Sword Banter: The Chinese Jian and Comparison to the Rapier

hey guys so today we're gonna be taking a look at this piece right here this is a typical design for a Honda or a din shiny straight sword that was used back during the Han Dynasty period this is typically what a soldier would be using on the battlefield you know usually in condition that that what do you call that that's a handguard that's not a guard that as a guard you don't really need anything that big in order to keep your hand from touching the blade don't you like your hands like do you want to get them cut well one you would either use this in conjunction with a shield or if you didn't have it then you would be using your technique to keep that from happening as you could see both so just finally made it up here Carol he's on a visit and we're gonna talk swords because I mean come on that's what we do and you will listen to us yes or else okay so uh that was for comedic intro purposes not gonna actually talk about the small garden I mean I'm not a fan of it let's put it that way but I see that with a different different usage different techniques you don't need this big Asgard necessarily I'm gonna keep it but but he can keep us his tiny little well so this is micro Guardian to be fair this particular piece was used in conjunction with a shield historically what guy was saying in the beginning on this is a typical design for a straight sword attend used during the Han Dynasty and you know when you're using a conjunction with a shield you don't necessarily do the handguard that big granted the Chinese did move over to bigger guards though not as big as what you typically see in western designs and part of the reason is tradition and another reason is again certain techniques that we used were to keep their hand out the way of being struck because there were a lot of techniques designed to attack the hand so of course it was up weeks to get the hand out of the way could be used as a bastard sword kind of because it's clearly designed with single-handed use in mind primarily but you can what to answer it seems a little pointless because this is so light like technique but at the same time using a sword with two hands is not just about oh it's so heavy you need the other hand it's also you get more control you you can do more with it so there's that and it's just crazy how life is listen my goodness it's it's very interesting thank very thin blade tapers one thing that I would like to particularly cover is quite often people compare these two rapiers before we go on a few words about the terminology what is a rapier the terms generally applied to single-handed thrusting swords with a complex hilt in a long narrow blade that was common as a civilian weapon in Western Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries it's not that simple though for example the 16th century German fencing master URM Meyer calls the one-handed sword and his manuscript or rapier it has a substantially shorter blade than a 17th century Italian rapier for example and it only has a cross guard with one ring and a knuckle guard rings for additional protection started to appear on arming swords in the 15th century early finger guards even in the 14th also the word rapier originates in the late 15th century so it's hard to draw the line some repairs have shorter pirata blades and simpler guards and others toward the 17th century you see more long slender blades and complex guards but not exclusively then there is a term side sword which is fairly recent and not historical it's also called cotton thrust sword in the 15th and 16th centuries people will generally just call it a sword some italian sources used the term spotted a lot--oh which literally means side sword but apparently prefers simply to any sword you might wear in practical terms a side sword is typically better in the COTS while a rapier is better in the thrust the rapier was an exclusively civilian sword while a side sword could be found on the battlefield as well confusingly the Victorians called the military rapiers there's a lot of uncertainty area swords that he could classify either as a rape here or a side sword so when someone compares the Chinese yen to a rapier they may or may not have a point depending on what they mean by that for clarity when I talk about the rapier I mean the later more thrusting oriented style you hold them side by side you're like I mean no especially when you handle them this is actually way lighter this feels like nothing I was actually very surprised what I picked this up like this is like it's this obscenely like almost there compared to all of other things I've helped and we've talked about the issue of the swords are not supposed to be heavy and everything we know all that but even so this is very light and I mean yeah sure if you wanted to apply rapier techniques now constrain thrust you can do that there are of course point control thrusts that you would you know expect the sea but and basically speaking they also do thrust when you drop the point where it comes down like that so it you know thrust that way and the leg of course propels and you could also call a center there are a lot of cuts where you know while thrust away you would cut or draw off first and then come in and that's a sort of thing that you would be using with a sword that was made for cuts as well as for thrust you're gonna be more doing the rotation from this part of the blade rather than closest at a wrist because there's more mass in the blades so you're gonna have to displace the blade this way a man this way and then it's not the same as that that that you know what you would normally do with a rapier that's actually show that site-by-site because I find this really interesting that the difference in how the disengage works so with a rapier you you dip under like this so it's just just the point that moves the hand actually stays mostly in place and this is the same kind of action technically as that but here actually is my axis of rotation is here not here so it's gonna be more like that and instead of relying purely on my hand to get the point here to here there I'm using my waist to bring that actual torque that I need in order to do it and of course is gonna be a little bit more subtly in real life but it's still powered with the core and the reason for that you might be thinking well it's simple one there's more mass in this way than on that one and two it's going up against other weapons that have more mass to them so if you're either trying to displace their weapon or buddy it's trying to quickly get up wait are they weapon with a blade that has a bit more meat on its bones you're gonna need a few more muscles and you got way more here than in here a much more appropriate comparison really would be a side sword and besides swords common a number of different varieties if you have anything from a very wide blade at the base tapering like this munich town guard here and then you have blades that look really a lot more like that they're just basically parallel and it is not a whole lot of taper fairly narrow blades I don't have a steel one right now however this is actually fairly close this is some this is not unlike a side sword blade and you notice when picking this out then this is you can apply Jen techniques to always right definitely like even though this is a little heavier than the one I just picked up it's not that much heavier and in fact is a little bit closer and weight to a lot of modern reproduction Jen that are based on Ming and Qing Dynasty designs and the balance point is still here this is pretty much exactly where Dan is balanced right pretty much at this spot there so I can still get my snaps off I can still control it with my waist I can still rotate at that balance point where I want it to be at this behaves a lot more like the swords I'm used to then a rapier does because the balance point where the rapier is a lot closer to the handle when I'm holding this I can feel right away that it I can force the rotation there but it feels really weird it feels off I don't really feel like it naturally wants to pivot there pretty much right the handguard so that's where it wants to rotate at and that really frees my technique off it's not gonna feel right when I want to try to ward their blade out the way with the techniques that I'm used to it's gonna feel something substantive and if they have a stronger motion or you know it's from a movement they'll easily knock my blade out the way plus of course you have different very different types of rapier there's a lot of overlap and to be fair a lot of the classification that we apply is artificial that they didn't even use at the time they might might have call it just a sword or what have you so it's it's really interesting to see also the differences between like this for example is is a very different kind of Hill do you hear you have a bit more of a substantial guard always supposed to hold it in is it the Griffis supposed to be sort of what lively it's supposed to be alive so you're not gonna have this a static hammer grip all the time now depending on what instructor you have what school you go to what the tradition is there will be arguments on oh the thumb and the middle finger should be controlling it in the rest of you loose oh no it's asking me to the last three fingers and this one stays loose oh no it's the two fingers here and that stays loose oh no they sometimes I lose sometimes I type the point is that the grip is going to shift and so fingers here have to have room to you know maneuver depending on the technique you're using so if let's say I'm rusting obviously suddenly if I want to really get that point where I wanted to go this finger is gonna have to extend someone you suddenly end up with a grip not like this because then you gotta contort your wrist in order to get that there and that's not good so you gotta loosen it somewhat now this fingers somewhat more extended but what does a finger gonna go nice a little groove right over here that I can just kind of rest against see it's feeling a little bit more comfortable right there now granted the shape on this one is not the same as I see it a lot of other contemporary made again where they kind of rehearse it where the side pieces here actually point straight up like they straight point toward the blade rather than away from it so in that instance the finger is going to be a little bit more exposed and I've even seen some people when you're holding that that was sword they'll just have the finger out like that which there's a lot of argument on whether that's correct technique or not but the point is your grip is still extending it's still going out like that notice the blade this one's a bit wider than the one that I showed before which was typical of Han Dynasty designs or should I say designs that you saw during the Han Dynasty this one is more typical of designs that you saw during the Ming and Qing dynasties where the blades are a little wider it's a bit shorter this one happens to be 30 inches the one I showed before was around 32 and up like the back that boards a little bit longer for battlefield use this one's a bit heftier so it definitely was made to really facilitate that cut especially because the doll back then were very popular and even though I think there was a time during the Ming Dynasty where they're kind of gravitating towards em for short period of time before they went again whole hog with the doll you still have people used to that good authoritative cut and having a good wide strong blade it helps with that and you compare blade like this to say a long sword design or even a typical side sword design it becomes even more obvious that that's the comparison that people should be making not the rapier that should not be the sword you should be thinking about when you thinking of this especially when you consider that this happens to be the model in terms of blade geometry grip all that that's the one treat that you mostly see these days you would not look at this and say oh that's what's wrong on however I can see where that's coming from maybe when looking at something like this like that okay that's a very narrow blade so come with it but this one's like I wouldn't expect tremendous ability from that one for at least you know depends on the target I guess like targets probably does pretty well you put a bone for one thing this is a practice sword anybody who's seen this model noses in the atom Susie and it was made strictly for practice but even so there have been some examples of late that have gotten this narrow will you okay that definitely looks like a rapier blade to me but these are not common if you take a look at a lot of surviving Ming and Qing Jen which are hard to find but they do exist this is not the blade profile you're gonna be seeing you're gonna be seeing it closest to the one that I showed before you'll see thinner ones during again during a Hyundai nnessee during the Chu Kingdom era but even then they're still not as narrow as this like I've rarely seen I've seen a couple here and there but this is pretty rare like it you know just you know straight off or poking and even then there's still enough mass so that you can still get a good authoritative cut and it's kind of funny to me that in fact when they designed this practice sword they specifically designed it to teach the student to align their edge properly for a proper cut because if you don't you don't get that nice whooshing sound that's the reason why they made the believe how much be the way it is if this sword was purely just for thrusting and if they took the traditional techniques for these or just for thrusting then why did they design this to teach the student how to make an authoritative cut then there's this which is like okay there's this a some interesting definitely so uh particularly the handling so this is longsword links essentially it's just pretty narrow and then it's got this really long handle and the interesting thing is I've handled a number of swords with a very long grip that doesn't necessarily benefit from it where I feel like okay if I if I hold it here it doesn't feel quite right in the cotton and I hold it here is like yeah okay there we go if I try that here uh that feels all kinds of wrong this really wants to be held like this like you know here that this makes it quite a nice sound when I first picked this up I was like what is this because it doesn't it doesn't feel like a long sword it doesn't feel like especially it doesn't feel like a sort of this you know if this was a European sort would generally be wider it would be you know it would have a large guard and everything this feels almost like an all metal spear kind of you know what that's probably having some way to think about it like you know like a short spear like an e claw then like almost not really but it kind of reminds me a little bit of it it's very different the reason why I'm thinking that's a good way to look at it is again this one by the way is based on old shoe kingdom / Han Dynasty designs they did I noticed it gonna be a shock for some people they did have swords this long back then before other cultures did and they were working with steel and making it this long and notice again how narrow the blade is it's I mean it's a bit you know wider than my thumb but it's not rapier narrow or maybe or thin there's still enough mass in there it does go to target right well however the way that this particular weapon is used for one thing again is noted the leverage you really need to hold it here and here to get good control because of the way it's balanced like if you're holding it here it just doesn't work right you put it here now you got it but now it's almost feeling like a whole arm and some of the techniques that I've seen in use with this sort of remind me of the spears but she's some of the counter techniques like I've seen things where a thrust would be coming in and you just step off their centerline and guide the blade in and then just trust there's a lot of that where it's like you just kind of let it slide in and if you thrust as if you're working with a spear and this actually worked pretty well against other polearms in fact that's kind of what this was designed for this was a heavy infantry weapon I mean you couldn't use it against other swords and shermaine guys did these heavy infantry weapons were made to you know use as a counter against other longer weapons and many of the maneuvers I've seen particularly the thrust maneuvers almost look like spear against spear so yeah we'll leave it at that for right now for the lander we could obviously be spending hours just just chatting about swords but there's we have some other things we want to do as well so I I hope you enjoyed this check out his channel link down below if you want to know more about Chinese martial arts and swords and fun things yeah and also in case you guys were curious about these weird oddities that I brought here the hot end Qin Dynasty designs I actually got from a company basically self LK Chen swords and they're basically the by a guy who is shall we say passionate about coming up with accurate representations of the weapons that we used back then if you curious links also down below alright let's get these video lights off because it's hot as hell right now and and we have to wear the shirts to get the mic songs a little we're dying anyway thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Skallagrim

Views: 591,757

Keywords: Skall, Skallagrim, Han Jian, Han Dynasty, Chinese swords, compare to, jian vs rapier, cut and thrust, blade type, double edged, sword, comparison, historical martial arts, sword collectors, Swordsage

Id: ISDXZZWCRw4

Length: 18min 31sec (1111 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 21 2019