The dao was never used as a cuting tool like a machete
The old japasnese swords are strait like this one.
Kusanagi-no-tsurugi is a legendary Japanese sword, as important to
Japan's history as Excalibur is of Britain's. The actual Kusanagi is likely to have been a sword in the style of the Bronze Age, typically double-edged, short and straight .
The history of this sword extends into legend when the Japanese god, Susano-O-No-Mikoto encountered a grieving family headed by Ashi-Na-Zuchi. Upon inquiry, the elder told that his family was ravaged by the fearsome 8-headed serpent of Koshi who consumed seven of the family's eight daughters and the creature was coming for his final daughter, Kushi-Nada-Hime. Susano-O proceeded forward to investigate the creature, and after an abortive encounter he returned with a plan to defeat it. In return, he asked for Kushi-Nada-Hime's hand in marriage which was agreed. Transforming her temporarily into a comb to have her company during the battle, he detailed his plan.
He instructed the preparation of 8 vats of sake to be put on individual platforms positioned behind a fence with 8 gates. The monster took the bait and put each of its heads through each of the gates. With the necessary distraction provided, Susano-O attacked and slew the beast. He decapitated each of the heads and then proceeded to the tails. In the fourth tail, he discovered a great sword inside the body of the dragon which he called Murakakumo-No-Tsurugi which he presented to the goddess, Amaterasu to settle an old grievance.
Generations later in the reign of the 12th emperor, Keiko, the sword was given to the great warrior, Yamato-Takeru as part of a pair of gifts given by his aunt, Yamato-Hime the Shrine Maiden of Ise, to protect her nephew in times of peril.
These gifts came in handy when Yamato-Takeru was lured onto an open grassland during a hunting expedition by a treacherous warlord. The lord had fiery arrows fired to ignite the grass to trap Yamato-Takeru in the field and have him burn to death and killed the warrior's horse to prevent his escape. Desperately, Yamato-Takeru used Murakakumo-No-Tsurugi to cut back the grass to remove fuel from the fire, but in doing so, he discovered that the sword enabled him to control the wind around to make it move in the direction he swung. Taking advantage of the magic, Yamato-Takeru used his other gift, fire strikers, to enlarge the fire in the direction of the lord and his men and used the winds controlled by the sword to sweep the blaze toward them to kill them. In triumph, Yamato-Takeru renamed Murakakumo-No-Tsurugi as Kusanagi to commemorate his narrow escape and victory.
Eventually, Yamato-Takeru married and fell in battle with a monster after ignoring his wife's advice to take Kusanagi with him.
In historical times, the emperor possessed a real sword with this name. Along with the jewel and the mirror, it was one of the three imperial regalia until the Battle of Dannoura, a naval battle that ended in the defeat of the forces of the child Emperor Antoku at the hands of Minamoto no Yoshitsune. Upon hearing of the defeat, the emperor's grandmother led the Emperor and his entourage to commit suicide in the waters of the strait along with three important artifacts which included Kusanagi. Although the enemy managed to stop a handful of them and recovered two of the three items of the Emperor, Kusanagi was never found.
The 10th Emperor, Sujin, had ordered the fashioning of a replica of Kusanagi. It was placed at the Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya.
The Katana that have no gards and are plain wood looking Shirasaya are in a protective case used for swords that are not used much the swords that are referd to as Zatoichi swords were used when the sword ban came along Zatoichi is not the name of a sword it is used now as a link to that sword style do to the movies of the blind swordsman
Zatoichi
Blind Fury
http://users4.ev1.net/~kagemusha/japanese_sword_glossary.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katana
http://www.geocities.com/alchemyst/sugata/shape.htm
