There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me

As if I were their well-acquainted friend

A comedy of errors, act IV, scene 3

That’s the thing, though, European swords cover the whole gamut from ridiculously light foils to nutso zweihanders.

I get that Japanese swords are the same and there are ridiculous nodachi and tiny little wakizashi but the difference is of size more than form.

There’s much more variation in European swords so it’s hard to say ‘the Japanese sword is better than the European one’ because there’s almost definitely a European sword specialized for whatever use case you’re comparing the swords for.