Monday, March 07, 2016
From "Long sabers of the Qing dynasty" by Peter Dekker
In the late Ming dynasty, Chinese coasts were raided by Japanese pirates -mockingly called 倭寇 wokou or "Dwarf Bandits" by their Chinese adversaries- who were using their long sabers, nodachi, to great effect. They consisted of Chinese sailors, fishermen and masterless Japanese samurai, or ronin. Apart from the fact that that they operated from ships and coastal settlements, they were not so much pirates as we commonly know them. The wokou had vast armies, sometimes taking the field with over 10.000 men, raiding coasta.l areas and penetrating deeply inland
The problem became so pressing that the Ming sent out notable generals Qi Jiguang, Yu Dayou and Tan Lun to fight them. Qi Jiguang noticed the quality and effectiveness of the large Japanese sabers. Not that the Chinese had never used long two handed swords before, but by Qi Jiguang's time they had all gone out of use. He ordered his craftsmen to copy these long sabers for use in his army. Eventually they managed to suppress the Dwarf Bandits, but this time the long saber was to stay in the repertoire of Chinese martial arts up until today.
Ref:
http://mandarinmansion.com/chinese-long-sabers
# posted by Akimoro @ 8:12 AM 
