Quote:
Originally posted by Elif Godson:
What century knights and samurai are we talking? I would put my money on the samurai any day for any time personally. If you are talking real katana's, not the crap that is mass produced today, the katana is far superior then the common long sword. ... snip ..., your making y brain hurt 
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Didn't read the article Memnoch posted did ya? I thought we were past all the the katana/samurai worshipping misinformation.
Japanese metallurgy was not "more advanced" than western... they were dealing with inferior raw materials (living on an island does that) so they NEEDED to use certain processing techniques (folding for instance) to get decent swords... those techniques were all available to western swordmakers... they simply weren't necessary. That tip weighted Katana might have been adept at cutting through Japanese armor but had a higher polar moment of intertia than Western blades (which have more distal taper) so forget about any blade speed advantages for the samurai.
Anyway... I could go on but first I recommend you read the article Memnoch posted... then check the link I posted... then check this link:
http://www.thearma.org//forum/showfl...=&fpart=1&vc=1
For the most part all these guys are more knowledgeable than anyone here about the subject and they make a lot of good points on both sides of the debate.
Finally... read this thread on a fencing forum:
http://www.fencing101.com/vb/showthr...dieval+fencing
There are a couple of modern fencers on there who discuss combat between modern (western) fencers and kendo practitioners. The reach and speeed of western fencing was severely overpowering. Now this is is comparing state of the art modern competitive fencing with a classical form... hardly fair... but keep in mind that modern fencing is the direct decendant of the western martial arts tradition when you claim that the samurai was superior. Even on that forum they admit that it all comes down to the skill of the combatants, and that both eastern and western techniques have advantages and disadvantages.
There is also a report of Portugese historical documents where sailors dismantled samurai on several occasions, without suffering a loss.