One other point regarding how the sword is carried is the historical context, AND how true the various ryu are to the historical period which they claim lineage. In other words, a ryu could be 600 years old in origin, but maintain reiho of a more recent period through which they passed.
Sengoku uchigatana was a transition from tachi mounting (note the "handachi" - a tachi somewhat remounted and put in the sash in katana fashion.) In this transition period, logically, the sword would be placed in much the same manner (horizonal in plane, projecting straight backwards) as the tachi. (The kodachi or wakazashi would be "across the belly, with the tsuka near the center line). Most musha-e (warrior pictures) of the Sengoku period show warriors on the battlefield with the sword horizonal in the belt - as I have learned in the Araki Ryu, and as the truly scary looking man in the "grey" kimono does in James' set of pictures. Among the reasons for holding the sword in the sash this way were ease of access and use - a quicker draw, an easier use of the tsuka-gashira in offense at close range.
As for the fear of saya-ate (clashing scabbards), I was informed that:
- this was not the same concern on the battlefield as in the town. The main concern was access to the weapon.
- Araki Ryu actually has several kata in which one sets up saya-ate ddeliberately as an excuse to cut the other, and in in "reverse", is prepared for this from another. Imagine some bushi as trying to get by in peace, and others striding belligerently down the street, swaggering confidence and defiance, quite willing to engage in a fight if an opportunity is offered.
On the other hand, if one looks a pictures from the Edo period, and photos from Meiji (again, noting most of the pictures in James' set), one carried the sword vertically to fit safely through crowds and narrow roads in peacetime - where one could face severe legal sanctions for unauthorized fights. One must note that any ryu, no matter how old, might also have been influenced by the hundreds of years of Edo culture, and adopted a peacetime method of sword bearing.
I have never seen a sword held in any historical pictorial representation in which it "projects" out sideways at an angle from the body, as one sees in some iaido schools. There are so many changes in iaido styles from technique to how the sword is held to etiquette to sitting - this is not a slight on iaido, anymore than noting that a zebra is different from a domestic horse is a slight on a horse. I've wondered, by the way, if seiza in iai, was originally an adaptation from iidori (on knees and balls of feet, a very common posture in grappling schools, both for that aspect of things and also for their iai.) I imagine that'
a. That as the period no longer really thought of battlefield fighting - rolling on the ground, drawing one's sword while in a clinch, etc., - and found themselves indoors, and no longer remembering or even caring about the original meaning of the forms they practiced, they simply "drooped" from iidori to seiza, no longer realizing how different the embedded meaning of these two similar looking postures were. In the process, they may well have created some new gokui or explanations to explicate their altered forms.
b. Iidori can hurt, particularly in winter, particularly if one's feet have a tendency to crack open at the bend of the toes (so does hanza, the posture called iaigoshi in Katori Shinto Ryu). Perhaps a few lead instructors of a few influential ryu, who other iaido schools modeled themselves shifted from iidori to seiza because they "wimped out" because of their hurt feet, and their students, unquestioning, imitated them.
With respect
Ellis Amdur