Travis Bussey 8 months ago I wondered about this for years, why do almost all historical martial arts from all over the world have what to modern martial arts seem so impractical. I think I found a possible answer. I found that training in unkempt ground makes the skills learned from a lot of the fancier lead switching and foot raising seen in many martial arts suddenly very necessary.

Sometimes the single leg is for long range, but sometimes it's for close range. It depends on what move it is. This guy is very knowledgeable about such things. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hdN7ib1jt7_Kh40.html

they can, the thing is that a two handed jian have not the same mass than a dadao...

Can

www.chineselongsword.com/dadao

Thanks a lot！

你没发现实际上这是刀破长枪的动作改编么？

+WolfClant Lifting the legs in 13 serves two purposes (though I'm guessing at the second one): the first, when raising the lead leg, it voids a strike at the legs, so if an opponent were to attempt to strike your forward leg, you could raise it over the strike while staying in distance, which is fairly important as the dadao is a relatively short sword (doubly so if fighting against someone armed with a polearm). The second, when raising the rear leg, I believe is to shift the body's balance forward and allow for a more powerful strike, but again, I'm guessing on this one.

+ChishioAme while drawing a circle to block, you do need to avoid being hit in the foot. the second raise of back leg is useless.

Surely all the fancy footwork ( of traditional Chinese martial arts) is impractical & useless, in both bare hand and melee weapon fights! Never waste time practicing it unless it is for Wushu competitions, which actually concerns choreography but not real martial arts.

+ChisoshioAme ...if one were to illogically strike to the legs, it's likely to be to the thigh...lifting the leg wouldn't avoid the strike at all, worse still strikes move *much* faster than legs and can be redirected...this only seems to serve to put you off balance and leave you open. See Roland Warzecha's "tactics 2: fighting in real times", he explains a nearly identical problem with footwork (committing too early.).... If the person has a polearm it's even worse....they can reach the leg (if for whatever reason they were striking it.) far easier than you can remove it...not to mention it'd be more difficult to avoid a logical strike to the body or head with your leg up. A powerful strike is done with a step...the hip rotation is important...using momentum to lift your leg into the air against the strike is actually going to make it less powerful, not more.

Footwork is 90% of the martial art. Fancy footwork may it seem, but everything has a purpose. Legs are crossed to keep facing the opponent while retreating, front leg is lifted to avoid ant cuts to the leg, back leg is lifted for further reach, etc.

Dao & gun, albeit an outdated long rifle

The Japanese were skilled at bayonet fencing, so the Chinese needed a big sword to counter it. A rifle with a bayonet has a lot of mass, so an ordinary sword won't stop it.

It's more likely that absolutely no one used these techniques as you see here. The application form is an "ideal" version of the technique, helps develop certain skills. In an actual fight the movements would be faster, smaller, and less obvious. The presentation also helps understand the mechanics and angles certain things should be delivered.

It didn't work and never will. This weapon was given to cannon fodders who were not expected to survive after the first contact. The chinese military had servere shortage of munitions and arms during the Japanese invasion. This thing was basically developped with a better-than-nothing mindset. It was said that on average 3-5 of these guys were needed to defeat one Japanese rifleman in melee combat, and that's assuming they can get there before getting shot. To properly deal with a bayonet you need a sword that is long and well balanced. This sword is way too short as a two handed weapon, and way too front heavy for single handed use. The katana or its chinese equivalent would be better suited for the job. But longer swords would require proper heat treatment which not every village blacksmith is capable of. It would also require purer steel which they didn't have access to in large quantities at the time.

You're correct that these swords were given to cannon fodder on the battlefield, but that doesn't mean that said cannon fodder were ineffective. Despite their high casualty rate the dadao squads seemed to be deadly enough that the japanese soldiers actually feared encountering them. That said, the applications as seen here were probably never used. The dadao, while seen in frontline combat, was often more popular as a militia/law enforcement weapon. The forms demonstrated here were likely adapted from different weapon forms hastily without accounting for the new weapon's mechanics. Also, while the Japanese katana (and its Chinese equivalent) is a more elegant and well balanced weapon, it requires more gentle and fine handling, which caused a lot of failures in war. The dadao, while crude and poorly balanced, tended to last longer in part due to its simple construction.

That once again comes down to heat treatment of the steel at which point even the katana, popularly considered the apex of East asian swordsmithing, falls short. The traditional katana and most likely its chinese equivalent too are only properly heat treated on their cutting edges. The back of their blades are effectively still soft steel. This means you can't chip and resharpen them as much as you can with say a European longsword. They are however very thick and very stiff blades and as such they cut soft targets really well. In our HEMA group theres a guy who has an authentic Japanese made katana and the thing cuts bottles and tatami mats better than the Albion sharps we have. But the traditional katana is also a lot shorter than European longswords, for the same weight. The katana blade is traditionaly around 75cm long which is a lot shorter than most European one handed swords. And if you've fenced against longer weapons or extremely tall stature you'd know the struggle of fighting against superior reach advantage. On a side note I don't understand why they didn't put a longer haft on this dadao thing to make a polearm out of it. Polearms are generally speaking much more effective battlefield weapons than swords.

There actually are records of "long handled dadaos" in use in the Chinese military during that period. Since the dadao wasn't exactly standard issue and more popular among militias and police than on the frontlines there was actually a lot of variety as to how they were built. You can't really look at the dadao here and think "this is what everyone was using" because it wasn't. Looking at photos, some of the "dadaos" resembled normal one-handed sabers more than the sword on display here. It is interesting that you mentioned the polearm since it's actually been theorized that the original design for the dadao (and possibly the ox-tail saber) was in fact on a polearm that had its top half cut off. I'm not arguing with you that the heat-treatment of the blade is important to the overall quality of the blade, but you also have to realize that this is a context of relatively modern warfare. Swords like katanas require more maintenance and delicate handling than most dadaos did, something that couldn't be done on the battlefield. Dadaos had no standard quality and the heat treatment and durability of the sword varied greatly. Some of the swords were relatively well made by local smiths and supplied to militias and some were hunks of flattened metal taken from railroad tracks. You can't really evaluate this weapon as viewed here since the idea that it was one standardized weapon, wielded by all soldiers, is little more than a myth.

Sometimes at close range it's better to take care of your enemies with bayonet instead of bullets

Its a "swo-nive"!

Both. Nowadays it is more useful to cleave chicken. You need a large chopping board for it and it is really a pain to sharpen the edges.

Both

I dont know but the chinese army still use that sword alongside with firearms during the sino-japanese wars

From what little I know, designated dadao units had more than just their namesake at their disposal, especially hand grenades, not to mention whatever firearm they had access to be it a Mauser broomhandle type or a rifle. Furthermore they were acutely aware of the need to carefully approach their targets in order to get close enough to do any good. The 29th's Dadao unit made their famous assault at night, achieving devastating surprise against an enemy obsessed with night fighting themselves. Of course this is all off the top of my head, and there are far better sources than myself on this subject. One final thing I should mention is that a significant user of dadao were the Date to Die corps, straight up suicide units who strapped dozens of stick grenades to themselves, which they were known to destroy Japanese tanks with by rolling under them and "daring to die" with a firm yank on the interconnected friction cords. This wasn't about personal survival so much as it was national survival by any means necessary.

No one ever said melee techniques were going to win over firearms. But melee fighting was still a thing in WWII believe it or not. Less and less so with more advanced weaponry comes to play in later years. There are numerable instances where Chinese and Japanese forces were so close to each other, they resorted to hand-to-hand melee. Other times it was simply because of lack of ammunition.

I recently purchased the Condor Dadao for around $80 its made full tang, of 1075 high carbon steel, weight is around 1.5kg, it is incredibly solid, comes sharpened (not incredibly sharp but cuts very well), for the price range i would definitely buy it. Chinnature and Zombie Go Boom both did reviews if you want more info

I have decided to get one of those; it's on my list... After looking everywhere for information on this; I decided that this is the best choice. When I get it, I'll do a Video on it... Stiletto :)

From what I know, this weapon was chosen because it could counter both the katana or the bayonet. Japanese soldiers were skilled with both, so the Chinese needed the DaDao.

Chinese soldiers also used Miao Dao, which is created for the sole purpose of dealing with a katana user.

My great grandpa from Guam who fought the Japanese bayonets with machetes and shovels would think you're REALLY stupid for what you just said LOL

The chinesw use that sword during the sino japanese war

@@ChamorruWarrior better than getting shot by a guy half your size and even less your skill.

@@hayden8491 Melee combat is always preferred. Firearms are just too sneaky. You could blown away by a guy you didn't even know was there, and unlike arrows (which already suck) if they miss or you dodge and or deflect, they can just shoot again and again and again. Only weaklings would prefer firearm warfare.

wiggalama Yea we kinda got our ass kicked in wwll until the Russian came(also the nuke). The Chinese army don't have enough guns and shit to arm their army so they gotta use swords.

wiggalama and type 98 katana are almost treated like treasure in China cuz ppl like'em

+Marvin The Nerd (MarvinTheDamnChink) Google "Battle of Changsha", also the katanas given to Japanese NCOs were factory made and extremely poor quality and was not desired by the Chinese because they were more effective fighting tools, but because they were novelty items (the same reason why Americans looked to collected swords too).

The Chinese got their asses kicked because they had swords VS RIFLES, not katanas LOL

There's a reason the dadao has a reputation as a katana breaker

此话怎讲啊

You can barely get off your seat, so you should stop commenting. Same logic.