After seeing “The Last Samurai” last night and seeing a scene between the two, I began to wonder how much interaction they had with one another… can anyone tell me how they regarded one another, what their differences in operating procedure were, and anything else of relevance?
Be as detailed as you like… I’m very interested.
I’m very, very glad someone else made this thread, as I’ve been wondering if I should. I know it was discussed fairly recently, but the search engine doesn’t seem to be helping me find the original thread, which was entitled something along the lines of “Ninjas Vs Samurai”.
My friends and I were debating the merits of ninjas vs samurai (Also because of Last Samurai), and I said ninjas weren’t really warriors. They claim otherwise. Google hasn’t helped much.
Well…I guess it depends on a few assumptions…
The ninjas killed by stealth and suprise… (as in from behind, using poison, etc…) The samurai were straight up, face to face fighters. Their belief in using the sword only (and not using guns) was that it was honorable and preferable to face your opponent 1 on 1.
In a straight up sword fight, the samurai (I believe) had the clear advantage. In using stealth and poison (compare it to a modern day sniper) the Ninja had the advantage.
It’s my understanding that the LAST thing a Ninja wanted was a fair, straight up, mano a mano fight. He / she would rather kill by stealth and distance, rather than match skills in the open.
I would say it’s more a question of tactics and application rather than skill alone. For example, it’s like saying who’s better, a SEAL, or a Green Beret? Could a Delta Force operative beat both of them?
They’re all highly trained, but have different approaches to an objective. SEALS and DELTA guys are amazing in small groups, under cover of darkness, etc… but you wouldn’t want to use them as front line troops in a daylight battle between armies.
Just my two cents…
D.
As far as I understand it, Ninja were never supposed to be fighting in a ‘fair fight’ - that’s not what most of their training was geared towards. They killed by stealth, sneaky and dishonourable.
Samurai and Ninja were complete opposites - Ninja were low-class, Samurai high class. I would imagine they would have had a fair amount of interaction, since one of the duties of a Samurai was to protect their master, and since this was often some local lord they would be the target of Ninja assassination attempts.
The comparison between a field soldier and a sniper is a good one. Both have been trained with different objectives in mind.
*Disclaimer: this is true to the best of my knowledge, but don’t take it as gospel.
This is like asking about the relationship between police officers and Mafia hitmen. They’re like oil and water. Samurai were the “knights” of medieval Japan. Ninjas were criminals for hire. I’m sure they were very good spies and assassins and the like, but in a straight up fight against a trained, armoured opponent like a samurai… no chance.
As for how they regarded each other, the samurai despised ninjas for being dishonourable cowardly murderers, and I doubt the ninjas thought about the samurai much except how to avoid facing one that was awake.
By the way, don’t miss www.realultimatepower.net for all ninja knowledge you’d ever want, need, or wish you never saw.
An additional point, there was actually some overlap. Some less than honorable Samurai moonlighted as ninja or became ninja as the situation required. No, not every samurai was the paragon of bushido honor, they were human beings suceptible to corruption, greed, etc, just like anyone else.
No way, that’s an easy one! Green Berets… 
this is all well and good, but what about the more pressing question of Ninjas Vs. Pirates? It seems to me that ninjas would win in most situations, except maybe a bar fight.
hmmmm… Rarely were samurai in full armor, as it was mainly necessary for war. All(well the majority)of the books I’ve read on the subject of ninja/samurai, say that ninjas frequently fought hand to hand(albeit in the dead of night)with samurai opponents. The major drawback of the samurai, is that they were excellent fighters against equals, but never an opponent who cared only for the completion of his “hit” and not for the sport. Ninjas were mafia like, but way cooler. I heard that ninja were so feared, the samurai trained themselves to constantly look over their shoulder in order to prevent sneaky attacks…then again I have no cite…
Okay, let’s get this out of the way. I haven’t seen the film yet, but reviews and some comments I’ve seen seem to indicate that in the movie the samurai rebels eschewed modern weaponry in favor of traditional arms. Well if so, that’s ahistorical hogwash.
In the actual rebellion that the movie is based on, a very serious affair indeed ( involving at least ~100,000 combatants ), the rebel samurai forces had both rifles and artillery - just not as many and not as modern as their central government opponents ( who included volunteer samurai as well as conscript peasants ). Saigo Takamori, on whom this movie Katsumoto was ( apparently loosely ) based, was reactionary in some respects ( at one point he wanted to help start an aggressive war with Korea by going over there and creating a diplomatic insult with his own death ), but that reactionary he was not - he had been among the first to modernize his forces in Japan, which is why his troops ( and others ) had triumphed over the truly traditionally armed Shogunal forces a decade or two earlier. While there was an odd ‘Cult of the Sword’ in samurai society of the time, it was more a feature of peacetime fascination, not an overriding military doctrine. Indeed much of the Bushido ethic and the romanticization of the samurai as ever-faithful, honorable warriors occurred to the long, enforced, stagnant peace of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the 17th-19th century ( the historical actuality was frequently rather different - samurai operated out of purely selfish concerns quite frequently, including switching sides with the prevailing winds of fortune ). Anyway bows ( and spears/pikes/polearms ) were if anything a bigger component of military samurai training and a rifle is nothing if not a better bow. The vast, vast majority of samurai ( the great majority of whom were never in rebellion ) had not a bit of problem using modern weaponry if they could get their hands on it.
Ninjas are the covert ops units.
Samurai were a class of people, not a particular “Type” of fighting man. The samurai were essentially the highest caste of individuals in feudal Japan - the nobility, as it were.
The fighting methods of samurai were every bit as numerous as, say, the different way that people fought in medieval Europe. There were bowmen, cavalrymen, swordsmen of all sorts. Musketry was used quite extensively at different times. The notion of a “Samurai” as a particular type of swordsman is wrong, a total misunderstanding of what the word means.
Warfare in feudal Japan was not a case of elite swordsmen fighting each other in honorable one-on-one duels; it was conventional warfare of the time, with infantry of various sorts being supported by archers and cavalry.
Ninja were simply assassins and infiltrators. It’s quite likely many were, in fact, samurai.
Another point is that in the movie the ninja are a little bit misrepresented. There definetely would not have been that many, and the black jump suit was not really a good idea. The best ninja to have was one ninja…dressed as a peasant to sneak into the leader’s house at night and assasinate him.
Not really. Ninja were almost all Samurai of some type. They mostly weren’t organised crime gangs, they were political operatives and spies. Just as in Europe the best spies were drawn from the officer pool, and hence mostly nobility. In many cases the same person who was a Samurai officially became a spy ‘unofficially’ just as in Europe. Spies/Ninja/Assassins have long been used as convenient political tool for sabotage and murder without political ramifications.
Because of this I guess the answer to the OP would be that in a stand-up fight the results would often be the same as in a stand-up fight between two samurai. It all depends on who has had the most training in the appropriate fields.
Interestingly enough, the History channel (I know, I know) had something on Samurai (or maybe Japan in general, I tend to keep the teevee going in the backround and inattentively listen to the soundtrack whilst surfing the net) a few days ago which indicated that a ninja was essentially a samurai acting covertly - in fact, I clicked on this thread because I assumed that program had generated the question. Now as to whether that info is accurate or not…
Here’s a site with history and myths… about ninja, and one about samurai
There was a lot wrong (historically speaking, and otherwise) with The Last Samurai. It’s been a hit here in Japan solely because of Tom Cruise’s popularity, in the way Pearl Harbor was a semi-hit here because of Ben Lopez. In other words, it’s a SAM-er-eye movie made for American consumption, not edification.
Please don’t make the mistake of believing Shogun or The Last Samurai in any way represents a reality that was.