Many of the movements of sword fighting throughout history remain the same, and therefore it is no surprise that the basic cuts and blocks of stage combat broadsword work will be used for fighting with the Japanese katana. What we need to add is the ritual and sense of control that was part of samurai life.
On the other hand, many of the techniques described below are somewhat difficult to master, and you simply might not have the rehearsal time necessary to really polish them, or even gracefully perform them by opening night. And it is certainly the case that although the style is popular, there are very few stage choreographers that have any training in it themselves. And you certainly don’t want a martial artist without stage combat experience to work out a fight for your show.
So read the section below, but feel free to go back to regular broadsword techniques. If you can add some of the flavor of the Japanese style, great. Safety first, believability of acting second, and historical accuracy last.
Wearing the Katana
Traditionally the sword is not only tucked into the obi (the wide fabric belt) but also secured with the use of the scabbard cord. That is a bit much for our purposes, so we’re just going to tuck it into the obi. Even this will require a certain protocol. Hold the scabbard in the right hand with the blade edge (outside curve) pointing forward. Make sure your right thumb clamps onto the guard to prevent the sword from falling out. With the thumb of the left hand, pull the obi slightly away from your clothing at a point just two inches left of your midline. Gracefully bring the right hand slightly up and with a clockwise swing bring the bottom of the scabbard to the opening you have made at the obi, sword edge now pointing up. Push the scabbard in about three quarters of the way with the right hand, then smoothly continue the movement with the left, remembering to cover the sword guard now with the left thumb. The fingers of the right hand can still gently touch the handle until this movement is complete, ready to draw the sword if need be. The sword guard (the tsuba) should rest directly on your midline.
The placement of any second weapon, the shorter wakizashi or the dagger known as the tanto, was not as strictly proscribed, and could end up almost anywhere on the obi, although just as with the katana always with the cutting edge of the weapon pointing up. The singular exception is the katana-like sword known as the tachi. This was a sword worn when on horseback, so was hung edge down in a ringed scabbard, much like the western cavalry sabre. Another sword, the nodachi, was an extra long sword that was normally worn across the back. Just as with European fighters, the sword would be unslung and then unsheathed just before battle, the scabbard left behind before engaging with the enemy.
When bowing, be sure to grasp the top of the scabbard with the left hand and hold the guard with the thumb. Nothing is more embarrassing than to have the sword slide out and hit the ground while in the middle of your bow.
Drawing and Sheathing the Katana
Grab the top of the scabbard with the left hand, the left thumb gently pushing the guard up by a quarter of an inch to raise the sword a bit out of the scabbard. As you draw the sword with the right hand, push the scabbard slightly down and to the left with your left hand. This will make the sword pommel point forward. You might even add a little clockwise quarter turn of the scabbard, so that the blade moves out parallel to the floor.. In this way the energy of the draw is directed towards your opponent instead of harmlessly up and to the right. Once the sword is drawn, bring the pommel back to your center and complete the grasp with the left hand.
In order to return the sword to the scabbard, grab the top of the scabbard with the left hand, making sure that the “eye” (top) of your fist is just a little bit higher than the rim of the scabbard. At the same time, the right hand gently swings the sword blade around in front of you and to the left until the back edge drops gracefully onto the left hand. The back edge (the unsharpened inner curve) of the blade is now pointing down and the true edge is pointing up, and the forte of the blade is touching the web of the left hand, left thumb almost touching the guard, the entire blade parallel to the floor. With the left hand gently pull up the scabbard and give it a quarter turn to the left (counter-clockwise). Push the right hand a little to the left at the same time, so that the pommel points at your opponent. The blade is now pointing behind you and to the left. Now push the right hand forward with a very slight rising motion, and the backedge of the blade will ride along the web of your left hand. As soon as the tip passes your web, the tip will drop magically into the opening of the scabbard. Immediately push the scabbard opening down with the left hand, so that you can slide the sword in with the right, still aiming the hilt at your opponent. Once the sword is in, let the left hand move the sword back to a comfortable wearing position, the fingers of the right hand still gently touching the hilt.
As you can gather from all of this, the essential meaning behind all of these moves is that the fighter was always ready to launch an attack or respond to a threat.
Holding the Katana and Basic Stance
The concept behind fighting with the katana is to take advantage of the one crucial instance where it is possible to strike before your opponent can react. In order to move from a completely motionless en guard to a lighting fast cutting attack, the body must be completely relaxed. Any muscle tension will slow down the reaction time for attack or defense. For actors to approximate this look, we must constantly work at relaxing our neck, hands and shoulders, dead giveaways to the audience of an untrained fighter.
The sword is grasped with the right hand lightly but firmly with the fifth and fourth fingers. The middle finger should hold with less pressure. The index finger will be relatively straight, almost touching the guard. The thumb will gently curve around the grip and rest lightly on top of the third finger. This is not a tight hammer grip, but a more relaxed and slightly angled grip, so that with the last joint of the index finger touching the guard, the web of the thumb will be about an inch away from the guard. With this placement, the handle will lay diagonally across the palm of the hand. The fingers of the left hand will be much the same, and if possible riding fairly high on the handle, preferably with the pommel of the sword cradled in the heel of the left hand and the little finger. If this feels very uncomfortable, go ahead and slide the left hand down so that it rests against the right hand, European broadsword style. For some actors, I’ve suggested that in order to keep a better grip on the weapon they use a modified golfing putter’s grasp, with the left index finger interlocking with the right fifth finger. But as soon as the sword feels more natural, it is better to switch to a grasp in which there is a good two inch distance between the hands.
The wrists, elbows, and knees should be slightly bent so as to relieve any tension. One foot (either one) will be slightly in front of the other in a natural stance, usually with the toes of the lead foot pointing directly at the opponent and the trailing foot slightly turned out, but no more than 45 degrees from center. The balance on the feet should be about a 50-50 distribution. Hold the sword so that the pommel is about six inches away from the body and the blade is pointed forward with the tip at roughly shoulder height and to either side of your partner, not directly in line. The upper body must be completely relaxed, shoulders back, and the head must seem to float on the neck, but with the chin slightly tucked in to give better peripheral vision of the opponent’s feet.
Moving with the sword.
Whether standing or moving, there must always be a straight line from the top of head to the center of hips. Never lean forward from the waist, but instead initiate forward movement from the center (the “tanden”) and then let the feet catch up. This way you land at the same time that your attack arrives, and are perfectly balanced as you complete the move.
Attacking with the sword
As the katana was not built as a bashing weapon, the fighting style is lighter, quicker, and more subtle than medieval broadsword work. This is a concept difficult for American actors to grasp, made even more difficult if they have watched Japanese sword movies made during the last forty years. The ”chop-saki” B grade movies have the actors flail away at each other as though they are holding aluminum bats, which in a way they were. If we are trying for a more realistic look to the fight, we’ll want to remember that the true Japanese sword had a very strong cutting edge but also a fairly brittle spine, so blocking with the sword was to be avoided if at all possible.
The attacks themselves had to come in quickly with a minimum of preparation, so we won’t do the broadsword big prep a’ la “Casey at the Bat”, pulling the sword all the way back to the shoulder before each strike. Instead, the cut will come directly from the en guard position. The left hand begins the forward movement, pushing the hilt toward the target. At the same time, the right hand gently pulls the handle, which sharply pulls the tip of the sword back. Almost immediately, the right hand changes direction, pushing the hilt towards the target, overtaking the left hand. This second part of the movement is what quickly brings the tip of the sword to the cut position. Both arms will be almost fully extended at the end of the attack.As you can see from this head cut, the sword hilt may travel slightly back before it goes forward, but the left hand really only goes up and then presses forward.
It is interesting to note that real fighting with the katana has many of the same elements that are found in stage combat. The samurai were taught to deliver the energy of the cut using mainly the momentum generated by the hips and torso but very little arm, shoulder, or upper body power. Never grip too tightly when attacking, and allow the hands to remain supple during the swinging movement. Only at the last second should there be a sudden tight grasping of the weapon at the very moment that the attack is blocked or we risk dropping the sword. Although both hands are involved, they each have slightly different functions. It is the left hand that actually delivers the cut, the right hand that guides the tip to the target. In order to do so, we have to allow the left hand to take up 60% of the weight of the sword, instead of a 50/50 distribution.
For stage combat we have to add some levels of safety. In order to maintain control of the sword, and to allow our partner to easily see the incoming attack, the blade is going to move back during its preparation for attack much slower than the actual forward motion of the attack itself. So practice with the sword until you can get the left moving forward at one speed, and the right hand doing its two motions at two different speeds. Back slowly, forward faster. At the final moment of the cut, the right hand squeezes a bit, with the thumb “pushing” slightly “into” the tsuba (the guard), giving the blade a snappy finish to its action.
Cuts, thrusts and blocks are all performed to the same five basic target points as in broadsword or rapier stage combat. It is interesting to note that horizontal cuts to the flanks are a modern fabrication for samurai style swordplay, but they are now accepted as normal even in the most tradition-bound Japanese schools, so we can certainly feel free to add them to our choreography.] What we can also add are some of the deflections of attack which is seen in true swordwork with katana. Naturally, we don’t want to have the actors deflect and cut in one terrifying motion – far too dangerous. For the bulk of medieval broadsword work we have the actors have their blocked cuts bounce back in the reverse direction that the cut came in on. But for katana work we can angle many of the cuts so that instead of meeting the opposing blade at 90 degrees, the blade will come in at only 45 degrees, glance off, and then move safely away from his partner by the same number of degrees. The attack of course stays on the same side of the defender, but continues its path from high to low or vice versa. This will require a great deal of wrist control. These kinds of attacks are also more difficult to see for the defender, for they will look initially the same as a simple diagonal attack.
If we want to add one more level of authenticity to the fight, we’ll have our actors turn the wrists when they block, so that they meet the incoming force with the back edge of the blade, not the true edge nor with the flat. The samurai would never choose to risk damage to the razor sharp edge by allowing another weapon to chip at it, and he would be only too aware that a strike along the flat could snap the blade in half. The back edge, on the other hand, has plenty of meat on it, and can absorb a lot of punishment. [A direct overhead vertical cut is difficult to block in this manner, but a trained samurai would find it wiser to avoid such an attack, with or without a deflection, rather than block it.]
In seeming contradiction to the above, a katana fight should also include some simultaneous attacks, where both fighters begin to cut, only to have the weapons stop each other half way between them. Of course, this means edge to edge contact, but not because the fighter choose to use the edge.
A move not commonly seen in broadsword fights but we can add here is a vertical slash. The attacking sword begins as would a vertical cut but the trajectory continues uninhindered until the tip points to the ground. Naturally, the defender steps slightly offline as an evasion. A nice addition is for the defender to bring his own sword into a vertical slash on top of the attacking sword.
So that the fight does not become merely another broadsword fight, many moves that incorporate the principles of Jujitsu or Aikido can and should be added to the choreography. For example, instead of merely using a standard block against a vertical head cut, perhaps using an augmented block that slides into a press that binds the sword down to the side. From there a number of close-in techniques suggest themselves (elbow strike, thrust kick, pommel strike, pressing slash, etc).
Modern practitioners of iaito may take me to task for ignoring the many effective deflections using the flat of the blade, especially against direct thrusts and quick head cuts. But as these require exquisite control of the weapon, and if poorly preformed can damage the sword, they are best considered advanced techniques and not appropriate for the majority of stage combatants.