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von Loringen: I re-visited some very old notes of mine on 3e's Katana skill (and with 4e in town, I think it's finally safe to utter that name online without raising debate : ). The notes are from a musty house rules article. 4e pretty much grants every wish I had for removing the "unfair" advantages given to the skill in 3e, and in fact even goes me one better, dropping the skill entirely!

(There's one suggestion in my text that I now disagree with, that it'd be okay to leave Two-handed Katana skill with the "free" Parry bonus that 3e awarded two-handed use of Katana. I would now say no; any such bonus should have a cost, or a balancing drawback. But that's moot anyway, as 4e removes both the skill and the bonus. Good!)

Anyway, given the theme of your article, you may find the text amusing, if you haven't seen it already. (Note that my ending comment doesn't suggest we should build Eastern fighters as superior; it's only saying that if a player wants to do so, basic skill level, weapon quality, etc. are the way to do it, not magically better skills.) Pasting the old article's text here:

Katana: Has any topic raised as much ruckus as this in online debates? In short, the weapon stats and skill description are way out of line for many gamers. Katana skill in GURPS includes not only an improved Parry but also both one-handed and two-handed use, which would cost broadsword users twice as many points to learn! And the weapon itself seems to have been imbued with mystical speed qualities...

Give amazing samurai swordsmen some respect, and assume that their abilities come from training and discipline (i.e., lots of points in skills), not from a skill that happens to be twice as cheap as one would expect. Split Katana into One-Handed Katana and Two-Handed Katana, defaulting to each other at -3. The primary skill for Kendo becomes Two-Handed Katana, with One-Handed Katana as a secondary or optional skill. (There's no reason why regular Broadsword and Two-Handed Sword shouldn't also default to each other at -3.)

This is all realistic. Kendo does not teach one-handed katana use! Yet GURPS assumes that a Kendo master, who has battled for years using nothing but two hands, can at any time switch to one hand and fight as if he'd been using nothing but one hand all those years. His Western counterpart, meanwhile, a master of the two-handed sword, switches to one hand and finds himself clumsily flailing away at default skill... Not very sensible. It's true that one- and two-handed use were both learned by the stereotypical samurai, but that doesn't make them one skill, any more than broadsword and shield use should be one skill for a European knight.

As for the weapons themselves, the weapons that people generally think of as katana do not seem to be 2-hex weapons, though such longer versions no doubt exist. Give katana the same stats, basic damage, readying time, etc. as equivalent broadswords and bastard swords; the only difference is that they are almost always of Fine or better quality (for less cost than in Europe; advanced metallurgy in Japan was a fact), and even the one-hex model can be used with two hands for additional damage.

The improved Parry for two-handed use remains reasonable; there's no harm in assuming that even sword skills can have higher "tech levels" with improved capabilities.

That leaves Katana skill and the weapon on par with their Western counterparts, at the base level -- yet it's still perfectly possible to build superior Eastern fighting arts. Just put points into maneuvers (or that couldn't-be-simpler standby: a high skill level!) and good stats to reflect a steely samurai's dedicated training, give him a Fine or Very-Fine sword, and possibly add "mystical" abilities from Martial Arts: Power Blow, Weapon Master, etc. No inflated skills or funny physics necessary.