Talk:Dōtanuki

Meaning of Dôtanuki
Can anyone find any reference to the meaning of "Dôtanuki" meaning 'cuts through torsos'. The final two kanji are used as a place name and a family name in Japan and I think it far more likely that it was a smithe's name or location. This strongly sounds like Japanese fan lore.


 * The japanese wikipedia page on 胴田貫 says also thet it was the name of a line of swordsmiths from Higonokuni, a province of Kyuushuu. Doutanuki Masakuni beeing particularly famous. It gives as an origin of that name that if you were to cut the torso 胴 of bodies fallen in rice paddies 田, it would go through 貫 to the rice paddy under it.
 * It also adds that Ogami Itto's sword has a different kanji in the middle (胴太貫) Alestane 03:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The first sentence of this article is hilarious. That has to be from a video game. Dotanuki is a school of swordsmiths, smiths often chose their art name so that the characters had alternate readings like "prosperous country" or "gold luck." They are not to be taken literally, and no sword exists that could cut a samurai in half wearing full armor unless you connected with an unarmored portion. Dotanuki were not particularly fine blades, but workmanlike. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.70.117.214 (talk) 17:14, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Wakizashi length
The article mentions Kozure Ookami's hero's sword as being of wakizashi's length. I'm not sure about the manga, I don't have one with me, but in the movies, Ogami Itto's sword seems certainly longer than a wakizashi. A wakizashi length sword would hardly be practical to give the todome of a seppuku.Alestane 03:46, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Reference
The reference to http://www.paralumun.com/swdot.htm seems more than a little dubious. It's not a reference to an actual history site or a reference to a decent book, rather it's just a naked page with pretty dubious claims. I'd like to remove it. Pmw2cc (talk) 21:49, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I would second this motion, it looks a bit too fishy 24.16.152.141 (talk) 08:11, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. 76.14.29.174 (talk) 01:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree as well, as it seems quite biased. I am deleting the citation and adding a in its place under the pretence of an unreliable source.

Cut through armor
I'd like to remove the sentence, "The dōtanuki was made to slice through a target with just a single cut and was the only sword capable of slicing in half a samurai wearing full armour.", as it seems partly nonsensical (in that all swords are designed to slice/cut with a single cut) and there's no evidence that the dōtanuki has any special power to cut through armor. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pmw2cc (talk • contribs) 16:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Some deeper changes
I think the main issue with this article is the confusion between historical and fictional meanings of the term “dōtanuki”. Dōtanuki are an important trope in jidaigeki, videogames etc., and I agree this use deserves to be documented, but we should be careful to distinguish from actual fact.

I took the liberty to add several pieces of info from ja.wikipedia. They’re unsourced, but in my humble opinion ja.wikipedia was still more reliable than the lame iai sword sellers people have been using as references here. I also removed a meaningless, unsourced claim (that “dōtanuki were made to cut in a single stroke”) and a reference that 404ed.

If you feel this edit was bad feel free to improve it, but let’s try to find good sources and to note fiction as fiction. Thanks :)

143.107.45.146 (talk) 14:36, 16 December 2010 (UTC)


 * It's true that this article is fairly bad. Anything you can do to improve it is appreciated. Please do try to find sourced material, though. One problem with the current article is that it's difficult to see which parts are sourced to the historical record and which parts are sourced to someone's opinion that Lone Wolf and Cub is pretty cool. Zanbatō has more or less the same issue. — Gavia immer (talk) 21:48, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Reading Confirmation
The English article says the reading is Dōtanuki while the Japanese says it's Dōdanuki. Most of my searching in English comes up with the T version for some reason, but searching in Japanese comes up with the D version. Can we confirm the reading? Erynamrod (talk) 15:35, 8 December 2023 (UTC)