Originally published at: Why couldn't samurai be left-handed? | Boing Boing
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Well, there’s a reason the Latin word is sinister, right?
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Never mind the middle ages, this attitude was prevelant at the Christian Brothers schools in Ireland into the '80’s.
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You’re still not allowed to be left-handed in Japan. Children have to learn to use chopsticks with their right hand one way or another.
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Yes, but these days it’s considered gauche to bring it up.
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Overt discrimination may have finally died down in the west, but pretty much everything is still made to favor right-handers. (Check out specifically power tools and electronics.)
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Do you have any links to support that?
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Most Muppets are left-handed, but that’s just because most puppeteers are not.
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Most empty handed martial arts, while there’s some chirality in forms, train most techniques on both sides. Kali people, since many of them fight with two sticks or knives, also work both sides.
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Ditto for ballet dancers.
Contemporary dancers without ballet training, you can see it because of this difference.
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Yeah, and I had several well-meaning but wrong-headed grade-school teachers in US public schools attempt to break me of my left-handedness in the late seventies.
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remember kids:
“only left-handed people are in their right mind!”
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A Renaissance rapier and parrying dagger, called a main gauche (left hand) on the assumption that the user would be right-handed.
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Boring, but true, story: late 1960s public elementary school being taught (cursive) writing, “Now class! pick up your pens in your right hand and make 'O’s and 'L’s!”. Teacher walks up and down the rows enforcing corrections for posture and circularity of 'O’s. By the end of nearly an hour of viewing less than perfect shapes, loudly declares to one frustrated student: "OK… there’s nothing for it, you may use your left hand [loud sigh of observing a lost soul]". And that’s how i was forevermore marked as gauche, sinister, stâng, keivhendt, ciotach, 左道… however, my 'O’s and 'L’s became instantly judged acceptable.
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Please tell me it wasn’t the Catholic Nuns, many a ruler was smacked across the knuckles and behold I was then a Right Hander loved by Jeebus.
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That’s been dying out in Japan for decades. It might still be going on, but I met left-handed Japanese people when I lived there.
as a left-handed person of japanese descent, i’m please to learn that Musashi was most likely left-handed, since he was a total badass.
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