At their height the Samurai were dedicated and well trained warriors with good blade weapons for their time, but they were not supermen with superweapons, and in several areas of weapons development and technology were relatively behind the curve compared to Europe.
Where is all this silliness spawned? Martial arts enthusiasts, kung fu flicks, “Shogun” and other popular fiction… what?
Well Samaurai weren’t, obviously. Ninjas are. A Ninja could flip out and kill everyone on this message board in half a second, and then wail on his guitar.
More seriously, I think that familiarity breeds contempt, and (english speaking) people are more familiar with knights than Samurai. Added to that, the exposure most people have to knights is through Robin Hood, possibly Crecy and Agnicourt. None of these are flattering to knights, and the latter two aren’t recognized as the abberation they are.
Next you’ll be telling us that Ninjas could not shapeshift, throw fireballs, turn invisible, stick to vertical surfaces, and kill a man with nothing but the arching of an eyebrow.
Hey! I grew up in the 80’s…I KNOW that these are all facts!
Seriously, I think that people get caught up in the ‘eastern mystique,’ as well as distancing themselves from the perceived brutish, unhygenic, ignorant ways of their European forebears. Sort of like reverse nostalgia.
Okay, pal. How do account for Samurai heat vision, then? Huh? And how about the ancient Samurai art of sawing a woman in half? Or the mystic bushido secrets behind making the perfect potato pancake?
True, a samurai couldn’t easily take out a knight. But put it up against a 100 foot tall fire-breathing hell demon from the 9th dimension, and it’s obvious who would win.
Even stranger is when those “brutish, ignorant” Europeans went head-to-head militarily with Far Eastern armies, up until the 20th century they won probably 90% of the time.
The katana was a technologically superior sword to most anything the Europeans made. This is in the sense that it was harder to craft a katana than, say, a bastard sword. The metallurgical technique was more advanced.
Of course as already pointed out in the other thread a katana is practically useless against an person armoed in plate or maybe even chain armor. However, it was superior against un-armored opponents, better than anything the Europeans made and most people on the battlefield were not armored like knights.
Of course the samurai never saw an armored knight to my knowledge so the katana was just fine for most of the fighting they needed to do.
I suppose, but we’re mostly talking about the 19th century when Europeans generally did pretty well against everybody due to superior firepower and tactical drill. In the early colonial period, say 16th-18th century, clashes between European arms and ‘Far Eastern’ ( I assume by this you mean China, Japan, and korea ) states weren’t as common and were a little less one-sided.
I think **Stonebow[/] was casting back to the somewhat skewed European view of their own Middle Ages as being excessively brutish and unhygenic compared to the romantic view ( mythologized significantly by Japanese themselves, particularly in the enforced, stagnant peace of the Tokugawa Era ) of the 13th-16th century ‘Japanese Middle Ages’, which are commonly regarded as more elegant and “neat.” Kinda ignorant in some respects, I’d agree, but not really the same thing as Victorian Europeans vs. declining Asian powers.
Pre-colonial period the Far East pretty much never came into contact with Europe in a direct military way, unless you count the conveyor-belt of displaced tribes and tribal confederacies that regularly migrated into the Russian steppe. But that really was a different phenomena and one the “Europeans” had only mixed success dealing with in the pre-modern era. I suppose the Mongol invasion of 1238-1242 could legitimately be called a clash with a Far Eastern power, in that they held Northen China, had absorbed some Chinese expertise in areas like siegecraft, and were backed by the resources of a massively wealthy empire. But really it was just a super-sized version of your typical steppe army, with suberb leadership and previously unheard of discipline and organization. At that, they pretty much annhilated the European forces in battle.
I read a biography on the legendary samurai Musashi. This guy dedicated his life to the way of the sword. He slept, ate, and drank sword fighting. I’ve forgotten just how many opponents he beat (killed) in one on one staged combat (I think around 13 or 14). He even spent some time living as a hermit in a cave.
One of his fights typifies his psyche.
He has to hitch a ride on a boat and travel up the coast to meet his opponent (which had been formally arranged). The ride was several hours. He didn’t even bring a sword. He first took a long nap. Then he woke up and confiscated one of the boat oars and fashioned a crude wooden sword. As the boat grounded on the shore he jumped out of the boat and ran at his opponent that was waiting for him stoically on the shore. Apparantly the site of this madman running at him with his crude weapon must’ve had quite an effect because Musashi wacked him up side the head and killed him before the guy could react.
My own personal opinion is that a well-trained samurai vs. an armour clad, relatively slow-moving knight would favor the samurai simply because they were quicker and extremely accurate with their strokes and could easily find those spots in the armour where a blade could penetrate.
Anyone watch that history channel show recently where medeival combat was recreated with mock combat and all the weapons of the time showcased? It was really good. I just think an agile, nimble, well-trained, disciplined samurai would be too much to the knight. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!
