The , "armor piercer"Japan by Pierre Landy; Nagel Publishers p. 68Selected masterpieces of Asian art Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 1992 p. 97 or "mail piercer",Report of the proceedings of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia 1891 p. 28 is one of the traditionally made Japanese swords (nihontō) that were worn by the samurai class as a weapon in feudal Japan.
Description The yoroi-dōshi is an extra thick tantō, a short sword, which appeared in the Sengoku period (late Muromachi) of the 14th and 15th centuries. The yoroi-dōshi was made for piercing armourSecrets of the samurai: a survey of the martial arts of feudal Japan Oscar Ratti, Adele Westbrook p. 260 and for stabbing while grappling in close quarters. The blade was generally from in length, but some examples could be shorter than , with a "tapering mihaba, iori-mune, thick kasane at the top, and thin kasane at the bottom and occasionally moroha-zukuri construction".The Connoisseur's Book of Japanese Swords, Author Kōkan Nagayama, Publisher Kodansha International, 1998, p. 30 The motogasane (blade thickness) at the munemachi (the notch at the beginning of the back edge of the blade) can be up to thick, which is characteristic of the yoroi-dōshi. The extra thickness at the spine of the blade distinguishes the yoroi-dōshi from a standard tantō blade.
Yoroi-dōshi were worn inside the belt on the back or on the right side with the hilt toward the front and the edge upward. Due to being worn on the right, the blade would have been drawn using the left hand, giving rise to the alternate name of ,1988, 国語大辞典（新装版） (Kokugo Dai Jiten, Revised Edition) (in Japanese), Tōkyō: Shogakukan or "horse-hand (i.e. rein-hand, i.e. left-hand) blade".
Gallery
See also Otoya Yamaguchi – assassin of Inejirō Asanuma Wakizashi – Japanese dagger, sometimes the shorter sword in a daishō Kabutowari - Japanese side-arm used for getting through armor
Notes
References
External links
Nihontō message board forum Richard Stein's Japanese sword guide