So while it's hard to exactly answer your question here, I think it's safe to say that yes, Katanas were short, but it's not necessarily because Japanese people could not handle longer weapons or didn't have the technology to make them. It was simply not socially acceptable at that point (and also inconvenient) to carry something longer. You see the same context in some periods of history in Europe too - the smallsword was a hugely popular sword too, and it was quite short, despite their users still being European. Under this context, the Katana remained it's length, with the socially acceptable size being dictated by culture - if you brought a ginormous around, people would think you're looking to cause trouble. Remember, these were often sidearms that are carried day in and day out, and you wouldn't want something overly long and inconvenient, especially when everyone else has a weapon of around the same length. In terms of actually addressing "fairness" of the comparison though, you need to remember the context in which each weapon was used. The Japanese equivalent would be a nodachi/odachi. These were specialized primary weapons, and wouldn't be compared to a katana at all. However, asking whether it's "unfair" for a Japanese swordsman to use a 155 cm sword is a bit disingenuous because that's not a longsword length - that's a montante/spadone/greatsword. While it's shorter, it's not that much shorter. As sidearms/secondary weapons, typical longswords were more like 110-115 cm long, while typical katana would be about 100-110 cm. I don't think there's any argument there. You're mixing together several different factors that complement each other here.įirst of all, the Japanese katana is objectively shorter than a typical European longsword.
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