I hear what you’re saying but the knight saw two opponents on his battlefield. Light infantry who were of the untrained or poorly trained variety and other knights. Knights never saw samurai caliber light infantry and the samurai will have tricks the knight has never seen before. The knight is unlikely to throw anything technique-wise at the samurai that he hasn’t seen before. What the samurai is unused to is the knight’s armor. I think the samurai will find a way around the armor faster than the knight will find a way around the samurai’s speed and technique.
Ok…before anyone jumps on me for this there were certainly other things on the medieval battelfield but hopeful the sense of what I’m saying gets through anyway. (E.g. Archers, cavalry, heavy weapons such as ballista, etc.)
Let’s look at it another way. Strip away the armor and weapons, and put an asian-style martial artist against a boxer. Equal training and skill in their respective martial arts. Unless the asian martial artist is using a judo type art, one with a large variety of holds and wrestling type moves, he’ll be crucified. The boxer trains to obsorb punishment and still be able to deal powerful attacks of his own. Martial artists are not trained to absorb the type of punishment the boxer can give and still fight effectively. This is not to sat that the martial artist won’t be able to hurt the boxer-certainly, he can. However the boxer can absorb that punishment and still deliver blows that his opponent won’t be able to withstand. It’s the same type of fight as Samuari vs knight, without the weapons and armor. A quick fighter who relies on taking out his opponent before the opponent can take him out is at a huge disadvantage when the opponent is able to withstand that attack and still retaliate. The Judo or Akido type fighter is the only one that has a chance-his art relies on taking the boxer down, neutralizing the boxer’s advantage. A boxer can’t fight well from the ground. This is the same as what I proposed earlier-several Samuari working together to take out a knight. Most marshal artists that I have talked too admit that against a similarly sized, trained and skilled boxer, they would be toast.
Well… this assumed notion of the extreme potency of martial arts expertise in real world combat with weapons involved is the main basis on which your hypothetical rests. This notion, per your example of the martial arts expert’s opinion you cite that it would all be over quickly with a few kicks and well placed blows, is fairly typical of the nonsense I keep seeing spouted by some (certainly not all) martial arts devotees. Even the best martial artists would generally wind up getting the muck-tuk beat out of them or quickly killed by an experienced fighting man using metal armor and a sword.
My martial artist’s opinion was not considering a guy in plate armor. They could punch our armored knight all they wished and not do a lick of damage to the man inside. That said I bet he’d think he could keep an knight from hurting him as well…just take him to he ground (although I also think he would be deeply worried at an armored opponent swinging a sword at his head…might go either way). Weirddave mentioned in his last post that a guy who could absorb punishment (ala a boxer) would wail on a martial artist. He also said that that boxer on the ground would be in trouble as he can’t really fight effectively from there. So, you have your knight…take him to the ground and its all over for him. Given the knight’s slower speed and the samurai’s training in doing exactly what I’m talking about and the knight is in deep kimchee.
I asked before about a match between an unarmored knight vs. a samurai. I think that would be a closer matchup.
Weirddave:
This is an aside but the martial artist expert I mentioned earlier also mentioned boxers. He said he sparred against one and as long as they kept it to punches the boxer completely had his way with him and he considered himself adept at pugilism till then. Of course neither was trying to hurt the other so it is hard to tell but the martial artist said the tables turned when they added in kicks and throws (hard to tell who’d win in a real, no holds barred fight). However, due to the boxers ‘mad skillz’ in the punching area the martial artist I spoke to also took boxing. While not a true expert in that art it was partly how he explained his ability at the ‘punch test’ I failed so miserably at (I made that term up…not an official test but I don’t know how else to describe it).
Here’s another take on the situation: http://www.thehaca.com/essays/knightvs.htm
I think he has a few interesting points tooffer, although most of them have been mentioned here already.
With unarmored knight versus samurai, I would think the samurai has a slight advantage because that is the style he’s familiar with and because he’s holding a weapon designed for that type of combat. Any slight speed advantage here, which I think the samurai has, would be more important than against an armored opponent. But what about, say, a rapier fencer versus that same samurai?
I am in absolutely no way an expert on things martial but… In the kickboxing GP held last week, there was a similar matchup. Alexey Ignashov, a smaller fighter from Belarus trained in Asian-style martial arts took on the much larger Jan “The Giant” Nortje from South Africa, an obviously much better puncher.
Nortje nevertheless fell down, writhing in pain, in the first round after taking in a few kicks just above the knee.
Boxers aren’t trained to kill and their reliance on upper-body technique is often a big disadvantage.
Roaming nitpick patrol…
No, no - You’ve got your periods confused. The attempted Mongol invasions were in 1274 and 1281. The last pitched battle between samurai was at Tennoji in 1615. The decline of a substantial part of the ( relatively recently “en-casted” as a purely hereditary profession ) samurai class as a primarily military force set in thereafter in the long enforced peace of the Tokugawa Shogunate ( 1615-1867 ). Between 1281 and 1615 Japan was in fact incredibly turbulent and violent - the period between 1490 and 1600 in particular are referred to as the ‘Sengoku jidai’ or “The Age of the Country at War”, often transliterated as “The Age of Warring States”.
As for the op - Armored, afoot and in an arena? Knight 3 out 4 ( or better ). Unarmored, afoot and in an arena? Samurai 3 out of 4.
Sweeping the legs of a trained, armored opponent is mighty risky and I wouldn’t want to bet on a success rate.
- Tamerlane
I well remember a controversial thread entitled,
“Ask the football hooligan” started by a poster called Owlstretchingtime.
His experience of eastern martial arts in a brawl was that they were fairly ineffective.If he came acrfoss anyone trying to use martial arts he just rolled right on over them.
This is against the experienced brawler, and I have read in other places that martial arts are not the whole answer, or even part of the answer in similar situations.
Don’t underestimate the endurance of a knight either, I once had the task of display cutlass swinging, at first it was incredibly hard work, I was very fit at the time too, but not fit at whirling cutlasses about.
A few weeks and I could wind those blades around for twenty minutes at a time.
If I had been brought up from childhood to wield weapons, as knights were, you can be sure that endurance would not necessarily be the factor you would imagine.
When we look at the weight of old weaponry with our soft, untrained bodies, we make assumptions about strength and endurance.
Wielding those cutlasses was much less about strength, even though they are relatively heavy blade weapons, when you are untrained you do tend to use strength and your endurance goes down, once you get used to it you find technique and familiarity completely outstrip sheer strength.
I think this is the crux of the matter. WAM’s hypothetical situation about removing all armor from both combatants plays to the Samuari’s abilities and takes away the knights biggest strength. It makes the OP moot, because it’s a completely different situation.
I’d like to put my $.02 worth in:
-
An assumption seems to be being made that the armor of a later period samurai was some how not cumbersome in its own right. While lighter than its european counterpart, and a tad better suited for longer use, it by no means was more of a pleasure to wear than the western counter-part. It was lighter and less protective. The second point is the telling point in this one on one theoretical foot match with no outside factors.
How long you can wear the armor is not going to decide this issue. To injure each other, the knight and the samurai have to come to blows. The samurai will not be so fast as to avoid all blows from the knight while freely manuovering for a vulnerable spot. A katana would have a devil of a time getting through most areas on a knight while a thrust from an estoc or solid blow from a short hafted polearm would go through most areas on a samurai.
As was pointed out earlier, matches of relatively equal skill are quick…not long drawn out affairs. If the Samurai dances, all the Knight has to do is turn and wait for the guy to come into reach. (Though from what I’ve read on the various techniques employed, it’s far more likely for the Samurai to close and attack than to “fence” with the Knight. I freely admit that I may be wrong in this regard.)
- Rapier vs Katana. Well, here I’ll employ anectdotal evidence. I saw a for fun “match” between the two modern, bastardized fighting styles Kendo and Fencing. It was no contest. The lighter blades went one-two-three and you’re out to the opposition. It was interesting with the saber though, the match lasted much longer. (And before anyone asks, the team was using kendo style head gear so full scoring oppotunities existed.)
The major problem for the kendo club, most of their techniques use outward or upward moves for slashing…meat on the table for quick thrusters like the light blades. Because the saber uses many of the same methods, it was much more interesting.
So my answer to Rapier vs Katana, probably rapier because European techniques included more thrusts than their Japanese counterparts. But it would be a heck of a battle to see.
are you saying bruce lee would have trouble with any boxer you can think of? :eek:
one on one on land my vote’s for the samurai. don’t the samurai have another shorter stabbing sword to work with? i imagine if the samurai is trained to avoid another samurai’s attack he would have no problem with the armoured knight, then it’ll just be a matter of time before the knight drops.
but isn’t the whole point of outfitting a knight in armor is to get him on horseback with a lance? i don’t see how a samurai can win then without killing the horse or something…
Of course you’re doubly disadvantaging the poor samurai by insisting he fight a heavily armored opponent with a katana. Any samurai who wasn’t a complete idiot would immediately dump the near-useless ( in this situation ) katana and reach for an axe ( which they did indeed use ), which was far better suited for shearing or rupturing armor. Give the samurai an axe or spear and their odds of surviving the encounter improve considerably ( on the other hand give the knight a shield, something a samurai wouldn’t have much experience with, and the odds drop back down again, at least a bit ).
The odds would still be against him, though. As Jeu_D’Esprit pointed out, Japanese heavy armor wasn’t a whole heck of a lot less cumbersome than one of those suits of individually fitted and carefully weight-balanced articulated-plate that a really wealthy elite knight would be wearing. And it traded some in defense - In a slugging match between a knight in plate with a sword ( little slower than a axe, but better reach ) or an axe and an armored samurai w/an axe, the samurai would probably lose more often than not.
Take the armor off the samurai and it’s probably even worse odds - the samurai by instinct and training would want to close and attack, not dance around like Muhammed Ali. Even if he did, if he danced out at a distance, the knight could just lean against a wall and wait him out. If he danced close he’d probably end up in several pieces, as all it would take is one glancing blow ( and again, in well-fitted plate a knight was surprisingly fast and agile, I’ve read they could probably do a full cartwheel in the stuff ) and the samurai is toast.
Not that knights were invincible by any means. They had all sorts of limitations, as for example those poor slobs in 13th century Eastern Europe that got caught in Subedei Bahadur’s blitzkrieg found out. But a samurai just isn’t a great match-up one-on-one in an arena setting.
Now on the other hand, take a lighter prototypical European infantryman, like say your standard viking, and put him up against a samurai - then we might be talking about a different set of outcomes.
- Tamerlane
Funny thread
A comment though from an unlearned participant.
Historicity!
With the exception of the linked article and Tamerlane (and another’s) intervention all I see so far is empty, ahistorical over-generalized stereotypes being thrown around.
Frankly, w/o any further knowledge but with an analysts eye, I do not see any way to make an intelligent comment on this without getting specific, by precise period and region.
Hey, you ain’t seen nothing - Check out one of those periodic “could a wolverine with one eye beat a hamadryad baboon with a spastic colon” threads.
The fun never stops in IMHO :D.
- Tamerlane
Actually, the decline of martial arts in Europe coincided with the rise of reliable flintlock pistols. You do the math. Hands & feet don’t shape up well against a horse pistol.
More data on Euro-martial arts.
The “Gentlemen’s Art” later included the formallized use of a sword cane. Some schools even taught the use of the “cane” section as a parrying weapon, used in the left hand, with the blade in the right.
The Greek & Roman Gladiators uses different versions of our modern boxing & wrestling. After all, those fights were bare knuckles only, and often to the death. A bastardized hybrid version of those unarmed combat styles may still have been in use in Greece as late as the 1950s.
Pre-Christian Ireland used a martial arts style, too. Practiced by the Druids, little is known of it, as it died out quickly after Xianity took over. What is known includes the fact that the Shilleigh was used by gripping it in the middle, & striking your opponent with either end.
There are rumors of others, but all lost long ago, with the rise of the gun & massed firepower.
By th way, in reading over the ARMA site -of great interest to this fencer- I must confess that while the analyses there struck me as well done and analytical, the creepy “Lost European Heritage” stuff began to give me the willies. Sounded almost like the white supremacist sites after a while. (Not that this seems to be their take, merely noting that the references got a bit creepy.)
I’m an assistant-instructor in the european martial arts and am trained in ninpo taijutsu as well which is the martial art of the ninja. I’ll try to shine some light on the subject and remove some misconceptions. Although not all-knowing on the subject I think I can clear some things up.
For simplicity’s sake lets pit a fully armoured, bastard sword wielding european Knight vs a fully armoured, katana wielding samurai.
Let’s not include shields, 2 weapon styles, changing to different weapons etc. Both sides can do this. And it doesnt really add to the discussion I think.
Now lets compare armour, weapons and martial arts.
Armour:
- Samurai: An armour meant to protect against slices/cuts. Around the 16th century it usually consisted of a combination of chain- and platemail as well as full plate (cuirass). Although lighter then their european counterparts, they had more weakspots as well.
- Knight: In the 16th century a knight usually wore a full plated suit. Contrary to popular believe he wasn’t restricted by it too much, as the joints left a lot of space for movement. And the weight was balanced very effectively so that the strong points of the body carry the most weight (Much like professional backbacks do these days). It was meant to protect against arrows and glancing blows, as well as save the knights life against direct hits.
The joints were usually protected by the layer of chainmail underneath the plate. The image of the unwieldy heavy armour is probably due to the tournament armours of that time, which were so extremely thick so that the knight could perform this passtime without injury. They were however completely unsuitable for real combat. There are accounts of knights doing cartwheels, rolls and jumping onto a horse wearing that battle armour.
Weapons: - Katana: A superbly crafted weapon, the result of the samurai’s
emphasis on the weapon rather then the armour. Razorsharp. Meant for cutting and slicing. The tsube protects the hand somewhat. It is also fairly light (although not nearly as light as the movies want you to believe) - Bastard sword: Compared to the katana it is a lot simpler to manufactor. Only the last 4-6 inches were usually sharp (although not as sharp as a katana). It was meant for chopping, slicing/cutting and thrusting. The tip was often armourpiercing. The sharp part was used to cut into weak/opened spots of the armour. The weapon also featured a crossguard, which added a lot of protection but was also used offensively and strategicly.
Skill:
First I’d like to make a distinction between martial art and martial sport. The latter being the currentday derivative of the old combat arts. Martial sports are the result of toning down martial arts to suit the changing times. I’m not saying that martial sports can’t be tough or dangerous (I definately dont want to be on the receiving end of low-kick from Ernesto Hoost for example).
However it should be kept in mind that martial sports can’t be compared to actual combat arts. We don’t go about poking eachothers eyes out in karate for example. And the kick in the groin is banned in most sports. So comparisons between a boxer and a karateka etc don’t really hold for the comparison between a knight and a samurai. Apart from that there is a wise saying that goes something like “When fighting a boxer don’t box, when fighting a karateka don’t use karate”.
That said, lets continue:
Europe being virtually in the middle has had a long history of fighting off invaders, we also did our share of invading, and have had tons of wars between European countries. Because of this Europeans have always had to learn, adept and improve. Whereas Japan being much more isolated mostly had to deal with internal conflict. Which resulted in them having a big problem with the mongols, the yamabushi and the ninja, as they had a different view on things compared to the ruling class, the samurai.
The European need to change and improve caused the abandonment of the armour for example, and thus the need for heavier swords. But also the loss of armed and unarmed marital arts. Evenso a fair amount of manuscripts still survive, and they give a good look at the martial arts of those days. I can from personal experience say that they are in no way less then their Japanese counterparts. Infact some very important ryu in Japan are based on European schools.
Conclusion:
I doubt the result would be based solely on weapon, armour or skill. I think it would be much more dependant on strategy and the use if misdirection, the use of terrain etc.
And if those factors would be even then Culture would probably play a large role as well.
If for example in a duel the samurai would start with insulting his opponent (as I am told they did) then the knight, after hearing the explanation 
, probably wouln’t wait for the samurai’s rant to finish…
ha. i’ll be voting for the guy who services his plane =)
back to the thread. my money’s on the samurai. why the hell do people keep talking about the samurai breaking his damn blade on the knight’s armor? i believe anyone in his shoes would have more brains than that - the modern equivalent would a thug smashing an aluminium bar against an abrams.
again, anyone who thinks the only thing the samurai can do is hack n slash with a sword seriously needs to go read up. anyone with agility on his side would wisely stay out of reach and wear the opponent down b4 finishing off.