Neal Stephenson:

Rapier vs. Katana reconsidered

There is a scene in my novel The Confusion where Jesuit ronin Gabriel Goto, armed with a katana, takes on several Frenchmen armed with rapiers and daggers and kills them all. Admittedly, he gets a lot of help from the fact that he has stationed himself at a needle’s eye (narrow arch) so that they must attack him one at a time.

Having learned a lot about swordsmanship since having written that scene, I am now pretty sure that I got it wrong. Fortunately, the scene as written is salvageable if one takes into account Gabriel Goto’s backstory: he grew up in Manila (a Spanish colonial city) and so was around rapier-and-dagger fencers his entire life. On the other hand, the Frenchmen he defeats in the scene in question have never laid eyes on a Japanese person or a katana and so are completely unprepared for his style of fighting. I believe most knowledgeable swordfighters would agree that under these circumstances it is plausible for Gabriel Goto to come out on top.

If they met on equal terms, however, the guys with the rapiers would probably win.