Why was the ”contest to kill 100 people using a sword" by Japanese soldiers fake?

According to Asauemon Yamada, a professional tester of Japanese sword, who lived in the middle of the 19th and worked as an executor of criminals, the max number of human bodies that a sword can cut in a row was 13. This record was made with one created by a renowned swordsmith. However, the swords used by the Japanese soldiers during the war were so-called "Showa-to", which were low quality swords mass-produced during the Show Era (1926-1988) for meeting the great needs of the soldiers' close combats. Therefore, they required to be frequently repaired.

A leading professional whetter Hikaru Miyagata, who had whetted the swords of Matsui and Hasegawa Generals in Shanghai said, "It has been revealed now what miserable results are brought by actual fightings using so-called Showa-to that were recently made from ingot iron."

In an article of a Japanese newspaper "Tokyo Nichinich Shinbun" (January 21, 1938) titled "Yamato Spirits repaired in a Japanese sword hospital", the correspondent Moriyama reported as follows:

"Three days have already passed since a sign appeared on the Chuzan Road in Nanjing of 'Repair of Japanese sword by the Local Service Group of the Great Japanese Sword Organization'. Every time I visited it, I saw many customers of officials and soldiers holding 'great stuffs' coming day and night."

Cutting 100 people in a row with a Japanese sword was impossible.

2014年12月20日