Attention Gainer	Draw the sword. “To many people, this is a symbol. It brings them to the days of mounted warriors who dueled with poems and honor, as well as a blade. It is a reminder of a code, a people, and a nation.”
Thematic Statement	“The Japanese Katana, a form of which I’m holding, is a symbol, a symbol of the Samurai, of bushido, and of Medieval Japan.”
Preview	Its also a sword. A katana is usually, according to Swords Online .com, a three foot long piece of steel with a two-foot long blade. This one is 37 and a half inch long with a 28 inch long blade. But measurements don’t really define what a symbol is symbolic of, except of itself. In my opinion, this sword is symbolic of three things: the people who used it, the code they lived by, and their setting and home.
Body point 1	The Katana was primary used by the Samurai, the aristocratic warrior class of Japan’s Edo, or Medieval, Period. The Samurai class, according to an article on Judoinfo.com, actually rose from mounted archers fighting the northern ‘Emishi’, or barbarians. The Emishi were actually the first to use the Katana, although the early Samurai soon took the curved blade for their own use. The actual aristocracy of the Samurai arose during clan warfare in the 12^th century, and the stayed as an important part of Japanese culture and politics until the Meiji Restoration of 1867. The Samurai were viewed highly from all points of society and were given remarkable rights. According to Historychannel.com, they even had the right to cut down any commoner who offended them. Samurai traditionally gave oaths of fealty to Daiymo, or territorial barons, much like knights served a count or a prince in Europe. These oaths of fealty were covered in Bushido, or the way of the warrior.
Body point 2	It wouldn’t be very wrong to say that the knightly code of Europes knights had a counterpart in Japan’s Bushido. According to Historychannel.com, It grew out of the old feudal bond that required unwavering loyalty on the part of the vassal. . It borrowed heavily from Zen Buddhism and Confucianism. In its fullest expression the code emphasized loyalty to one's superior, personal honor, and the virtues of austerity, self-sacrifice, and indifference to pain. For the warrior, commerce and the profit motive were to be scorned. The code was first formulated in the Kamakura period from 1185-1333, and put into writing in the 16th cent.; the term itself, however, did not come into use until the 17th cent. Bushido became the standard of conduct for the daimyo and samurai under the Tokugawa shoguns and was taught in state schools as a prerequisite for government service. After the Meiji restoration in 1867, it was the basis for the cult of emperor worship taught until 1945.
Body point 3	For six hundred years the Samurai were the supreme masters of the land of Nippon, the Rising Sun. This personified in the Tokugawa Shogunate, a military dictatorship set in place after two centuries of civil war, in which the Samurai was given all their traditional powers.
Summery Statement	The Meiji restoration ended Japan’s medieval period as well as the reign of the samurai. The things that the Katana, the sword of the samurai, represented soon faded from the eyes of the modern day, consigned to the memories and stories of the past.
Concluding Remarks