"Mediaval knights never faced Samurai!" Topic

So goes the argument for those who see superiority in all things Samurai.
But then, the Samurai never faced mediaval knights either, did they?
Nor did they face Vikings…

Well, the Samurai did defeat the Mongols, twice, which the Medieval knights of Europe never did as far as I know. Albeit with a little help from the weather. :)

There are way too many variables to account for to give any single answer to 'who would win, a knight or a samurai', or any of these fantasy match ups.

-Will

Sword work largely cancels out until Europeans invent using the point, i.e. fencing. The point will win out versus the edge because it is much, much quicker, more economical of movement/energy and far more subtle than parrying with the full blade edge or a shield. So yes, medieval knights and Samurai would be on a par, the best swordsman expected to win….

I'm still waiting for Samurai vs Jedi. I think the Jedi might win…

A few years back I took a fencing class. The master (classically trained in Italy with historical methods) was Olympic level – though he didn't like the "sport fencing" they do now.
He repeatedly bested a Japanese master using Samurai methods. Does that count as evidence ;-)

Good to see the old , thrust is superior to the cut baloney still going strong… as well as the idea that "fencing" which mean as many things as, "knights" and "samurai", is somehow the epitome of sword fighting skills…

Issues such as actually stopping the other person are important, rather than just hitting someone, whether that is with the point or the edge. There is little point in being able to hit someone, however one achieves that, if they then keep going long enough to take you out as well

The point vs edge debate is totally different if armour is involved.

Yes, my poor, mindless computer, I said "armour" and I meant it.

and it of course actually depends on the weapons actually being used…

and while we spell armour, properly "our" forebears actually spelt "armor" and "honor" ;)

Can the medieval knights take a bunch of long bowmen with them?

Great War Ace, I am curious where you acquired your point verses edge bias? Are you evolved in any marital arts, either Western or Eastern. I have trained with various Chinese swords and they are mostly cutting weapons. My uncle studied Kendo, which was also a cutting edge, not a point based art. My experience with rapiers was for stage fighting, but I would not want to take anything lighter than a sword rapier up against a fully armored opponent.

While "rapiers" were sometimes used on the battlefield, that was once the amount of armour was more reduced, the "rapier" is really a "civilian" duelling weapon…

"Medieval knight" covers a broad range.
Do you mean these guys?

Or these?

Because the samurai would likely be a superior match against the former, an even match against "splint" armor circa 1300s, but the armor on the 1450-1490 fellows might be a different matter. Full plate armor is fairly good proof against swords; most knights were slain after being battered down and stabbed with a dagger through the helmet slits. How a samurai's lamellar armor (made of iron, not steel) would stand up to a European broadsword I can't say, but there's no question that when European armor became available to Japan in the 15th and 16th centuries, it was Japanese armor that adopted European forms, and not vice-versa. So on that point the samurai themselves seem to have acknowledged at least a technological superiority by the late medieval/early renaissance European martial world.

But, like the number of licks to get to the center of a Tootsie pop, the world may never know…

Speaking of which, which one is Winston Smith, and which one is The OFM?

YouTube link

Whilst no doubt the phychological and practical disciplin of the Samurai is impressive, a medieval European knight was often trained from birth and made combat a profession. Armed with shields and steel armour of various types over time he would be a highly skilled warrior and also capable of taking a hit or two whilst delivering some crippling blows against any foe not similarly armoured. My money would be on the knight – technology provided a consistent edge for Euroean feats of arms for hundreds of years ending with guns and gunboats.

Simple.

Play DBA 100 times, see who wins most often. Problem solved.

You are welcome.

i found this rather interesting link

Great War Ace, I am curious where you acquired your point verses edge bias? Are you evolved in any marital arts, either Western or Eastern. I have trained with various Chinese swords and they are mostly cutting weapons. My uncle studied Kendo, which was also a cutting edge, not a point based art. My experience with rapiers was for stage fighting, but I would not want to take anything lighter than a sword rapier up against a fully armored opponent.

First off, I really like broadswords. I was not referring to foils or what Korvessa refers to as "sport fencing". Much less stage fencing, etc.

I have no practical experience beyond early medieval reenactment, i.e. short spears and shields. I never have used a broadsword in reenactment "fights".

My bias comes from a late friend who was among the best on his college fencing team. In after years he would expound on the superiority of the thrust over the cut.

For my own part, nothing I've studied has disabused me of his conclusions, rather reinforcing them.

Spears are thrusting weapons and never have gone out of vogue (bayonets, everyone). They are man's oldest formational weapon of war. A Samurai can cut down any ordinary spearman, but would be rash to take on a cluster of them. Likewise, a knight of any type, early or late, was more than a match for a footman with a spear, but could be bested by a formation of spearmen. While spears evolved into pikes, swords changed from edge only weapons into cut and thrust broadswords, and finally into the rapiers of the professional swordsman. His training was unequalled anywhere else in the world at the time, distinctly European, and remains the superior discipline of the swordsman today….

Watch deadliest warrior 1st season. Samurai vs Viking

Romans would slay them all

EUGENE28 as some one who has spent his life working against the the misunderstanding of European martial culture, that video stand for most things I hate! ;)

GWA
I think to say that swords "evolved" from cut only via cut and thrust to thrust only, is misleading,and sustains the idea put froward by Victoria sword researchers, of inexorable progress from the primitive to the sophisticated. There were plenty of thrust only swords in the bronze age.The development of the civilian sword in Europe, Rapier -small sword and finally sport fencing sporting equipment, and associated fighting use, has as much to do with fashion and social snobbery as it does with the contemporary theories for the superiority of the straight line over the curved. One should also note that numerous masters who had seen fight in real action as opposed to in the fencing salle and the duel, fought against the deficiencies for the thrust only use of the sword, from the rise of the rapier until the abandonment of the sword as a fighting weapon.
I also don't any support for the idea that the training of the European swordsman being unequalled, beyond the western authors have written more extensively than those of other nations, certainly in formats available to us in the west.

Why broadswords? WOTR dismounted "knights" usually wielded some sort of pole arm on top of the sword.

I like the Gunny, but I think the video has problems. Against the steel armor, it looked to me as if neither weapon produced a significant enough puncture or cut to inflict serious injury. If the wearer had on the typical cloth under layers, neither weapon might even have produced so much as a scratch.
Against the leather armor, Gunny didn't duplicate the swings. With the longsword he made a side-swipe blow against a wide expanse of leather covering a very "fleshy" part of the torso. With the katana he used a more powerful downward blow against a much narrower strip of leather on a thicker, less fatty portion of the torso. Think about punching someone— a gut punch hurts, but the stomach fat absorbs a lot of the blow (he actually struck below the rib cage, from what I could tell). But if you hit the shoulder, you're smacking mostly muscle and underlying bone, not fat; there's less underlying "give" to absorb the force of the blow.
Now, I do suspect that the curve would indeed produce a greater and longer length of cut than the straight-bladed longsword. But the heavy long sword would probably shatter bone and bite deeply into the body from front to back. Either way, the result of both would be lethal.
Against the metal armor, though, it will come down to repeated blows, which is where the quality of the opponent's armor comes into play. And on this, the 15th century knight probably has the decisive advantage, even if only armed with a long sword against a samurai with a katana. The katana is slicing and poking at the knight's steel shell, but doing little or nothing to the knight, while the long sword is battering, bashing, smashing and slicing the samurai's more flexible lacquered iron armor. Even if not cut, the samurai is feeling the sword's heavy blows— he might even have broken bones— and his armor is likely coming apart in chunks.

But as Big Martin Back pointed out, while the weapon of choice for the samurai is indeed the katana, for the dismounted knight it is the pole arm— such as the halberd or the Lucerne hammer.

Now, those are can openers. One punch from a Lucerne hammer, and mister samurai is likely down for the count.

But again, that's setting aside the fact that the classic medieval knight only dismounted to face massed infantry with pole arms. Any other opponent, especially single opponents, he first faced while astride a warhorse, armed with a 15 foot (or longer) steel-tipped lance. Prior to the creation of significant gunpowder weapons, that was the definition of "penetrating power" in Europe. Mass, muscle and momentum, concentrated on a single point. There's no way that lamellar armor could have stopped it.

So the battle at last comes down to skill. Can the samurai dodge the knight's mounted charge and force the knight to dismount? Can the samurai hack his way through the knight's steel shell before the knight shatters the samurai's shoulder, or worse, his skull? Can the knight stand upright to smash his blunt-force blows against the samurai without falling to the ground from the katana swings (in which case a katana punch through the eye slit ends it for the knight…)?

At this point, I think it becomes a matter of faith in the arguer as much as training in the respective warriors. But I will say this: Hollywood love affairs with Asian martial arts aside, when the cultures finally did conflict, the Western style of warfare won out, any way you look at it. They might not have been knights and samurai, but the Western mode of "kill 'em from as far away as possible with whatever will kill 'em" was the one the combatants both adopted.

a 2-3 lb knightly long sword will not transfer energy through plate armour, hence the use of weapons better suited to the needs of fighting opponents in a variety of armour types. Against an armoured opponent, the sword was used half-sword, one hand on the blade to make a short spear like weapons, or a fire arms with a bayonet, using the cross and pommel for hammer type blows and hooking, the point of the blade to set in to gaps and joints and the whole weapon.was used to aid in the leverage of close in grappling.

The sword was never the primary weapon of the Japanese bushi, initially they were primarily mounted archers, and later the main weapons in battle were likely to be a spear or naginata, very similar to European glaive type weapons. The Katana is a later development of the japanese sword, the earlier sword, the tachi was of a different style and carried differently.

There is an article that lists the proportion of injuries cause in Japanese warfare, in both the earlier and later periods before the introduction of European firearms, the swords was right near the bottom of the list, the early period arrows were at the top, the later period spears. Earlier more wounds were cause yy rocks than by swords!

As to gunnys video, gunny may be a good gunny but he is not knowledgeable or skilled in handling the weapons in the videos as mentioned so they are not used appropriately and the "armour" used is laughably bad…

Right, this is EXACTLY the problem with is debate; what do you actually MEAN when you say 'knight vs. samurai'? Here's a partial list of the possible variables:

1) Which era? Normans vs. Heian Period Samurai, 'High' medieval vs. Ashikaga Shogunate, HYW vs. early Sengoku, Gendarmes (or similar) vs. later Sengoku?
2) Which weapons and armor? European polearm vs. Katana or longsword vs. Yari are different from Longsword vs. Katana. Never mind the fact that earlier Samurai were archers!
3) Mounted or on foot?
4) Single combat, skirmish, massed battle?

You take any given combination of these, and the dozen other factors I've no doubt overlooked, and you'll get a wide variety of possible answers.

-Will

Its also why I have tried to avoid direct comparisons, but rather we need to think on what each "side" actually could and could not do…

All very well, gentlemen.

But seriously… Ninja, or Pirate?

None could stand before the Power of a Jedi MAster…. well except a Sith MAster….

But seriously… Ninja, or Pirate?

Viking, obviously! That's like a pirate but so much cooler!

I love TMP when we banter with this kind of stuff. :)

When we say Samurai versus knight, we are instantly assuming the supreme evolution of both, not the earlier guys. At least that is how it comes into my mind.

And Gunny's expert associate simply repeated what my late friend always pointed out as the core difference in thinking between Japanese and European swordsmanship, the "perfect cut" versus the maneuvering approach. Feinting and maneuvering your opponent out of position so that the real blow takes him down. Different approach entirely to the "perfect cut" ideology.

Armies of Samurai were as unreal as armies of knights. Yes, they occurred, but anything like total war involved everybody. Duels between gangs of Samurai and knights would indeed be an interesting thing to see. I still believe that such a contest would be more or less evensteven.

Only when you get to the more developed swordsmanship of the Renaissance would the advantage swing in favor of the European methods….

The notion of the "perfect cut" in Japanese swordsman ship is something really that comes about after the Tokugawa shogunate, If ones looks tat the older Ryu in Japan dating back to the late 15th and 16th centuries they don't focus in the same way as those from later.. Yes a cut need to be be good enough to do the job. There are deceptive blows in medieval combat, but the general intent is to close in behind an attack to bridge the gap, bind the weapons, work of the bind to open an target or close in and grapple and throw. Armoured fighting in both places is not that dissimilar, but they are both dissimilar to the unarmoured duelling in Europe of the late 16th and 17th centuries

I would again disagree with the notion of Renaissance swordsmanship being more "developed". It is increasingly "specialised" but that doesn't carry within it any real superioity

Yes, "developed" was a poor choice. All formalized fighting techniques are "specialized", that's why they differ from each other. What I mean to emphasize as the main difference between a fully developed Samurai katana technique, and the contemporary European with sword and main gauche in particular, is the fulsome subtlety of the European, making full use of two weapons, point being the most lethal, but none of either weapon or indeed the full body being left out of the total package of defense and attack.

There was a video on YouTube a few years ago that I tried to find again just now, but alas my searching skills leave something to be desired. The thing I remember about this particular pair of fighters was the ferocity of their dueling, controlled, flowing, and FAST. It was one of the most terrifying acts I have ever seen filmed, and illustrated as closely as I can imagine the realization, even in modern times, of what a fully trained and experienced swordsman was capable of back then. I have seen nothing to compare with it vis-à-vis Japanese sword fighting….

This is cute: YouTube link

Here's one where the "knight" loses, with two weapons no less…. YouTube link

Ah, here it is; not quite what I remembered, but impressive nonetheless. The video is artsy and makes me wince: YouTube link

the first one is a "dramatic fight", the fight is choreographed (so doesn't further anything beyond stylistic choices), it's not badly done but not great either (part of my day job is a combat teacher and fight director) there is lots of attacking to where the weapon is and ignoring open targets which would kill or maim the other person. It also has the misleading title of "samurai" vs fencer and sparring… they are both "fencers" one in kendo and one in a European mode and they aren't sparring!

Oh my… the second one is horrible! lots of… i'll hold my bokken away from myself and you can alternate hitting it with both your weapons. Not to mention the badly made and fitting "armour" of the European which is largely "fantasy", There is nothing going on in it. The Japanese has some skill and training, the European is a show fighter/re-enactor… at best

Right… the last one is good I know these guys and they do an excellent job of showing "medielval" of the German or Lichtenauer tradition. We are seeing sepcifc techniques or series of them from the surviving manuals and Manuscripts. However these are set forms, this isn't freeplay and are long the lines of the paired kata we see below…

Now this is Katroi Shinto Ryu, founded in around the 1470s, the same time the Gladiators video is presenting
youtu.be/cQB5Lc1C_a8?t=3m12s
The packaging of the presentation is different and things like the Japanese using wooden bokken etc. but the actual delivery, complexity and subtlety etc are on a par. On top of which the Japanese is an unbroken living tradition here, the German, a recreated one

Again I don't see any more or less subtlty, fulsome or otherwise ;)in any of this, if you made it that far in the video you'll have seen the KSR using sword and dagger too. Sword and "main gauche" in Europe comes from a time when there was a distinction between war swords and civilian swords and the associated, styles and purpose. Hence specialisation. A rapier is a civilian duelling sword, out of place, in general, on the battle field, it is optimised for thrusting, so is infective to cut with, and requires a specific movement style, different from that one uses with a cut and trust sword or say a long sword, pole arms or in effective grappling. Something that was pointed out by opponents to the rise of the fashion for rapiers and duelling at the time, it was too specialised.

Now their can be a lot of "complexity" and variety of techniques in later civilian duelling styles but they are an artefact of training, and in the periods were railed against for being overly complex and impractical for real use, or that they just went out the window when people tried to use them in an actual encounter. This only got worse when sword fighting became sword play as duelling went out of fashion and the skills were practised for their own sake and for sport. It should be noted that a similar transition was made in Japan, when the skills were not used in earnest to the same extent, they so much of what is now considered "ways of the samurai" are actually Do, ways of practice not of use, for example Kendo and Iaido (sword).

Interesting points, Gamesman. Yes, I saw that the first video is choreographed, the second is clumsy entertainment, and the third is impressively demonstrative of late medieval texts; they have at least three other videos on YouTube as well.

I enjoyed the Japanese video very much. Thanks for sharing.

Each time this subject comes up (every few years it seems) I get a little bit more convinced that the method is the least important aspect of "who will win", and the intent ("you gotta be willing") is dominant. All skills and intent being equal between two opponents, nobody should be able to say beforehand who will win.

I will keep my concealed handgun, thanks….

YouTube link If both have the Force, who can say what the outcome will be? :) …

ans that is Katori Shinto Ryu ;)

Not sure that the average katana would stand up to the strength of an average medieval broadsword for long…or even at all.