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justin hooker (judd h.) wrote:
So therefore my bokken and just about everyone elses in my dojo is the correct or near correct Iaido sword length. If I would've left the tsuba at it's original location, it would have been a 9 1/2 inch handle, and a 31 inch blade. That to me was just too "mismatched" if you will.
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This actually made me chuckle outloud. The idea that there is a "correct Iaido sword length" is just plain wrong. The rules for blade and tsuka length vary from ryu to ryu and even branch to branch within a given school. For example, the guidlines given at Nosyuiaido are based on the specific branch of Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu that the owners of the site practice. They are also the length of the sword blade, not the distance from tsuba to tip.
Now, that doesn't mean you just get to pick any length sword you want, based on the reasoning that different schools use different lengths, so they're all good. Different schools use prefer different size swords because they use them in different ways.
This "mix and match" mentality is one of the reasons that aikido weapons work doesn't get much respect outside aikido. Bokuto of A-ryu held with grip of B-ryu swung like in C-ryu with the footwork of D-ryu is just a mess, even if A-ryu, B-ryu, C-ryu, and D-ryu are fine schools.