I’m not asking about historical examples of swordsmen fighting others who were bare handed, but I have noticed in a lot of Japanese comics, movies and anime that there is a trope of a bare handed martial artist who is challenged/attacked by a swordsmen. The bare handed martial artist NEVER complains about this.
I always find it weird and it hurts my suspension of disbelief when the guy in the karate gi doesn’t go “WHOAH WHOA WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!?” when a guy challenges him to a duel with a katana. Is the trope based on the wandering martial artist, always looking for a challenge? Are there relatively historical but not mythical examples of these types of fights actually taking place?
An example I can think of is Fighter in the Wind, which admittedly is a Korean movie about Mas Oyama, who was a Korean-Japanese. He is attacked I think multiple times by swordsmen and beats them bare handed. The movie is fairly pro-Korea anti-Japanese, so it could be used just as a method of making the Korean protagonist more impressive, but I wonder if this trope exists in other cultures too…not the mismatch, so much as the lack of complaint about the mismatch.
It’s late so I could’ve worded this thread better but it’s been something I’ve been thinking for a while.
Historically only Japanese nobility had the right to carry weapons, swords in particular. They also had the absolute right to use those weapons however they wished - if a samurai had to cut a bitch, not only was no one allowed to complain, but there wouldn’t be any investigation of why he felt he had to. Samurai said the guy had to die, he must have had to. Case closed.
Obviously this didn’t sit quite right with the people who were getting disemboweled on a lark by drunk samurai, which led to the development of martial arts in general. And also explains why so many schools of martial arts that involve weapons focus on weird devices like sticks, nunchakus, sickles and the like - peasants were allowed to have those, in fact they were farming tools in the first place. The peasants only had to learn how to use them as weapons.
So the reason Japanese kung fu guys don’t complain when someone takes a sword to a boxing match is that their kung fu is *meant *to be able to take on people with swords. It’s ultimately what kung fu is for.
That and the fact that beating up an armed opponent unarmed is quite obviously bad ass and a visual demonstration of just how skilled the hero is. If the hero had a sword, he’d be facing guys with guns to make it an even fight (yes, yes there are movies and anime just like that. Yes, it’s awesome).
never read of a case wherein an unarmed man defeated a swordsman in a square-off duel but you have several cases of the former disarming or defeating the latter while in the lurch or from behind (think of ninjas on a cold dark night.) that barehand fighting techniques have drills and katas intended to tackle a swordsman or some other weapon wielder, this is almost always the case. but it’s usually situational (mainly the one with a weapon is a dope.)
it’s not just the japanese nobility who are allowed to use swords (2 actually) but also the warrior class (samurai.) but there were periods wherein men who were neither samurai nor nobility openly carried swords. miyamoto musashi faught as a ronin (masterless bushi) for some time.
karate is a modern invention. an okinawan brought the technique to the main island sometime in the 1920s. but there were already several un-armed techniques in japan during the samurai era (like ju-jitsu.)
kung fu is chinese. from bruce lee to jackie chan to jet li, japanese fighters have always been made to look silly.
“Warrior caste” is pretty much the definition of nobility. Samurais were just nobles by another name.
Ronin were still samurai, even though they were out of a day job. They occupied a strange, dysfunctional strata of society and were misliked by pretty much everyone, both peasants and samurai alike. Still, most of them had the birthright required to wear a daisho (some however were actually peasants who had acquired weapons illegally and pretended to be samurai or descendants thereof - a dangerous gamble, as they would be put to death if caught).
Musashi included, BTW - he might have grown up and lived like a belligerent bum, but his daddy was samurai and sword teacher for the Shinmen clan.
Quite - I was using kung fu in the Western, generic, “kung fu flick” sense of the word.
“Associating nunchaku and other Okinawan weapons with rebellious peasants is probably a part of romantic imagery. Martial arts on Okinawa were practiced exclusively by aristocracy (kazoku) and “serving nobles” (shizoku) but were prohibited among commoners (heimin). Furthermore, Okinawan disarmament was never total; nobles were still allowed to carry their swords and members of the royal family and princes were even allowed to have firearms for hunting”
The idea that sai or tonfa etc wouldnt be recognised as weapons doesnt make a lot of sense after all. After the first samurai gets clubbed, they’d kind of catch on.
Movie device wise, the hero against overwhelming odds without complaint is pretty common.
Thismight be relevant:
Ie the hero doesnt complain because whenever you have a better weapon than your opponent in a movie, it probably means you’re about to get stomped.
hmmm… i actually see few examples of what the thead starter is saying in a japanese setting. more often it’s “let me fight you in a fair duel” type of thing. if ever, it would have been purely situational.
In a deleted fight scene in Kill Bill, Bill fights a no name character played by Michael Jai White in an oriental alley. At first it is a sword fight. Bill has his katana, and White’s character is dressed in Chinese garb and uses a straight Chinese sword. The fight then becomes a hand to hand match for awhile. Both characters return to their swords, but Bill make a show of sheathing his. White’s character follows, and they briefly duel with sheathed swords. Alas, it was a ploy, as Bill intentionally misses a blow to the head in order to slyly unsheathe his katana just enough to cut the other man’s throat. I mention it here because it sort of represents the rare opposite of the OP’s observation.
the biggest opposite to the OP’s case i know is one episode from wild-wild west. jim was thrown into a gladiator pit, had a piscator net thrown over him, but he overcame two armed fighters. a third armed fighter showed up and he dueled on even terms, eventually winning. an unarmed fighter came out ready to fight, and jim dropped his saber. when the unarmed, un-named fighter was getting his ass kicked, he picked up jim’s saber and jim quickly grabbed a free trident.
I just watched Sonny Chiba in “Street Fighter” and “Return of the Streetfighter” yesterday – he does a ton of this, especially in “Return.” He has some kind of leather-looking forearm chaps on that seem to help him block various swords coming at him.
Prior to seeing these movies, I didn’t give a shit about Japanese anything, being a Kung Fu fan and having been “taught” that the Japanese were conniving, sneaky assassins who ambush the Chinese heroes, but I have now seen the power of Karate.
ETA I missed the real point of the OP. My fault, but I’ll not delete Sonny Chiba’s name.
If the nobles pass a law that the peasants aren’t allowed to have pitchforks, threshing flails, or poles, then they’re going to start getting pretty hungry pretty soon. You can’t prohibit every tool that could be used as a weapon, because there’d be no tools left.
bare handed defense techniques against wooden sword are present in some forms of jujitsu and its aikido descendant. Now, that does not mean that these techniques actually work, just like other things about traditional martial arts may be highly unrealistic. But if this notion exists in theory, then it stands to reason that in fictional portrayals it will appear in practice.
Similarly, I don’t think that you can get two criminal gangs to make peace for a long time by getting them play basketball. But this trope is apparently popular in fictional movies because some not-so-smart people sincerely believe and push this sort of BS. And if something is in popular imagination, it will end up shown in the movies, even if it flagrantly violates laws of thermodynamics.
I can’t provide a cite, but I’ve read of a US Marine that was attacked by a Japanese officer on Iwo Jima. He simply grabbed the blade bare-handed, wrested it from his opponent and killed him with his own weapon.
Surely if a guy without a sword is attacked by a guy with a sword, then stands there and starts bitching about it instead of fighting, he’s gonna get chopped into little pieces. Or maybe bigger pieces.
Because if you watch any Japanese movies, anime or manga, they always have PLENTY of time for Shakespearian speaches before they actually start fighting? Plenty of time for unarmed fighter to go “By the way, how about you ditch that sword”?
In reality every fight I have ever seen in real life in the USA where one person has a weapon and the other doesn’t, weaponless guy at least TRIES to guilt/goad the other guy into dropping it to make it a fair fight, “So you need a weapon huh?”)
I’ve never heard a line even close to “fight me like a man!” in Japanese media with regards to weaponry, the lack of it is odd to me considering how often unarmed guys go against people with weapons in their fiction. And when they do, it’s not even acknowleged as a mismatch. I can’t think of any “duels” in American fiction where one fighter has such a huge advantage over the other guy weapons wise and no one even makes mention of how unfair it is.\
edit: I forgot to mention something possibly related, Japanese MMA fans in general love freakshows where a 300lb guy fights the smallest guy they can find, they never get tired of David and Goliath type fights, whereas in America those fights would never be sanctioned in the first place, and the American fans aren’t interested in some 300lb sumo vs some competant middleweight.
It hurts your suspension of disbelief when one guy attacks another, and they don’t engage in lengthy monologues or dialogues of self-justification before going at it? Don’t think I can help you with that.
I don’t know where you got that idea from what I’ve said. The suspension of disbelief is because they are having lengthy dialogue, but about things other than “But I don’t even have a sword!” Do you understand now, or is there another snide comment you can think of?
I suppose I should’ve made it more clear that I’m talking more about one on one dueling situations instead of just someone being attacked visciously, where it is obvious why one wouldn’t complain about being underpowered (since that is the point).
Holy Land: Protagonist who is a meak schoolboy who keeps getting into streetfights, does not complain when he has to fight bare fisted against a character with a Bokken (Even these training swords could easily kill you with one blow). The comic is not cartooney at all, and the bokken fighter is not depicted in a negative manner for swinging a deadly weapon at a skinny, unarmed opponent.
I can think of a bunch more but it’s past my bed time.
This. It’s not that the samurai doesn’t know *exactly *why the peasant is carrying a rice thresher or *kama *on his person, or the monk a long stick. But the peasant has plausible deniability: “Yes sir, that’s mine sir, I’m fresh from the fields sir. It’s harvest season, sir. Oh no sir I wouldn’t dream of hitting anyone with it sir, that would be very wrong sir, you shame me by even thinking that I could sir !”.
Could have to do with the Japanese philosophy of warfare and combat. To them, sacrificing an existing advantage no matter how overwhelming is not “honourable” or “fair”, it’s just dumb. Everything’s fair in love and war and all that. You fight to the best of your ability, always. In fact, it’s downright insulting when you don’t, as it implies your opponent is too weak to even remotely be a threat.
To give you a famous example, one of Miyamoto Musashi’s most famous opponents got the best of many fencers in part because his sword was much longer than theirs and he had the reach advantage. Musashi didn’t ask him to “fight me with a standard sized sword, you coward !”. It would have made no sense, neither in the context of a symbolic test of skill between them (as “skill” involves more than just knowing how to wield a sword), nor in a practical sense - in war your opponent won’t make things fair for you. If you can’t deal with that, you’re no warrior.
So instead, Musashi carved himself an even longer wooden sword out of a boat oar and thrashed him with it. He also had the cunning to set the time and place of their duel in such a way that Sasaki would have the sun in his eyes when they fought. Unfair ? Nope. Clever.
