Katanas are cool.
Small wonder, then, that katanas show up often in cyberpunk media. The genre came of age in an era of Japanese ascendency. In Western cyberpunk works, the katana served as a symbol of Japanese cultural and martial power, and a marker of globalization and Niponnisation.
With Babylon, I wanted to do something different.
There is no Japan in the world of Babylon. Or, rather, there is no longer a Japan in the world of Babylon. Yet the language, the culture, the symbols, and most importantly, the weapons endure. The katana is a link to the past, to a warrior tradition predating the age of gods, representing half of Yuri Yamamoto’s heritage.
Yuri himself does not use a katana outside training.
Cyberpunk tries to be cool. My works strive to be cool by being authentic. In the battlefields of the grimdark future, swords have little place. It is far easier and safer to engage incoming threats from long range than to close in and cut him down. In the rare occasions where melee combat does take place, it will be in close quarters, in a situation that precludes using firearms or more powerful weapons to destroy the threat. In such a situation, there’s no room to wield a katana.
Which is why Yuri Yamamoto carries an o-tanto.
Either a long knife or a short sword, the o-tanto is his weapon of choice for extreme close quarters battle. He can draw and cut down an enemy in the blink of an eye. Its short length allows him to wield it freely in small spaces without sacrificing power. And when fighting exotic threats with many tentacles, redundant organs, or force fields, the o-tanto becomes his only available weapon. In his martial system, the use of the o-tanto shares many commonalities with the katana. Training with one helps you train for the other, if you keep the differences in mind, helping to accelerate the learning process.
Beyond martial and tactical applications, there is another, more profound reason to study the sword:
The way of the sword is the way of strategy.
Do Not Trade Blows
Cutting a man is easy. The art lies in cutting and not being cut.
A boxer can afford to trade blows with an opponent. He can wade in and absorb a strong punch in exchange for setting up an even more powerful blow. You cannot do that with a sword. If the opponent lands a clean cut or thrust, you lose a limb, or your life.
Mutual slayings are common in weapons arts, whether in East or West. A combatant lands a mortal blow on his enemy, but before the enemy expires, he delivers a fatal wound as well. Thus the only ‘winner’ is the man who dies second.
This is not conducive to survival.
A samurai does not seek to trade blows with his enemy. It only takes one mistake to lose the fight, and his life. Instead of trading blows, Yuri Yamamoto seeks to go where the strike will not be.
He does not contest for space. He does not resist an enemy when he comes to seize the space he presently occupies. He merely moves out of the way, creating a void where he once was—a void he encourages the enemy to fall into.
Consider this: an enemy slashes a sword at a samurai’s head. The samurai steps off the line of attack, raising his own blade to cover his head deflect the blow. The incoming blade slides off the flat of the katana, harmlessly falling into empty space. The samurai swiftly turns and cuts the enemy down.
Instead of holding on to what he has now, Yuri Yamamoto moves to a superior position, avoiding the incoming attack, and delivers his own blow. This is the strategy behind the technique.
In the same vein, when confronting monsters with superhuman strength and black magic, Yuri does not engage them in a stand-up fight. No human can afford to do that. The superior approach is to get out of the way of the threat, and hit him where he isn’t looking.
The art is getting to that point.
Deception and Provocation
In a life-or-death struggle between two combatants, there are three possible outcomes. Fighter A lives, Fighter B dies. Fighter A dies, Fighter B lives. Or both fighters kill each other. In other words, there is only a one in three chance of surviving the fight.
These are not good odds.
Keenly aware of this reality, the sword masters of old sought to stack the odds in their favour. They did this through the art of deception and provocation.
Deception is the art of hiding your intentions and movements from the enemy. It is convincing the enemy that you are planning to move in one direction, when you intend to go somewhere else. Provocation aims to elicit a response from the enemy. When the enemy responds to a feint or a shift, he creates an opening you can exploit.
The Fiore school of swordsmanship integrates deception into its guards. The guards appear to expose a portion of the body to attack. In reality, the sword is held in such a way that if the opponent takes the bait, the swordsman can deliver a swift counter.
Yuri Yamamoto’s art teaches sophisticated methods of movement. The human eye is designed to pick up approaching threats. But it can be fooled. Here’s an example.
Stand with your feet shoulder width apart. Stretch out one arm. Notice the length of you reach. Now swing back your opposite foot behind your other foot. Notice how you have extended your reach.
Your lead foot remained static. Your rear foot moved away from the observer, and so his brain isn’t likely to register the movement as a threat. With this motion, you have moved half of your body off your starting position, allowing you to avoid a blow coming in from that direction. At the same time, you have extended your reach, allowing you to deliver a counter.
Now consider an enemy slashing a sword at you. You swing your rear foot back and raise your own blade. This step takes you off the line of attack. For insurance, you bring your sword through an arc. If you have mis-judged the distance, the flat of your blade will catch the edge of the incoming sword and deflect it away from you. When you complete the arc, your sword falls naturally on the opponent, while his enters the void.
This is your plan. But it requires him to cut at you a specific way: a kesagiri cut, from the shoulder to the hip. You can provoke this by deliberately lowering your sword, making him believe that you have lowered your guard. Then when he moves, you know where he is going to cut. The counter becomes swift and inevitable.
Through deception and provocation, the swordsman seeks to control the encounter. He encourages the enemy to move in a certain way, one he is prepared to meet. He fools the enemy into thinking he is somewhere other than where he is now. When the enemy is deceived, the swordsman ends the encounter with a decisive blow.
This is another strategy to overcome a powerful enemy. If the enemy chooses the time and place of the battle, Yuri Yamamoto and his allies will surely be destroyed. When facing a threat prepared to fight them, they must use deception and provocation, drawing the enemy’s attention elsewhere, and strike where the enemy is open.
Faith and Fear
The great paradox of combat is that to preserve your life, you must be willing to throw it away.
This becomes especially clear in swordsmanship. Your sword only reaches so far. To defeat your enemy, you must step in and cut him down. But when he is within range, so are you.
Many sword techniques require moving into danger. With a double-time technique, you parry an incoming attack, then deliver a counter. In a single-time technique, you attack into the attack, giving the opposition no time to react. This is the essence of fencing: offence and defence as one, leaving no gap for the enemy to exploit.
To be clear, there are sword methods that do the opposite: you step away from the enemy. Usually this is in the context of sniping the enemy’s hand as he cuts at your own. Even then, however, your hand must stay in range, exposed to the enemy’s blade, long enough for him to commit to action, before you can move to safety.
In a weapons engagement, the outcome is decided within the blink of an eye. There won’t be time for complex thoughts, for cooking up plans on the fly, for exotic techniques. These things just slow you down. You need to move swiftly and decisively—and yet if you make the wrong move, you will die.
Fear of death is natural. In a weapons engagement, the risk of death is extreme. A single mistake is all it takes to lose life and limb. Yet the only way to survive is to close into danger and act without hesitation. If you hesitate, if you freeze, if you panic, you create openings that the enemy can exploit, paradoxically making the encounter even more difficult. Conversely, if you move with celerity and decisiveness, you will overwhelm the enemy, and he will no longer be able to harm you.
The sword teaches faith in the face of fear. Faith that your training will work even in the gravest extreme. Faith that your tools will serve you well. Faith that if you hold true to the teachings, you will prevail.
Yuri Yamamoto and his team face the most frightening enemies that ever stalked the streets of Babylon. Surely they will need faith in the face of fear.
And long before he was an operator or a street samurai, Yuri Yamamoto was a man of faith.
How can a man have faith in his style of the sword? Because the techniques and principles were born in a bloody age, and were transmitted flawlessly across the ages. Styles founded on flawed principles would have been destroyed on the battlefield long ago. When executed correctly, in training and in combat, the techniques delivered results. With every successful execution, a man’s faith and confidence in the sword grows.
In the same vein, how can a man have faith in a God that does not show his face? Because the central claims and doctrines of the faith have survived the challenges of the ages. Even though the New Gods present themselves as all-powerful, they flee before the Almighty. With every encounter he survives, his faith grows stronger.
The sword is the symbol of the knight. It represents force wielded by noble hands, in turn guided by a heart filled with faith. More than just a weapon, the sword is a symbol of the Cross.
And in the chaos of a horrific cyberpunk dystopia, the light of the Cross burns bright. Back Babylon Black on IndieGoGo here!
