Although the metal blades may add a little more realism to the weight and balance of the weapons, I feel that they would be unnecessarily dangerous.
Sparring/freeplay with intent and steel blades is possible to do safely and is IMO necessary. No amount of training with wood or shinai or padded weapons will prepare you like steel will. The Glascow Company of Duellists (among others) do this safely. Of course, injuries will occur because it's impossible to train properly in a killing art without getting hurt once in a while. The trick is making sure there are no serious injuries. If you've never had a good bruise from training a fighting art, your training likely is too soft.
If a weapon such as an iaito is being used, they are made from a zinc/aluminium alloy, and are designed to be so soft that they will not hold an edge, nor will they hold up to much impact without being badly bent or damaged. If a mogito is being used, that is essentially a true sword without an edge, so it will stand up to the impact, but will still be dangerous in that there will be quite a sharp tip (kissaki) to the blade.
TR use specially designed blades, IIRC. They tend to bend after a few exchanges, but they are easily straightened. For western sword arts, Albion Swords makes a line of steel sparring blades that are rigid in the bind, but flexible in the thrust and are extremely resilient. They are also very safe when combined with decent safety equipment. They also handle and feel very much like sharps, increasing the realism of one's training. They've certainly done me a lot of good. I don't know who makes those used in TR.
In the video, the competitors did very little that looked to me like effective cutting, instead opting for fsater, lighter "hitting" style actions, similar to kendo (hence my comparisson).
This may be deliberate depending on what protective equipment the the techniques are designed to work against. Against an unprotected head, even a light fast strike will stun and perhaps incapacitate. Even a marginal cut will devastate unarmoured body parts.
Remember, about 90-95% of Japanese swordwork is evasive cutting, where the opponentcuts and you simply avoid their blade and cut them at the same time. There is very little in the way of blocking with the blade, as that takes too long, exposes you to counter cutting, wastes energy, and risks damage to the delicate cutting edge of your weapon.
Different ryu have different methods. Certainly many have counter cuts with blade contact (opposition), hanging parries and the like that you see elsewhere. Blade contact doesn't come from "blocking", it comes from counter cuts that close the line, edge to flat and vice versa. That's faster and safer than a void and counter cut in most circumstances. You always risk damaging your edge because you can't predict that your opponent will be nice enough not to strike into your edge like an idiot as you attack. It can happen, since not every opponent is a skilled fencer with perfect footwork and bladework. One attempts to mitigate it through proper technique and strategy but there's no sure thing. Also, since feet are slower than hands, sometimes your feet are not fast enough to save you.
This is not to disparage the Toyama Ryu or what they do. But it should be remembered that the Toyama Ryu is a MODERN MILITARY art. And it was developed the same way modern military systems work. The sparring aspect is not meant to be realistic, but to engender a competitive spirit amongst the soldiers (similar to a military base having a boxing tournament, or these days, MMA or BJJ style competition), as well as getting the soldiers used to the effects of adrenaline, and giving them the experience of moving forward ander all conditions.
No argument there. However, since they accept other arts in competition, they are bound to learn a lot. It may not be perfectly realistic now, but in 10 years, they will have assimilated a lot more information on bladed combat vs. resisting opponents. I'm interested to see how this develops.
Hopefully this will help explain why sparring is not realistic combat experience, even though it has many other benefits, and why the Japanese approach of free-form expression against nominated or un-nominated attacks is actually more realistic (and more common from a Japanese Martial Art perspective).
The only thing like a real sword fight is a real sword fight. However, as long as the swordsman is prepared for the chaos that a real fight brings, he should be in good stead. Whether that comes from sparring or kata doesn't matter in the long run. You can't really replicate the fear of knowing that a mistake will kill you, and that this other person six feet away is TRYING to kill you by burying a yard of sharp steel in your skull.
Now, I did notce that the movement seemed not very consistent with longsword footwork, but whether that's an artifact of technique degrading under pressure or by design I have no idea. It seemed too linear to me. But video isn't always a good way to see what's happening with three dimensions squashed into two.
Best regards,
-Mark
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