Pretty sure the samurai were so much into the idea of beating their neighbors that they immediately jumped onto guns almost immediately after the first few got shipped from Europe.
Samurai fucking loved guns practically as soon as they were introduced in the 16th century to Japan, and before that they would have been more proud of archery and horsemanship than swordsmanship anyway.
I wouldn’t go that far. The whole Way of the Sword and all that really kicked off when Miyamoto Musashi was around and that was the 16th century. He was a famed dualist with a sword and wrote The Book of the Five Rings, which is all about swordplay and techniques/styles/skills.
I was under the impression that long arms were the main weapon of choice, at least for the infantryman, which is usually the bulk of armies.
I thought that all that pride in their Katanas was invented and revisionistic after gunpowder came to Japan and they actually took way more pride in their skills with a bow.
If you bragged about your skills with a Katana in feudal Japan, you kind of admitted that your archery skills are shit.
Bows and spears get the work done, swords are mostly for show.
Swords were mainly for the generals and other higher up officers, since they require way more metal and thus were way more expensive.
So yes, mostly for show because those higher ups rarely went into battle themselves.
Pride in katana was during the Edo period when the samurai were relegated to being government officials and they used swords for duelling.
It’s rather that trained skills in general (with a bow, a sword, a musical instrument) were important.
Can’t help thinking that with my particular set of disorders growing up in such a society (not as a peasant, God forbid) could be advantageous.
And shooting an arrow from a composite bow is much more of a “moment of art” thing than waving a big knife around, so.
Just to nit-pick, the Japanese never really figured out how to produce composite bows, the Yumi was just laminated bamboo. It was one of the reasons they couldn’t successfully invade Korea until they were given western tech.
It’s kinda ironic nowadays, but prior to the meiji restoration Japan was considered a cultural and technological backwater.
The mountainous island with no metal? The one that shut itself off for three centuries? Technologically limited? Perish the thought.
You have just been disavowed by the university of Tokyo for revising revisionism. You can’t just go around attempting to dispel over 400 years of self aggrandizing, it’s just rude.
I always thought it would suck to be the guy that practiced his entire life. Gets sick on his first campaign and is just lucid enough to see their side lose the fight and the enemy come to execute them.
Only just a little ironic that the Israeli Flag anon writes a short fiction of an arrogant upper class getting their comeuppance.
The user can manually set the flag to whatever they want… Most people use the jolly Roger pirate flag if they’re gonna bother setting the flag though.
The katana and related swords were the best they could manage given the technology and raw materials available at the time in Japan… but on the whole, they were pretty mid.
I think (having no actual direct knowledge of kendo or any sword martial art, so take with a grain of salt) that the reputation of the katana came more from the skill of the samurai using them than from the blade itself.
It’s a light, curved blade, so using it effectively would involve slicing with it, rather than chopping, which is more suitable for heavy blades combined with heavy force. A slice would involve both sliding the edge along the target cut and moving it forward at the same time. It would make sense to me that a slicing motion would generally lead to cleaner and more complete cuts than chopping. It would also hold its sharpness better, since the edge is being interacted with a parallel motion rather than a perpendicular one. The same is true for the full blade.
It’s difficult to do that kind of slicing motion combined with a full swing, but perhaps the mediocre iron they had access to is the reason why they went to the effort of developing that technique. Those who were better at cutting things wouldn’t break their swords as often, so they put effort into honing that technique and eventually got to the point where katanas would survive long enough to be antiques or family heirlooms.
But that’s just my guess, based on observing samurai characters in various media being impressed with the quality of cuts they observe. Like, “based on this cut, I know that it was done by a skilled swordsman”. That says there’s some kind of technique involved, rather than just swinging the sharp side at it.
Bro you gonna summon a army of otakus with your facts
That’s okay. They’ll most likely commit sudoku when they learn that samurai weren’t the noble and honorable warriors they were made to believe.
