Ancient Japanese MA's vs. Ancient European MA's

Treebranch · Black Belt

In hand to hand combat and bladed weapons, who had and has the superior fighting skills? Europeans or Japanese?
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JohnnyS · Green Belt

I'll go with Europeans because they were always fighting each other and invaders (i.e. goths, vandals, huns, tatars etc ).

The Japanese were such an insular society that rules grew up around who could fight who etc, even in battle. Draeger mentions that standard practice was to face off with one enemy and engage in a protracted "psych out" period of verbal insults, reciting one's lineage,bragging about how cool your sword was, etc.

The Japanese apparently even tried this protocol with invading foreign armies of mongols and were predictably slaughtered in a mass engagement.

The arts of war (the bugei) were developed according to highly idiosyncratic Japanese ideals. Warriors were expected to behave in certain ways and they were trained to fight in certain way which their rival Warriors were aware of. The few times that the Japanese tried imperial expansionism before the Meiji period (when Japan Westernized its army and industry) were failures. The type of fighting that was useful between rival clans of Samurais simply did not work outside of Japan.
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JerryLove · Black Belt

Armed and armored, I've repeatedly sided with the knight oer the samurai. Unarmed, I'd have to wonder who we are talking about for Europeans... I can think of erll-trained h-t-h European fighters from the Spartians to the Celts... but I would not wish to venture a guess here on comparitive skill of the "average knight" vs the "average samurai" unarmed.
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YoungGrasshopper · Yellow Belt

With both traditionally equiped, I believe the Samurai would surpass the Knight no doubt.

Speed: Knight(less) Samurai(greater)
Agility: Knight(less) Samurai(greater)
Honor/Passion/Spirit: Knight(less) Samurai(greater)
Offense: Knight(less) Samurai(greater)
Deffense: Knight(greater) Samurai(less)

HHHHHMMMMMM....who would winnn???(sarcasm)

But then firearms came along...and then speed agility or all that stuff didn't matter anymore.

btw: it has been said that samurai's katana could penetrate the average armour of the knight with a thrust, but not a slash.

aznkarateboi · Brown Belt

With both traditionally equipped, I believe that the Knight would win hands down.

Speed/Agility: Knights hand down, fightingwise, Samurai had the strategy of one hit kill, which definently doesn't allow for speed, as most of their time was spent parrying and positioning for their blow. Also, Europeans were and still are generally more athletic, strongerm and faster then Japanese. The portrayal of lightning speed and hundreds of blows that you see portrayed in books and anime are simply not true.
Knights=greater

Honor/Passion/Spirit: Knights had Chivalry, Samurai had *, chivalry involved honor, kindness to ladies, and politeness while * (yes i know it's supposed to be bushido) emphasized emptying your mind and other
traditional mumbo-jumbo. * also states (and this is a fact) that if any peasant that offends the samurai in any way, the samurai has a moral obligation to slice off his/her head and those of their family members. This resulted in most of the samurai's training being either meditating or hacking peasants to death in the streets.
Knights=greater

Offense: Samurai win this category due to their use of two handed weapons, which might I add are remarkably weak for two handed weapons due to their curved edges which increase speed and lessen power. Samurai=greater

Defense: Knights win this category hands down, European metalworks were far superior to that of Japanese in the medieval times, Japanese samurai were also known to wear wooden armor. European knights also generally carried shields. Knight=Greater

HMMMM.... who would winnn???(sarcasticly)

btw: it has been said that samurai were killed in droves by mongols while the samurai one by one went up and proudly announced their ancestry of samurai and had their wooden armor and spiritually protected bodies pierced with mongolian arrows.

SaiFightsMS · KF VIP

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