You didn’t actually think we’d jump straight in, did you?

Fool! You’ve fallen for one of the classic blunders. Never get into a land war in Asia, never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line, and never expect Rusty to get right to the point. 

Before we talk about katanas, we first need to have a conversation about low contrast language. 

I don’t remember where exactly I first heard about this concept, but it’s not my original idea, so I don’t want to take credit for it. And for the life of me, I can’t make google spit out the right answer, so we’re just gonna have to roll with it. Good thing we’re not trying to be all scholarly and shit, right?

We humans have a natural tendency towards binaries. For whatever reason, our brain likes to categorize things as being either this or that, with no room for nuance in the middle. This is especially true when we try to distinguish good for bad, whether we’re talking about quality or morals or whatever. Something either sucks, or it rocks. There’s no room for anything else. 

Let’s use product reviews as an example. If you want to get something, you look up what other people said about it, and see what they think. They might list the upsides and the downsides and paint a relatively clear picture of what it is that you’re getting yourself into, but the instant you stop reading, the natural tendency is for your brain to throw all that shit out the door and distill it down to good or bad. Either it sucks, or it’s awesome. 

Naturally, when you buy the product thinking it’s awesome and realize it has downsides, you’re going to be upset. Or, you get it begrudgingly since you can’t find a better option, and are pleasantly surprised to find out how much you like it. This isn’t the reviewer’s fault; they’ve done their best to give you a balanced picture of the product and their experience with it. But, your brain’s not programmed to accept low contrast language. There has to be an obvious difference between the good and the bad, and if there’s not, you’ll come up with your own. 

We’ve gotten so bad about this as a society that calling something “mid” is considered an insult. A 5 out of 10 review should be average, but we treat anything below an 8 as absolute garbage. People get upset if a game they were looking forward to gets a 7. By any objective measure, a 7 should be pretty good. There are some downsides to be sure, but it should mostly be a fun experience, right?

Fuck that. If it ain’t great, it’s terrible. Nuance is for suckers. 

I say all that to say this: you’re really gonna want to put your low contrast goggles on for this next bit, or you’re going to be in for a bad time. 

The longsword section was mostly explaining what, exactly, a longsword is or was, when it was used, and what it was good for. Why? Because most people don’t have a clue what they’re actually like or what they were actually used for. Pop culture has spent the better part of the last century depicting them as these big, slow, lumbering, graceless things, and in order to have a proper conversation, we had to correct a lot of these notions. 

The opposite is true for the katana. Most people are at least broadly familiar with the katana, since it appears in just about every action movie with blades. Pop culture has made it out to be this all singing, all dancing, all cutting magic thing that’s so impossibly perfect, the mere idea of comparing it to another sword is insulting. 

If I’m going to course correct from that steaming pile of bullshit, I’m going to have to explain what the katana isn’t as much as what it is. That means pointing out the very real, and very pertinent, downsides and disadvantages. In other words, I’m gonna have to knock it off its pedestal. 

If you’re a diehard katana stan, you might get the idea that I don’t like the katana, and assume this is some sort of hit piece. You’d be wrong, but that’s not the point. Your high contrast brain isn’t primed to accept low contrast language. 

So, consider this a priming. I’m going to have to poke holes in the katana mythos, but at no point should you take that as me calling it a bad sword. I’m not, and it really isn’t. When used as intended, it’s an exceptionally good weapon. But, it’s not the very best that no one ever was. If you can’t handle that, then you might as well walk away now, because it’s only going to get worse from here. 

With that out the way, let’s start with defining what, exactly, the katana was before diving into what it wasn’t.