Kaiken (dagger)



A kaiken (懐剣) is an 8 - 10 in long, single or double-bladed dagger without ornamental fittings housed in a plain mount.

Uses
It was once carried by men and women of the samurai class in Japan. It was useful for self-defense in indoor spaces where the long blade katana and intermediate sword wakizashi were inconvenient. Women carried them in their kimono either in a pocket-like space (futokoro) or in the sleeve pouch (tamoto) for self-defense and for ritual suicide by slashing the veins in the left side of the neck. When a samurai woman married, she was expected to carry a kaiken with her when she moves in with her husband.

Orthography
Prior to modern orthographic reform the kaiken was called a kwaiken (pocket knife); also called a futokoro-gatana