Katana Sword — How to wear it. Learn how to put on the sword, such as how to tie your belt and attach the sword scabbard, how to prepare to draw and resheath the blade safely. This Bujinkan sensei shows how to wear, carry and be prepared to draw the “katana”, the famous samurai sword that endures and threads it’s mystique throughout the centuries.
We recommend that you investigate “Enshin Itto Ryu Battojutsu” from the Enbukan organization for more information about learning many of the the katana techniques shown on this channel. Shihan studied it in Japan with Machida Kenshinsai.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: This transcript of the featured video can be translated using the translate button at the bottom of this page.
How to wear the katana
(start at :40) Okay, today what I’d like to go over are some of the basics of the sword: ways of holding the sword and drawing the sword, and cutting with the sword. So, we’ll have to go over a lot of different basics with it first.
The first basic is how to wear the sword. Typically, with a drawing blade sword, that’s a dull-edged sword or batto jutsu/iaido, you’re going to put it on the left-hand side, tucked in under your belt. On the way you’re wearing it, in Japan, when I was working with Machida Sensei, a sword master, he said that it literally will come out for the tsuba to be in line with your belt. So, it looks like it’s out at an angle coming out so that as I step forward, the sword goes into a straight position towards where my opponent would be. If I step back, the sword is at the side, so it has a slight angle here. The cord, or the sageo, is going to go under that part of the sword and there’s a quick-release method for this.
I’m going to take about 2/3 of the way up on the sageo and tuck it under my belt and bring a little tiny loop up here. Then I’m going to take the other [end] that’s still below, tuck it into that loop, and pull the other end down and snug it in nice and tight. That way, this is a quick-release method. If I needed to take this off fast, I just pull that release, this will all come right off and out quickly, and I could take this whole entire apparatus out if I needed to. So, 2/3 of the way, tuck it underneath, pull that loop up through, put this other cord from the bottom in, and then snug it down. Now I have the release and I could just pull it all out with one single pull. So, that’s a way of wearing the scabbard.
There are many ways, this is just one of them, but this is a really good basic way to put it in your belt and to wear it. So, I have the sageo on my swords in the belt, and this is the basic way that you would hold the sword in a standard position.
The next thing would be, what do I do with my hands when this is in my belt? So, typically, the sword would have enough on the end here in the koiguchi so that it wouldn’t just slide out easily when they were riding or when they were walking down the street, and so it’s slightly up at an angle instead of being down. That can start to be where the sword would just easily slide out. So, if it’s at a slight angle up, it’s going to stand naturally.
But actually, if you’re walking with it, you would have your left hand with the thumb just holding on it, resting there as you’re walking along. One of the ways that a fight might occur was they would break this tsuba, pushing it forward, and crack open the sword. It’s kind of like drawing your gun and being at the ready. So, this is where it’s already broken through that barrier where it holds the sword in tight and it’s easily easy to just pull the sword out quickly then and have it come out. So, if you broke that bond there, that meant that it was on. So, they would just hold their thumb on top so that they could be walking through and they could hold their sword up and get through the market and whatever else they needed to do. So, the other hand was just at the ready, able to shake hands or do whatever else you needed to do. And if you had to switch hands to reach for something, you would hold your sword with the other hand.
So, those are the basic ways of wearing the sword in the belt, attaching this sageo, or the cord, and then walking.