Tameshigiri
試し斬りJapanese sword test-cutting: originally a test of blade quality, today a measure of technique, on a tatami omote target.
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Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Tameshigiri
Tameshigiri is the Japanese art of test-cutting against a target. Originally it was not a test of the swordsman but of the weapon: the practice spread during the Edo period, that is, in the seventeenth century, and served to verify the quality of Japanese swords. Only gradually did the emphasis shift, and today tameshigiri demonstrates above all the skill of the person holding the sword. Its historical form was harsh. Cuts were made into the bodies of the dead, and occasionally of condemned criminals, using a whole range of named cuts, among them tabi-gata and o-kesa. The result of the test was recorded directly on the tang of the blade as an inscription called tameshi-mei or saidan-mei; the sword thus carried permanent proof of what it had managed to cut through, and this inscription is still among the details by which blades are judged today. Modern practice keeps to materials that merely imitate the human body. The most common target is a tatami omote mat, rolled and soaked in water, while green bamboo is used where the cut is meant to correspond to bone. Practitioners train a set of precisely defined cuts: kesa-giri, made diagonally from above; kiri-age, also called gyaku-kesa, made diagonally from below; the horizontal cuts yoko and tsuihei; and the vertical cuts made from above, which include jodan-giri, happonme, makko-giri, shinchoku-giri, and dotan-giri. The point is not to cut through the target at any cost, but to guide the blade so that the cut passes cleanly and along the correct plane.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.