Im fairly certain that any piece of hardened steel would be able to withstand the same force the very short period that katana did. To put it into perspective walls are not, usually, made of hardened steel, and a wal of sufficient thickness will stop a .50cal round. Also a bag of sand will stop several rounds. People who are in awe of this kind of spectacle are just looking for more reasons to worship an inanimate piece of metal used to kill humans due an over developed sense of romanticism.
One of the things that always bothers me about vid of 50cal machine guns being pitted against a fixed blade to that the blade is somehow t3h uber blade... (and don't get me wrong I do have a huge amount of respect for the craftsmanship and smith work that's gone into a properly forged blade of folded steel like the Japanese ones) It's just sort a weird selective test. A bit like parlour trick really. No one is going to fire a 50cal pointed directly at your blade so the bullets get sliced neatly. I'm sure there was more than one Japanese soldier who rushed a position in the Pacific with sword in hand and found out the hard way as he became of crumpled heap of riddled with bullets.
It's not a bit like a parlor trick, it is ALL parlor trick. It was a sorry waste of a traditionally made nihonto for the sake of television. It ranks right up there with the guys that cut a watermelon off of someone's stomach with an unsharpened iaito. "Stupid sword tricks" if you will.
I just noticed having linked this article to another thread here, the images are missing, I'll fix that later when I get home, I guess the directory holding the images may have got deleted since 2006 when the article was written. Fix coming soon.
I injured myself a few times when I started training. Nothing drastic though but I learned really quickly which one is the wrong hand.
I study bujutsu in the Tenshin Shōden Katori Shintō-ryū. I've been living in Japan for over 10 years now.
Well, as I said money is an issue, and I'd like to start with a cheap weapon. I looked into Japanese swords and the cheapest are already quite expensive for my means as far as what I could find.
