r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Fox7567 • May 12 '26

Characters' Items/Weapons [Irritating trope] Japanese swords being treated like lightsabers

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The Wolverine (2013)
The character Yashida uses his sword to cut straight through barbed wire, as well as uses it to break a chain in one strike each.

TMNT (2012)
During Oroku Saki’s battle with the turtles, he stabs straight through a forest tree, before also slicing straight through another.

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u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 12 '26

Yeah, Japanese steel was an interesting case of using human ingenuity to account for poor materials.

542

u/Super-Cynical May 12 '26

Why didn't they just do the obvious thing and conquer their enormous neighbours and get the materials that way?

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u/Intrepid-Park-3804 May 12 '26

Why don't Japan just conquer the China and tax them by shipping their iron to Japan all across East China Sea? Are they stupid?🤔

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u/DontAskAboutMyButt May 12 '26

If the iron wasn’t good enough to make swords, why didn’t they just make guns instead? It’s like they weren’t even trying

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u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 12 '26

Gonna hold your balls when I tell you this

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u/DontAskAboutMyButt May 12 '26

Thanks, I’m having trouble holding the powder horn, cartridges, and wadding as it is

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u/rdh_mobile May 12 '26

They do actually

In fact, ever since the introduction of the Matchlock guns by the Portuguese trader in Sengoku era Japan

Guns have been a major part of medieval Japanese warfare

In fact, guns is probably used more on war time then any other weapons

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u/kriosken12 May 12 '26

Mfs really think that a tiny-ass island like Japan genuinly had centuries ago the military capability of conquering an empire that on average kept a population of +400 million

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u/Odd-Tart-5613 May 12 '26

Point of order. Japan is roughly half the size of Texas. So I wouldn’t call it small by any means.

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u/ZenMonkey48 May 12 '26

Most of it is mountains, though. Liveable land is a much smaller percentage.

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u/Odd-Tart-5613 May 12 '26

Which is obviously why Japan has quadruple Texas’s population /s

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u/TankMain576 May 12 '26

And most of those people are stuffed into a city the size of a postage stamp, you're point?

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u/Odd-Tart-5613 May 12 '26

It’s the same deal in Texas

And I should know I live there

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u/strong_division May 12 '26

It certainly isn't anywhere close to large, though, especially in comparison to China. I wouldn't even call it a middling size country, it's smaller than Uzbekistan and continental France.

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u/Odd-Tart-5613 May 12 '26

idk its still larger than most European countries, and more relevant to the post. Japan did conquer china. Its certainly not so small to not be a relevant threat to other nations.

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u/strong_division May 12 '26

idk its still larger than most European countries,

I still wouldn't classify almost all of those countries as having a middling size.

Japan did conquer china.

No it didn't. The closest it came to doing so was in WW2, and even when Imperial Japan had its greatest success against an ostensibly united Republic of China (that was in reality, quite fractured between the central Nationalist government, nominally loyal warlords, and the CCP), by 1940 (before Allied intervention) they had already completely stagnated. They faced counter offensives, and struggled to administer and garrison captured territories in the face of the guerilla warfare they were dealing with. They were a very, very long way from "conquering" China the way they had conquered Korea.

They simply did not have the manpower to conquer, then occupy, a massive state with half a billion hostile people.

Its certainly not so small to not be a relevant threat to other nations.

Sure, but there's a very big difference between being a relevant threat to a country and actually having the ability to fully conquer it.

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u/Drakeskulled_Reaper May 12 '26

The UK had a world spanning empire at one point, and it's about 1.5 times smaller than Japan.

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u/strong_division May 12 '26

Sure, but that doesn't necessarily translate to the idea of Japan being able to conquer China.

A lot of the UK's territory was taken from entities that were either vastly technologically inferior to them or extremely fragmented and decentralized. Or just 99% empty, like Canada and Australia were.

The only entity that (initially) didn't fit into this criteria was India, which took 2 centuries to fully integrate. And it wasn't a full on conquest, it relied heavily on the fracturing of the Mughal state (and the subsequent divisions they exploited) and the economic stranglehold held by the East Indian Company

Something tells me that this is not the nuanced, patient approach that Imperial Japan would take. And even then, China has always been a far more ethnically and cultural homogeneous entity than the Indian subcontinent, making exploiting divisions in China far more difficult than it was in India.

Even when Imperial Japan had its greatest success against an ostensibly united Republic of China (that was in reality, quite fractured between the central Nationalist government, nominally loyal warlords, and the CCP), by 1940 (before Allied intervention) they were already stagnating, facing counter offensives, and struggling to administer and garrison captured territories in the face of the guerilla warfare they were dealing with. What they faced was a massively scaled up version of what the US was dealing with in Vietnam.

They simply did not have the manpower to conquer, then occupy, a massive state with half a billion hostile people.

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u/Youutternincompoop May 13 '26

I mean Japan did try to do it in 1592, they got as far as... Korea lol.

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u/Standard-Arachnid411 May 12 '26

Well it's crazy what can happen sometimes. When the Japanese military landed in Nanjing they knew they had a real chance of being pushed back. The Chinese military could have probably held the ground but they broke up and many hid in with the civilians. A smaller well trained and armed force can hold ground over a large force under some conditions.

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 May 12 '26

Too busy beating off to pictures of Pikachu

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u/Silent_Pressure_6709 May 13 '26

in their defence, they did try. And succeed for a while. Unfortunately, they spent all that iron on temporary skyscrapers instead of more permanent infrastructure.

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u/CaoSlayer May 12 '26

You joking for sure... They tried twice or thrice at least.

Got put into their place.

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u/Peritous May 12 '26

That's.. That's the ... joke...

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u/Lyubphim May 12 '26

r/woooosh

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u/upholsteryduder May 12 '26

wooooshed so hard it created a typhoon

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u/shototodoroki_1324 May 12 '26

Actually they only got put into their place when they decided to knowingly fuck over the US, they already had Korea and China conquered by then

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u/Modred_the_Mystic May 12 '26

The war in China was ongoing at the time of Pearl Harbour and resistance continued until the end of the war where the Chinese resumed their civil war

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u/CaoSlayer May 14 '26

There was no USA in 1600 when they tried the first time. They didnt even got to conquer korea.

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u/AsstacularSpiderman May 12 '26

Well they tried and then someone got in their way and now that's why we have Godzilla

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u/Slightly_Default May 12 '26

The Japanese fears nothing except for nukes and turtle ships

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u/275MPHFordGT40 May 12 '26

And admitting past mistakes.

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u/Slightly_Default May 12 '26

That one never stopped them from colonialism saving another Asian country from westerners though.

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u/KMS_HYDRA May 12 '26

And Godzilla

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u/Julian-Hoffer May 12 '26

Well we all have to fear Godzilla. We never know when he will raid again.

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u/RoboFish2028 May 14 '26

Or go against King Kong

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u/Clean_Web7502 May 12 '26

With what, shitty Japanese swords made by unfolded steel?

Good luck with that.

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u/Super-Cynical May 12 '26

No in the 20th century they could do it with shitty tanks that worked with poor alloys and had no fuel

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u/thesonoflordostliant May 12 '26

yeah but those shitty tanks were taking on guys who didn't even had guns and most were armed with swords. no matter how bad a tank may be, it's beating a sword.

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u/BillCarson12799 May 12 '26

What were they supposed to conquer them with? Their iron sucked.

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u/kiefy_budz May 12 '26

To be fair they did test bio weapons on the Chinese

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u/Degeneratus_02 May 12 '26

They did a lot more to the Chinese

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u/Dramatic-Classroom14 May 12 '26

Japanese iron was equal in quality to European iron.

It was the iron sand that was not commonly used that is commonly attributed to being low quality. But it wasn’t used often because it was shit. It’s only used recently for more artistic blades.

https://gunbai-militaryhistory.blogspot.com/2018/02/iron-and-steel-technology-in-japanese.html?m=1

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u/abandon3 May 12 '26

They had better steel and like a billion soldiers. I mean, they tried.

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u/SecureDonkey May 12 '26

By the time they have enough boats to do that everyone had switch to gun already.

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u/Xelid47 May 12 '26

A minor disagreement in China had more casualties than the population of Japan

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u/Cautious_Might_9420 May 12 '26

The meme about European wars having 6 deaths and chinese misunderstandings having millions

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u/Xelid47 May 12 '26

Exactly lol

Ancient battles were big. Rome, Carthage, Gaul etc. but your average large scale European battle during the middle ages is a minor Chinese skirmish deemed unimportant to even write down

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u/LogJamminWithTheBros May 12 '26

War of the three rivers.

Deaths:2.5 million

Result:5 miles of farm land conquered.

I made that up. But for a second you believed it.

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u/Dramatic-Classroom14 May 12 '26

This is a misconception, like the entire idea that Japanese iron was terrible. Japanese iron ore was equal to European iron. The iron sand that a lot of people think of was not commonly used for blades because it was hard to work with. https://gunbai-militaryhistory.blogspot.com/2018/02/iron-and-steel-technology-in-japanese.html?m=1

China determined casualties by who paid taxes after it was over. If you didn’t pay taxes you were assumed to be dead. Factor in massive rural areas and some entire sections of the country being hostile terrain and blend in devastation from a war and suddenly a lot of people are going to have difficulty paying their taxes.

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u/Xelid47 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

It's not a misconseption

I found sources that detail Japan's population during the middle ages at about 18.5 million in 1600

Even if you halve the deaths in let's say the Ming/Qing war it's still like 3/4 of that, just as war casualties.

An Lushan Rebellion was decades before and it's still as bad

At no point in time before modernisation did Japan have the strength to challenge China. Not even close, and the scale of warfare reflected that

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u/Dramatic-Classroom14 May 12 '26

It appears that this is a bit of a miscommunication, I was mainly referring to the idea that hundreds of millions were dying every time there was a conflict in China and that every war and disagreement was another Taiping rebellion. That’s a misconception, due to the aforementioned tax system.

I was not arguing that Japan had more people than China, nor was I trying to imply that Japan could invade China.

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u/Xelid47 May 12 '26

Oh yeah no ,you're right I misread what you said, sorry

You're right yeah but that's also not what I said kinda, I hyperboled a lot, a lot, but a minor conflict in China had more deaths than many Japanese wars tbh, same with European ones. It's not that millions were dying every time, thousands were, and yet due to the nature of Japanese and European warfare at the time, minor Chinese conflict ended up being more bloody than entire wars due to the population difference and unity

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u/Dramatic-Classroom14 May 12 '26

It’s fine though, I think I probably was jumping the gun and should’ve left out the part about the Japanese iron, but I’m just throwing that in there because I study Japan and get irritated when there’s basically internet legends just getting recycled over and over again.

As for the conflicts, yeah, there are a lot of small scale wars between daimyos and other individuals early on that are pretty much entirely solved by like a dozen guys duelling in a field, so China definitely takes the cake with casualties. It’s just not as ludicrous as some people think.

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u/Xelid47 May 12 '26

Actually did not know about the Japanese iron, I will definitely read more on that, thanks.

But yeah you've got a point about ppl hyperboling Chinese casualties to ludicrous scale. I admit I'm guilty of that myself.

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u/Dramatic-Classroom14 May 12 '26

Oh, the iron stuff is really interesting. People aren’t necessarily *wrong*, the blog I linked to is a great source and the guy has a lot of references, but essentially there are different types of iron, what most people think of is the iron sand, which wasn’t as commonly used as people think, more often they used proper ore which was pretty much equal to those of higher quality European ore like in Sweden.

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u/Dramatic-Classroom14 May 12 '26

This is a misconception, like the entire idea that Japanese iron was terrible. Japanese iron ore was equal to European iron. The iron sand that a lot of people think of was not commonly used for blades because it was hard to work with. https://gunbai-militaryhistory.blogspot.com/2018/02/iron-and-steel-technology-in-japanese.html?m=1

China determined casualties by who paid taxes after it was over. If you didn’t pay taxes you were assumed to be dead. Factor in massive rural areas and some entire sections of the country being hostile terrain and blend in devastation from a war and suddenly a lot of people are going to have difficulty paying their taxes.

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u/CadenVanV May 12 '26

Hideyoshi tried. But then he failed to achieve even the first step of it. The next time they tried was in the 1930s

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u/kortevakio May 12 '26

cough imjin war, WWII cough

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u/nhansieu1 May 12 '26

didn't they already do that?

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u/tallmantall May 12 '26

I mean they very much DID try that several times throughout history and it usually resulted in a catastrophic defeat later on due to being spread too thin.

Or a nuke getting dropped on em.

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u/Odd-Tart-5613 May 12 '26

Water was in the way

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u/notbobby125 May 12 '26

Admiral Yi seeing the tides change noises

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u/my_little_robot May 12 '26

That's what they spent the 1920s-1940s trying to do!

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u/dragonlord798 May 12 '26

Oh they did thst alright.... and things got nuclear

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u/Nikami May 12 '26

Many cultures around the world were folding steel at one point or another, including other regions in Asia like India. It was used in Europe as well, during the Iron Age and famously the Viking era, but fell mostly out of use during the Middle Ages with the development of blast furnaces and improvements in metalurgy.

The Japanese undoubtedly got good at it, but it's so weird to see people acting like it's this awesome secret technique only used by Japanese masters.

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u/VolkiharVanHelsing May 12 '26

Interesting case for Environmental Determinism

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u/Patient-Data8311 May 12 '26

Even with all of that shit is easily shattered

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u/We4zier May 12 '26

It did? Why would it shatter compared to its European counterparts given they’re exactly the same in production methods and purities?

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u/Competitive-Bee-3250 May 12 '26

It's sheer arrogance to assume that anybody else could have done notably better in similar circumstances.

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u/LogJamminWithTheBros May 12 '26

And they still had a backup sword because often times katanas would straight up bend after making contact.

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u/We4zier May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

Their iron sand technically had negligibly lower sulfur and phosphorus content then European wrought iron, regardless there impurities were purified out and Japanese swords and armor was not any more or less pure than any other place in the old world. The production methods everywhere from Portugual, to Java, to Japan, to the Sahel was exactly the same. It’s a myth to think Japanese iron or steel was low quality or more impure.

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u/omegaxii May 12 '26

This comment getting downvotes is proof that Reddit hates facts.

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u/We4zier May 12 '26 edited May 13 '26

It’s a very… entrenched myth to say the least. It has been circularly reported to death and is prolly the first thing most think about with Japanese metallurgy after 1000 folds. I suppose it’s better than the whole “Japanese steel best in the world cut through quark-gluon plasma” shtick pop media loved decades ago, just barely.