From the Jian Sword to the Katana

I've recently aquired a new little book about the Japanese swordmanship writen by a Brazilian I Ai Do master, George Guimarães, named "A Magia da Espada Japonesa" and learned lots of things I didn't know before. One of them is about how the Chinese swords turned to be the Japanese:

The Japan always had a huge cultural influence from China and it can be seen at the Martial Arts too.
Exemples are that the Karate ("Chinese hand" that changed to "empty hand") was developed by a Chinese that came once to the Okinawa island; and a very popular weapon called nunchaku (liang-chi-kwan in Chinese) came from China too.
Not diferent would be with the most used weapon all over the world after rocks and clubs: the sword.

The Japanese blacksmithig is known all over the world by theyr so well done weapons, but theyr blacksmith tecnics came from China. Not that the Japanese owe theyr fame to the Chinese, they had superb blacksmith, but theyr special tecnics to deal with metal came from China, witch not many people know but was the best at dealing with metal to make weapons all over the world.

"But from the jian sword to the katana there are huge diferences" you may be thinking. It has indeed! The reasons for these diferences:
The fighting style of the jian sword was principaly about stabs and used almost only the sword's point. But the Japanese were somewhat smaller than the Chinese and had shorter arms and legs so they couldn't do much with a sword that was used to stab as they would have dificulty to beat other people with theyr short arms and legs. So they prefered to focus on the cutting, with wide circular movements, like a windmill, turning the straight sword with double edge into a curve weapon with only one edge, with diferent point chape, changing from the name jian (gin) to ken. The stab movements are used sometimes with the katana, but it's not used to be a main technic.
The curve shape of the blade is better with cutting because of the guillotine effect: when a straight blade meets a resistence point, it uses only a small part of its extention, but a curve blade would multiply this contact extention with less effort.
The point shanged from a straight triangular shape to a grooved shape aiming for a cutting complement.

  


Oh, yes! One thing I should tell you: that book seems a little confusing and suspect... so it may not be much true.



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