No, I'm not talking about his accidently use of the straight blade square guard "ninja-to" he used in his books in the 80's. I'm talking about his use of the straight blade square guard "ninja-to" in his brand new DVD's.

It's been proven for a long time now that ninja did not use this choku-to/kyokaku tsuba sword, and Stephen Hayes even wrote a reply to an e-budo thread about his mis-conception of using the blade in the 80's. Why is it that he continues to use this blade in his new DVD's when he should know better by now??

As TSD is Hayses non-traditional "thing" now, whats the big deal about using a non-traditional sword?

Is he making it a new tradition for his art, then?

Agreed, Hayes is "doin' his own thing" now. If he wants to do it with ninja-to let him.

Okey dokey. It's just that sword is commonly associated with neo-ninja and ninjers alike these days. I personally have no problems with Hayes using it, it's his thing and that's his business. But you gotta wonder if it's good for his reputation, you know? Of course it has absolutely no effect on my training, but I was just curious if there was any reason for it's continued use by Hayes. Ironically, in the same video I saw, he's wearing iga-bakama, the historically perceived pants for accurate shozouku, and those are rarely seen.

"ninja" image

I haven't seen the straight blade in any of his DVD's--but I certainly don't have them all. I've seen the square tsuba on a couple of blades that do have a curve. Is that what you saw?

I've seen the square tsuba on a couple of blades that do have a curve. Is that what you saw?
No, definately not. Try the senban shurikenjutsu DVD. He uses it to block shuriken about 25 minutes into the film. There was also a preview for another DVD (subtitled "kenjutsu japanese sword) at the end where he's shown using it again (he holds it in a kasumi no kamae type stance during the preview, so you can clearly see that it's straight, but it's obvious regardless).

Watched the tail end of one of my dvd's, sure enough it's chokuto. That is odd...still like his stuff, though.