A guy told me katanas came from japan and only japan.some other guy told me china first influenced the katana from the tang dao which the Japanese took that idea and turned it to a chokuto then to a tachi.Some other guy told me it came from the Mongols.WHAT IS THE RIGHT ANSWER!!!!! HELP!
katana is an japanese, they clearly messed up in improving it but it looks cool so fk it. thing is the chinese introduced forging techniques. not the blade design.. sooo yeah.. your friends were sort of right..
Freedom of speech, you have every right to say whatever you want...youll have to deal with the consequences though. In that particular case...normally a beating, maybe worse.
Well if we are being fair I don't really like that word because because it's a hurtful word but... good to know I have the right.
Hard to say regarding the tang dao as there don't seem to be any preserved examples of it (after all it would be at least 1100years old). But much of japanese culture is imported from china and korea, especially during the time period which the tang dao would have been in use, if anything it would be strange if there was no chinese influence on the development of the katana.
Katana started as a tachi. Nowadays we don't call it tachi (uses the characters 'excessive' and 'single-edged sword') anymore. Did it evolve? It's hard to say, as the quality of Japanese swords went up and down throughout history. However, as for the origin, while it's often believed that the tachi started out as Chinese swords, in reality, they only adopted the smithing techniques of the Chinese, though at this particular moment, they didn't really call themselves the Chinese, they called themselves the people of Han. They had like 10 different dynasties at this time, so tracing the ancestry of the tachi is difficult. Ancient Japanese swords, called tachi, were straight. Yes, they were straight. Not even a single one of them were curved. The only similarity with katana is that they're single-edged instead of the double-edged swords you see in chinese kung fu movies. So how did they became the curved shape we know today? The shape of the katana came from the tales of Inari Okami, the current kami of foxes, rice, fertility, tea, sake, agriculture and industry. But long, long ago, she was the patron of swordsmiths and merchants. The story goes that Inari Okami and his fox spirits, helped the blacksmith Munechika forge the first sword, named kogitsune-maru (little fox). Due to the help of Inari and the fox spirits, Munechika decided to honor them by creating a sword in Inari's image. Now, this is the first blade created by combining two different steel, they did use folding, but the use of several types of steel inside the same sword came much later. The first steel is the core, the soft steel symbolizing Inari's passion and kindness. The second steel is the outer hard steel, symbolizing Inari's cruelty towards those who besmirch the natural order. When it was combined together, the difference in hardness and cooling time naturally creates the curved shape. When it is done right, the blade will curve like a fox's tail and this was seen as blessed by Inari and considered sacred. Thus why until the second world war, only samurais could carry it and then again, not all samurais had katanas. Katanas are considered sacred even to this day due to its origin and that's why there are so many myths and legends attributed to katanas.