bohi, and by using larger tsuba.

3) Bugei. Nami Ryu...or at least their fan club. Now, James Williams is a great cutter, don't get me wrong. Nami Ryu seems pretty cool, too (I'm not going to say anything about all of these "legitimacy claims" going around since I simply have no idea). I'm not sure, though, about all of this talk that says extra long tsuka = more traditional. I have been shown a couple of pictures and given a couple of lectures...but I still don't really buy into it. Maybe for a specific school, but not more traditional overall. A couple of reasons.

• I've seen five pictures (Photographs and paintings) showing samurai with extra long tsuka. I've seen countless more, however, that show samurai with standard sized tsuka.
• I've also seen a large number of antique Nihonto with tsuka that were of what I consider a good size (9"-12"). For standard length antique katana, I've only seen a couple with exceptionally long tsuka.

So, I love their swords, but not their thoughts on tsuka.

4) Laws. With all of the rules about blade length, perhaps some people were compensating for shorter nagasa by adding length to the tsuka. They would end up with a longer sword, but the nagasa would still fall into the legal limit.

I really do think that it's just one of those fashionable oddities that turn up every now and again throughout Japanese sword history. Long tsuka, no sori, nejirimaki...all just fashion choices in my mind.

Let me know if anyone has some more insight!

Kawakami