To the best of my knowledge katanas are quite far from the uber-swords that the modern western culture makes them. Some various points (not an expert myself, but most of those can be easily verified by the arcane power of browsing the
Matrix Internet):
- Katanas were the symbol of samurai status, but for actual combat their preferred weapons of choice were either a longbow or a yari/naginata (and no, I've never seen any mention of the katana being to good to be used in mundane stuff like actually trying to kill your opponent before he kills you).
- The much praised method of folding steel used to produce them wasn't a unique feature of the katana, the same technique was used to create various European swords. In fact it was in used by Vikings 2000+ years before katana was introduced.
- This technique in fact was the only option to get a decent sword in medieval Japan; the country didn't have access to a decent source of iron and what could be smelted was usually quite brittle and made poor swords. Most 'katanas are awesome' vids/posts around the internet are based on katanas which, even if made using medieval techniques, are made from modern quality steel, which is not necessarily comparable to the average original.
- Katanas never evolved, the basic design remained the same for around 7 centuries, despite the advances in metallurgy and the general understanding of the art of killing the other guy. Compare with European swords which constantly evolved, ending up with stuff like the Polish cavalry sabre (I really don't want to get into a discussion on the lines of 'what was the best euro/worldwide sword ever'; the sabre seems to be generally considered a really solid sword, so I went with that).
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Edit: ninja'd (or samurai'd?
![Tongue :P](https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/Smileys/default/tongue.gif)
)