this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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Ways in which revolvers are not the katanas of guns:
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Revolvers are generally incredibly simple and cheap to build, operate and maintain compared to semi auto pistols, submachine guns, assault rifles, light machine guns, etc.
Conversely, katanas require a significant amount of skill and practice to wield proficiently, as compared to many, but not all, other kinds of swords, and are/were also comparatively more difficult to properly forge and balance than many other kinds of swords, and were quite expensive.
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Revolvers were incredibly common during 'the West', almost anyone could fairly easily equip themselves with one, and many did.
Katanas, for essentially all of their history, were only allowed to be carried by wealthy, royals or nobles or warlords, and their extremely small in number official bodyguards/goons, and soldiers. The vast majority of people were/are legally barred from owning or carrying them.
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One on one revolver quickdraw duels almost never happened in real life.
One on one katana honor duels were actually somewhat/fairly common amongst those who actually had them.
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Other points:
Revolvers are romanticized akin to Katanas because A Fistful of Dollars is basically a shot for shot remake of Yojimbo.
Kurosawa sued Leone over this, and won 15% of A Fistful of Dollars' sales revenue.
Nonetheless, A Fistful of Dollars was widely influential on future western films.
The modern, relative popularity of revolvers in real life is a result of their simplicity, reliability and inexpensiveness compared to other hand guns.
They would still be largely popular irl even without their depiction in media.
Katanas, on the other hand, are basically only popular in media in the West due to media, very few people actually own a katana, ever fewer have enough Iaido training to know how to use one.
Compared to revolvers, they would probably be far less popular irl were it not for the media exposure.
Correct me if I’m wrong but weren’t katanas fragile (in sword terms) because low iron quality and a one on one sword duel was less clashing blades and more of a mobile type of duel that ended in a few decisive strike
A well made katana is probably (?) more flexible and less brittle than many european bastard or two handed longswords.
That is to say, they're more likely to deform from bending, from striking or blocking at an improper angle, whereas a stockier european style sword is more likely to crack or shatter generally from hitting something solid too many times or with too much force.
That is a huge generalization though, an in depth look would require a lot more specificity.
One on one katana duels varied in character depending on the nature of the combatants, relative skill levels, level of armor of combatants, overall scenario.
Some duels would be more as you first describe, a drawn out struggle, others were finished in seconds.
I am far from an expert as to the relative commonality of different natures/kinds of one on one duels but they did actually happen with decent regularity, as compared to one on one revolver quick draw duels, which there seems to be no solid evidence of more than a handful of occurences of, and even those are contested.
The quick draw duel trope as we know it today largely comes from A Fistful of Dollars outright doing its best to emulate a fast, one on one or one on many katana engagement scene from Yojimbo, but with revolvers instead.
Such scenes with katanas as depicted in Yojimbo may not be literally historically accurate, but are generally more grounded in reality.
It would kind of be like if that movie version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo Di Caprio, where they just use modern guns that are named 'Longsword' and such for artistic liscense... somehow kicked off a greater cultural trope or meme about how street gangs in the 90s often conducted armed disputes with guns.
IRL in the 1980-90s gangs in cities like Los Angeles did in fact regularly shoot at each other. The truce between the Bloods and Crips was a big deal and made national news. That isn't a meme or something from a movie.