Giles wrote:I didn't see your last posting, wrote this before...
In this case I would agree with Wayne, in the sense that 'leverage' is much less of a thing with the jian. Of course, it depends how you define leverage and it will always be there in some way. It will turn up to some extent in CMC-style sticky swords and in sword sparring, but usually the less the better. If the other guy doesn't watch out, you may seize/control his hand for a moment and slice and get out again or even disarm before he can recover. However, if you post an image of a half-swording guy in full harness, Origami, then that's a very different kind of 'leverage': willingly closing to grapple and using lots of explicit leverage to get the point of your sword into the cracks and weak points of the armour. Here, any kind of slicing, cutting of tendons, muscles, blood vessels etc. is not going to happen, period. And the sword itself, probably an arming sword, has to be much stiffer and more robust than a typical jian. When it comes to the jian, when held in one hand it would be almost a fluke if it were to find and penetrate an armour gap even point-first. And if you just look at any established jian form, you see the jian really is more of the 'water' element, flowing around resistance - half-swording doesn't put in an appearance. The great majority of techniques in the jian form would never work against someone in full armour - to me it seems more of a 'civilian' weapon, but I'm open to correction on that point.
My whole point with the jian lately is that it's a very context specific weapon.
Leverage is key particularly when you're trying to do all this fancy "water based" technique. I agree that you don't see Chinese forms involving grabbing the lower third of your own or the opponents blade due to the arrogance and lack of practical experience of the folks designing and propagating the forms.
Sabre and stick form all day long.
The blocking techniques of the lower third use leverage, the sliding techniques of the middle third use leverage, every aspect of handling a sword, much less hitting or cutting someone with it is going to involve leverage. The further a load is from the fulcrum and applied force the harder you have to work at it. This is the primary concept in blade contact.
And I know there is this fantasy where doing this dance every day means you can just waltz between the strikes of your clumsy external foe but the reality is your blades are going to hit each other at some point and a weapon intended for fighting takes that into account.
You're not going to half sword in that fashion, and just reaching out and grabbing a blade is kind of dumb, but let's say you get bound and you can push their sword towards the strong hand, exposing the lower third behind yours with their tiger mouth facing you. Reach over your arm. Grab the lower third and pull while pushing the sword toward them, disarm and remove defense while attacking.
Just one example. Another being if for some reason you need to get two hands worth of power into something by "third swording".
I learned 13 sword energies of Taiji Jian, y'all are talking about 2-3 of them as if that's everything transmitted and that there's nothing else a sword can do.
But really. Yes, I posted a picture of somebody half swording a rapier.
This thread started with a comparison of rapier to sabre as if it were relevant to a discussion of Taiji Jian. How is accurate historical use of that weapon not relevant in this discussion? How is a discussion of blade grasping techniques by the same individual regarding the same weapon somehow incorrect?
I get that we have emotional attachment to our ideas, but seems like we're wanting to cherrypick our blade arts.
Yes these forms are missing techniques common to blade arts from cultures that actively fought wars using similar weapons, techniques that come out of active fighters trying to explore these systems today. that should tell us that they aren't the ultimate badass completely comprehensive king systems of swordplay and that maybe we should test our assumptions.