What Chris said. However I will admit to being confused by the use of phrases such as: "I think the Katana is being used more now because it is less heavy than the Tachi and more compact (easy to carry, etc)." and "but the Katana is more efficient and practical." I feel they show that you might be a bit confused about the various sword arts still extant and how and why the are practiced.
Tachi is sometimes a more general term, referring to any kind of full-size sword. For example, in aikido, sword disarm techniques are known as tachi-dori, even though they are often training against katana-style movements.
Not exactly. Oddly enough, the terms tachi and daito use exactly the same kanji, one of which is the same kanji for katana. It is referred to as tachi-dori because to the Japanese, daito-dori does not "sound" very good, so they change it. Be very wary of attempting to assign definitions to Japanese phrases, as it is very difficult to pin any Japanese word to a single definition. As I stated earlier in this thread, the only definitive difference between a tachi and a katana is the side of the tang that the mei is written, which indicates whether the original sword was carried edge up as a katana, or edge down as a tachi. If there is no mei, then it is impossible to tell one from the other as there are numerous historical examples of large and small, thin and heavy, very curved and quite straight swords carried both edge up as katana, and edge down as tachi.
You sure about that? I'd been under the impression that daitô was 大刀 ("big sword"), while tachi was 太刃 ("wide blade"). Similar and related kanji, but not quite the same.
I've seen tachi written with 太 instead of 大 (both mean large, 太 usually referring to something wide, or big around) but I've only seen 刃 used in relation with cutting implements such as knives. Of course, my Japanese is pretty miniscule. Just looked it up in my kanji dictionary, and it lists both 大刀 and 太刀 for tachi.
How non-JSA people or those who saw a picture of a sword once refer to cursory (and compliant) vertical cuts done by people who don't really want to do them against their buddy.
Understood. I'll reserve another spot on that wall I'm currently head butting already in the aikido forum then.
