Nodachi

Origins

The curved Japanese sword first took shape as the tachi, a long cavalry sword slung edge-down from the belt of a mounted warrior. In the fourteenth century, during the long civil war between the Northern and Southern Courts (1336-1392), fighting on foot became more common and battles grew larger, and swordsmiths began making much longer blades for warriors who wanted reach against horsemen and spearmen. These were called ōdachi, "great swords," or nodachi, "field swords," and they are shown in the war scrolls and chronicles of the period being swung by warriors on foot. The two terms are often used interchangeably, although some writers reserve ōdachi for the largest examples.

Design & Construction

A nodachi is built like a large tachi: a single-edged, curved blade with a ridge line, a hardened edge produced by differential clay tempering, a disc guard called a tsuba and a long grip for two hands. The dividing line is usually a blade of three shaku, about 36 inches, and many working nodachi had blades of four or five feet. Such a blade is difficult to forge evenly and to harden without warping, and the swords that survive are admired as feats of smithing. The length also made the weapon hard to draw: it was carried on the back, drawn with the help of an attendant, or simply carried in the hand. Some later examples have a very long grip or a wrapped section of blade so that the user could shorten his grip, like a Landsknecht Zweihänder in Europe. The largest shrine offerings, such as the fifteenth-century Norimitsu ōdachi, with a blade over ten feet long, were never meant for use.

Combat Use

In battle the nodachi was used in wide cutting strokes against horses, riders and massed infantry, and in the hands of a strong man it was a fearsome weapon; the war chronicles describe single warriors clearing a space with one. It was, however, tiring, slow to recover and useless in a crowd, and by the sixteenth century the spear, the bow and then the Arquebus dominated Japanese battlefields. The Samurai of the Warring States period (1467-1615) generally preferred the Katana, worn edge-up through the belt and quick to draw, and the long spear called the yari.

Legacy

In 1588 Toyotomi Hideyoshi's sword hunt took weapons away from commoners, and later Tokugawa regulations limited the length of the swords that samurai could wear. Many old nodachi were shortened into katana by cutting down the tang, a process called suriage, which is one reason complete examples are rare. Others survived because they had been given to shrines as offerings, and some shrines still hold them as treasures. The nodachi survives today in a few traditional martial arts schools and, in exaggerated form, in films, games and animation, where it is often drawn far larger than any real warrior could have used.