Kubikiri Korner

[Surfson]

By the way Christian, I ended up watching that video.  It's an amazing art!  Thanks for posting.

[ROKUJURO]

This knife is called NATA. It is mainly a gardening tool.
____________________________________________

Just today,  I received the actual KINOKUYA catalogue from Kelly Schmidt. Item No. 17 is a "KUBIKIRI" which in the description is called a "YAMAGATANA". Interesting enough, I thought.

▼№１７ 逆刃刀 「やまがたな 長さ２９．０cm、内反り１．０cm、目釘穴２個」
江戸時代 ￥２８０，０００

Unfortunately, I am unable to copy photos.

[Surfson]

Jean, did you try a screen shot to grab a couple photos of it for our collection here?  

[ROKUJURO]

Robert,

I am sorry but I don't know how to do this. There is no way to mark the photos but perhaps you could try it yourself: 

file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20%E3%82%AB%E3%82%BF%E3%83%AD%E3%82%B0333%E6%9C%80%E7%B5%82%20(3).pdf

[Wolfmanreid]

This is a fascinating topic. While I am a mere novice on the topic of Japanese Nihonto, nata, etc I do have some experience on the topic of the cutting of heads, having beheaded many animals ranging in size from sheep to bull elk. Additionally, during my participation in the US military’s campaigns against the Taliban and Islamic State I have had the distressing experience of watching many propaganda videos of beheadings, and have personally encountered and examined several beheaded human bodies.  Finally I studied medieval history for my undergraduate degree, a field in which one inevitably winds up reading accounts of judicial beheadings 
 

A couple points from this data then. First off cutting off a head is an extraordinarily awkward, messy and difficult task if you don’t know what you are doing.  On the other hand if you understand the principles of jointing and related butchery, it is quite easy to quickly and neatly remove the head of even quite a large animal with nothing more than a small sharp knife if you sever the windpipe and properly get the blade between the vertebrae. I am not surprised that there are detailed Japanese explanations for how a warrior should go about the task, as screwing it up would be a remarkably undignified experience, to include risk of serious accidental injury to oneself. 
 

Secondly, “chopping” a head off is exceedingly difficult, even for professionals with specialist tools.  There are plenty of medieval and early modern accounts of judicial executioners using axes and swords designed for the task making a messy cock up of it. I would venture to say it’s even harder to “chop” the head off a dead, limp body than it is to do so to a living victim due to the respective body positions of chopper and victim.  The nata or “kubikiri” pictured would not be very effective for “chopping” a head off at all.  If you don’t know how to bone and joint, then a saw is an infinitely better, neater and safer tool for beheading than any sort of chopping implement; which I think some of the period Japanese scrolls and descriptions of such things bears out. 
 

On the other hand, I agree with the members who have suggested more mundane uses for even the fancier and more exotic looking blades pictured. They bear close resemblance to stylized versions of specialist harvesting tools such as sickles, etc. one still encounters in undeveloped parts of the world or in use by arborists, in orchards, etc for cutting certain types of plant stalks, cane cutting, precisely and cleanly lopping small tree limbs, in basket making and weaving of fish weirs and similar objects. 
 

When one considers that in Japan some aspects of these “agricultural” or gardening tasks had become highly ritualized and stylized by the Edo period, and were very much an “elite” activity as much as one done by peasants in the fields then it is easy to imagine why wealthy persons might commission elaborate nata with beautiful fittings and tempered edges. 
 

Anyway, a very interesting and informative discussion here, I’ve learned a ton and look forward to hearing others’ thoughts on the matter. 

[Bazza]

Reid, thank you for such a "down to earth" exposition of beheading.  I have "a thought", but first I have to find a book...  That might take a while...

 

BaZZa.

aka "Gunnadoo"

[Jeff E]

On 3/19/2018 at 11:58 AM, Markus said:

"First you pin down your enemy to the ground and stop with your right foot on his right arm. Then you fold back the shikoro and cut his windpipe. After that, you hold your wakizashi in reverse grip [...] and cut off the head."

Markus, I'm not arguing anything here, I am just curious, how often was the word "wakizashi" actually used in ancient times? It has been my understanding for at least 15 years that they used the term "shoto," which would refer to anything shorter than 2 shaku in blade length.

[Jeff E]

On 1/23/2021 at 11:19 AM, Wolfmanreid said:

Secondly, “chopping” a head off is exceedingly difficult, even for professionals with specialist tools.  There are plenty of medieval and early modern accounts of judicial executioners using axes and swords designed for the task making a messy cock up of it. I would venture to say it’s even harder to “chop” the head off a dead, limp body than it is to do so to a living victim due to the respective body positions of chopper and victim.  The nata or “kubikiri” pictured would not be very effective for “chopping” a head off at all.  If you don’t know how to bone and joint, then a saw is an infinitely better, neater and safer tool for beheading than any sort of chopping implement; which I think some of the period Japanese scrolls and descriptions of such things bears out. 

 Hi Reid, 

I noticed that you only focused on "chopping." Out of curiosity, what about slicing? 

The blades are probably made for agriculture, but as someone who had one custom made many years ago by Walter Sorrells, I like to keep the fantasy a little.

The blades on the antiques that I have seen are always kata-kiriha in cross section, and as a carpenter, I can fully see this blade shape being used to allow the user to trim whatever they are trimming as close and flat to the surface they are removing it from, however, this would also possibly aid in slipping through joints. 

We see the Kata-kiriha cross section on hocho, though, so I wonder what exactly the cross section was meant for.

Maybe they were the knives of head butchers or head gardners? 

[Rich S]

Old topic, might look at;

 

http://www.japaneseswordindex.com/unji.htm

 

Rich

[Jeff E]

Thanks, Rich. I figured it wouldn't be too out of place to rekindle it given the time lapses in it before, and I didn't want to start a new topic when the information seems to be gathered in this thread

[IBot]

This topic has been discussed before and I previously pointed out that as far as I knew, nata were primarily ceremonial in function. When invited to a tea ceremony, the honoured guest would be led through the garden to the tea house by a servant who carried a nata who pretended to cut off imaginary twigs and foliage that might snag the guest's clothing. Many years ago I owned one with a blade that terminating in a double curve and hole making it look a bit like a bird's head. It was mounted in a beautifully carved wood scabbard and hilt with an inscription stating it had been carved by a Buddhist monk, clearly not someone needing a blade to lop off heads. 

Ian Bottomley

[Wolfmanreid]

On 9/2/2022 at 1:45 PM, Jeff E said:

 Hi Reid, 

I noticed that you only focused on "chopping." Out of curiosity, what about slicing? 
 

Slicing with a draw cut or similar motion is the most efficient means of severing the spine, muscle and tendon of a large mammal and removing the head using a sword or swordlike blade. A properly sharp blade will have no trouble in that situation naturally sliding into the intervertebral space, especially if the sword is curved. However, IMO the cutting edge of those “kubikiri” and nata is on the wrong side of the curve in order to do that efficiently. If you look at a skinning or boning knife which one might use for just this sort of thing you will see the cutting edge is on the outside curve, as it would be on a wakizashi, katana, saber, shamshir etc.  that is pretty much the most efficient blade geometry for that sort of cut as far as I understand. 

[Curran]

• As Jean said, my opinion is that most are Nata romanticized as kubikiri.
• As Reid said, cutting of a head isn't like cutting through SPAM. It is a lot harder than it looks. Sometimes you make a muck of it catching a bone wrong.
• Knackering a pig or cow can be done with a fairly modest knife. Personally, I would prefer a non forward curved blade.

 

   --- Wife was taught to use a small similar knife in florist and ikebana studies, usually reversed in a way that was more of a pulling action and required only slight forward hook with the blade slightly larger near the tip than from where the pulling action starts low on the blade.

 

 

 

 

 

[Curran]

Kubikiri ?   http://www.shoubudou.co.jp/products/detail.php?product_id=216

 

 

花押 --->   A hananata.  Flower cutter / chopper.

    My wife uses a smaller one of these. Kept wicked sharp. She doesn't want me to shave with a straight edge razor, but she flings here hananata around quick enough that she could cut the testicles off a gnat while it is mid-air.