I’m studying Japanese on Duolingo. I’m fluent in Spanish but my first language is English.
I found this video on YouTube which compares the Spanish rapier (espada ropera) to the Katana.
In the video, he says that the Katana was a ‘Medieval’ weapon which did not evolve over the centuries, while the rapier was a ‘Renaissance’ weapon which was constantly evolving.
How is the concept ‘medieval’ discussed in Japanese? What about ‘renaissance’?
2 comments
While they have terms in Japanese (中世 and ルネサンス), the terms ‘medieval’ and ‘renaissance’ are primarily used to refer to European history, not Japanese (though ‘medieval’ sometimes get applied to Japan to mean ‘feudal’)
When ‘medieval’/’renaissance’ are used in reference to Japan vs. Europe, it’s only referring to those overall time periods, i.e. roughly 800s to 1300s vs 1400s to 1500s. Since the renaissance originated in Italy, and is therefore limited to the effects thereof, the term ‘renaissance-era Japan’ can only ever be used to mean ‘roughly a similar time period’, not an actual era within Japanese history.
As for how the actual Japanese eras work, they’re a little bit more sub-divided, but as far as the sword thing is concerned, katanas have been around since roughly the [Kamakura era](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamakura_period), which was kicked off by the Gempei wars where samurai first became a big factor in warfare. This era, being 12th to 14th century, is around the time of what we call the ‘high medieval’ period, which is probably why he referred to it as such.
The rapier, meanwhile, came about somewhere around the end of the renaissance. However, when talking about Japanese eras, this would put it somewhere around the Sengoku Jidai.
So yes, the eras match, but said eras are only used to discuss European history, not Japanese history. They are only used in reference to Japanese history to make dating events easier for unfamiliar westerners.
Side note: the katana did evolve somewhat over the course of time, but the blunt truth is, it was *never* the primary weapon of the samurai. The samurai used a variety of weapons, but their origin was as mounted archers. The *bow* defined the samurai, not the sword, and katanas were emergency weapons. The katana didn’t undergo much change because it never *needed* to undergo much change; focusing on this would be like focusing on *knives*.
Buyuuden Japanese History is a fun YouTube channel for Japanese history as it’s taught in Japanese schools- won’t answer your question directly, but you may find plenty of other interesting stuff in there. They also have short (~3 min) summary videos for some of the eras they cover:
https://youtube.com/@BuyuudenJapaneseHistory?feature=shareb