A tsuba is the guard fitted at the point where the blade meets the handle on a Japanese sword, typically a flat, roughly circular piece of metal with a hole for the blade's tang to pass through. Its main function is to stop a practitioner's hand from sliding forward onto the blade during a thrust, and to offer some protection against an opponent's blade sliding down toward the hand during a strike or block.
Tsuba are fitted not only to live blade weapons such as a shinken or a training oriented iaito, but also to many wooden bokken used for paired practice, where the guard helps train correct hand position and offers a degree of protection during contact drills. Historic tsuba were often decorated and are collected as craft objects in their own right, while training tsuba are generally plain and functional.
See our weapons training guide for how tsuba fit into choosing wooden and blunted sword weapons for practice.
