It is a commonly-encountered article of faith that katanas are intrinsically superior to European swords. This belief is frequently bolstered by
roleplaying games that assign superior statistics to katanas, and also by many
movies. However, these claims are largely based on misunderstandings about the manufacture and role of European swords, and comparing the schools on their worst examples instead of their best.
Because Japan was an iron-poor society, making a sword was an inherently expensive undertaking; the supply of swords was limited, and so it was in the smiths' interest to make the most of the materials they could afford. Europe also had superlative swordsmiths;
Toledo steel swords from
Spain are one example of legendary quality swords from outside Japan. However, the greater availability of iron made it practical to produce cheap, low-quality weapons in large quantities. Where Europeans had the choice between expensive good swords and cheap bad swords, Japanese had the choice between expensive swords, somewhat less expensive swords, or none at all.
Some European swords were also designed for different modes of combat. The katana's sharpness makes it an excellent cutting weapon. Katana are capable of damaging armor to a degree and even today Shinkendo masters perform the ancient helmet cutting ceremony. In this light, the different characteristics of certain European swords are due less to the limitations of their makers than to the requirements of their use. Attempting to establish the superiority of the one weapon over the other is ultimately meaningless without first defining the circumstances in which they are to be compared.
At the same time, many European sword types from the very beginning of the history of the sword, through the medieval period and the renaissance to the 20th century were designed for the same combat modes as Japanese ones, fighting against lightly-armored or unarmored infantry. Styles that relied on a single longsword for both offense and defense were well known - see e.g. Joachim Meyer's
fechtbuch[2] - and disparities in weight have been greatly exaggerated; both longswords and katanas typically weighed between 1.0 and 1.5 kilograms (2-3 pounds).