Why did Samurai love their swords so much?

Why were they so pasionate about the Katana so much that they put it before any other fighting style or weapon? In Chinese martial arts, the sword is just an extention of your hand, Kung Fu teaches you to use any weapon you might find on th battlefield, so how come Samurai were so obssesed with their swords, what made a Katana so precious to them.





And also, i knwo that not all Samurai knew Jujitsu, so what would happen if a Samurai was disarmed? A shiaolin would still be able to fight. Why didn't the Samurai ever think of that?

Why did Samurai love their swords so much?
Why does a person love their pet so much they would die to save it?





we each have what are our priorities and what is important to us in life and to the Samuraii their Katana were as sacred to them as the Horse were to the Commances and or the Huns.





When they did not have their Katina to use they usually still had the Wakisashi and or Tanto where the first was preferred for indoor sword combat for its size.





it is just their personal devotion and faith that made them that way as any one is with something they are that passionate over.
Reply:it was (is) a symbol of honor that is taken very seriously.
Reply:The sword was there only friend.
Reply:They did. I'm not sure where you got your idea that the sword was the end-all-be-all to the samurai to the exclusion of all else. That simply isn't true. The sword was a primary weapon, the most efficient, potent, and practical, but not the only one that the samurai trained with, and they did train in unarmed combat as well.





The samurai practiced the katana, wakazashi, tanto, naginata, chigiriki, yumi, bo, yari, kusarigama, etc., as well as various unarmed techniques called "torite kogusoku" or "kogusoku koshi no mawari" or "kumiuchi" (the name jujitsu didn't come along until the 1600's) and kempo learned from their trade contact with the Chinese. A samurai had to be well rounded to be an effective soldier, but no one can master everything so many chose to specialize with their most effective weapon. There were noted samurai that specialized with the naginata or yari, or who were noted archers, but the sword was still the most effective weapon at their disposal. The same holds true today, US soldiers master the M-16, however they also learn to use the pistol, bayonet and knife, and unarmed tecniques.





Since the sword was so powerful and could mean life or death to the samurai, they placed a lot of faith in it and revered it above the other weapons, much as the Europeans revered their swords, and especially the Damascus steel blades.
Reply:Because it was their symbol of honor. It was what saved their lives over and over and over again. It was always with them and was as much a part of them as any arm or leg.





And FYI the majority of samurai had systems of empty handed fighting that were fairly similar to aiki-jujutsu although I can't remember the general name for the old system. I think it was kutsho or something similar





And Chinese martial arts teach you to use any weapon because they were peasant fighting arts. The samurai came from a warrior class where they would be staffed with weapons. Apples and oranges. Ninjutsu teaches you to use any weapon just like Chinese martial arts because it is a peasant art as well.
Reply:As Jerry said, the swords held a reverance to the Samurai. The largest reason was this : the daito had been handed down for generations father to son....there was a spiritual bond they held dear with the swords themselves because of this.





When it came to combat for example, the sword was not the most effective weapon on a battlefield....especially when one takes into consideration an opponent wearing full O-Yoroi (armor).





Also, the sword was mainly used when a Samurai went into war on horseback as one could use a Jin-Tachi (predative sword to the Katana) to cut an enemy down easily from a mounted position.





Anyhow, even beyond this, the Samurai trained in many many other weapons. For ex : Yari (spear), Naginata (halberd), Nagimaki (short handled halberd), Kusarigama (sickle and chain), Ogama (battlefield sized Kusarigama), Yumi and Ya (bow and arrow), Shuriken and Shaken (throwing blades), Bojutsu (staff - all of the other variants as well), Kusarifundo (handheld weighted chain), and the list goes on and on.





Some of these weapons were dictated in usage by their time in history....some were moreso modern, versus others moreso ancient....and not all Samurai were masters by any means of all these tools.





Some were more useful for fighting a man in armor (Yari for example), whereas others would have been relatively useless in the same scenario (Shaken for example).





The Samurai held their swords with a regard of spiritual resonance due to their familial bonds....it wasn't anything more complex than that.
Reply:Most early samurai were primarily archers. They let the peasants handle the dangerous close-quarters combat and stayed at a relatively safe distance. Even as the preference for other weapons rose, bows were still common on all samurai.





The reason we think of samurai as being nothing but swordman is because of the poetry written about the era of the combat samurai by the samurai of the Tokugawa Shogunate, who practically never saw battle, and as such were left with nothing to do by daydream of what their lives would have been like if they actually had a job to do. They were forced by duty and honor to be the best martial artists in the land, but lived through a roughly 250 year long era of peace.





Certainly, the fact that the poetry does praise the katana so much is reflective of its importance, but really, for most of the period of the combat samurai, bows and spears were the prefered weapons for warfare. Their daishos were symbols of rank and honor, used more in small-scale unpredicted battles, not full-scale combat.

affiliate reviews