Hi /k/, I have a question for anyone that knows some Japanese

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>>34075454
The only thing I know is that the master Samurai Miyamoto Musashi almost lost a dual against the Kusarigama
It's a good thing samurai carry 2 swords

>>34075493
That is helpful, thank you. It doesn't really answer my question, but it does add to the idea that the weapon mostly appeared in fiction.

>>34075513
Miyamoto musashi was a real person

>>34075636
He was, but Shishido Baiken, the guy in the story using the Kusarigama, was not.

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>>34075649
Actually some Japanese scholars, including myself, are revisiting the idea that he was indeed a real person.

>>34075694
That's not relevant.

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>>34075454
its a pruning hook
as its a custom to have ninjas on your payroll and have them pretend to be the gardeners and landscape keepers

>>34075720
Close. That's just a Kama. Kamas were definitely used as peasant weapons similar to how Europen peasants would improvise scythes with the blade set parallel instead of perpendicular.

The kusarigama is a kama with a weighted chain attached. The practicality of the chain as a weapon for anything other than demonstrations and theater seems completely unbelievable to me.

>>34075694
And who the fuck are you to say that?

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>>34075454

>>34075694
This is goddamned autism

ill never forget living in china, walking past old people doing tai chi on the way to work, and the old guy that would occassionally bust out the bladed whip and do his sequence

They were real and were used, we just don't know what for.

>>34075694
Quality joke M8. Kek.

it's a specialty weapon that only a few people ever used

you could do things like catch a sword with either the sickle or whip the chain around an arm or even sword to incapacitate your enemy. you would have to do this pretty fast and precisely so i doubt it was used much on purpose, most likely as a last bit of defense if you can't run away and hide. ninja were farmers by day so one could also use this in the field while being clandestine guard duty.

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>>34075454
>Was the Kusarigama ever a real weapon?
Yes. It was popular enough to have multiple variations of it.

Both sickles weapons and chain weapons were fairly popular, so some guy went "why not both" and that's how it was born.

>They seem to me like flails. A cool-looking idea that an artist had that was later made "real," as ceremonial or decorative pieces rather than actual weapons.
That's another myth. They weren't many if any at all in use in medieval western Europe as is commonly depicted in fiction, but a fair amount were used in Eastern Europe and Asia.

>>34077554
>ninja were farmers by day so one could also use this in the field while being clandestine guard duty
Some schools considered them to be "secret weapons", but they developed enough that they were obviously weapons and couldn't be hidden in plain sight like ordinary farming tools.

>>34075694
>Actually some Japanese scholars, including myself, are revisiting the idea that he was indeed a real person.
Care to elaborate?

>>34077554
> ninja were farmers by da
Actually, some ninja came from samurai families. Hanzo Hatori, for example, was in service to Tokugawa Ieyasu as a samurai.

>>34075454
>They're obviously very showy and require intense mastery to use even halfway effectively, which to me seems like it would make for an awful weapon on a real battlefield.
Protip: You throw the weight, not the sickle.

>>34075454
I'm somebody who actually does a lot of sparring or training with kama and kusarigama, and even I want to ask this. The kama are obviously just small scythes, basically the same as European peasants using sickles to fight. The kusarigama is definitely in multiple weapons schools, and I'd believe it if you told me they were sometimes used in duels. I've been having trouble trying to track the exact origins and use(due to the fact that it's a simple modification to a tool). Kama were very common, but I really can't find much evidence that the kusarigama was ever used outside of a few weapon schools as a more obscure option.

What is obvious is that it was definitely never used on the battlefield. Besides needing decent training to use it(although it's nothing complicated), space is the main issue. Even though you can throw the weight straight, you'll be limited to that unless you have space around and behind you to spin the chain.

Even if they weren't popular or made for the battlefield, they're definitely really interesting to use. Something to keep in mind is that there are variation in chain placement. Some tradition designs have the chain on top, this allows for one handed manipulation of the weight while keeping the hand in it's normal swinging position. The other design(which I consider much better) has the hole on the bottom like in your pic. When using it this way, the chain can be held with a second hand which gives much better control and allows for straight weight "thrusts" using the same techniques as a rope dart. You can also just reverse grip the kama and still manipulation the chain and weapon with one hand. I do HEMA longsword, but I can still appreciate how fun and interesting the kama and kusarigama are. They're some of my favorite weapons.

>>34075744

>That's just a Kama

A Kama is a hand-sized harvesting scythe. A Kusarigama is like a pruning hook because

>throw hook, attached to chain, up over crook of tree branch
>yank hard
>take down branch

Possibly how it might have worked.

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>>34075694
>Japanese scholars, including myself