Some how while trying to track down you're claim Ols I ended up on that page. Since I pulled the battles on wikipedia I probably ended up there by the victors. You know, the none-TWF army without pants that kicked their TWF asses.
If you have a citation laying around I'd like to read it. I've never heard of something like that which makes it unique. And on the bows,
horseback archery was favored, not necessarily archery. They replaced foot based archery as early as the 4th century then peaked and died out 500 years before the Edo period, probably because horses are expensive. Well that and as I said before, their bows sucked balls.
The bow that seen wide spread use, probably due to mounted archery, was the yumi. It's f'ing huge, made out of bamboo and even with proper care and maintenance it'd only last a few generations. In addition, they only had a draw weight around 30~40lbs. To put things into prospective, modern hunters use the low draw weight of 90lbs+ to kill deer with razor sharp machined steel heads instead of rocks and dull pointy heads and 20~30lb bows are what Cub Scouts use at Scout camps because with a dull tip you can't kill anyone. To really paint a difference, Longbows have a draw weight up to 185lbs and so many survived the middle ages (sic over 800 years ago) in working order without care or maintenance that people purposely broke a bunch of them to test their limits for science. To even more put things in place, it is possible to dodge, parry, or block a single arrow pretty easily with such a low speed if you know it's coming. To fire hundreds of arrows you need terrain that supports hundreds of archers, not a mountain.
@Kuori, no hes right on the strikes.
You've used weapons before, you know there are only 9 possible strikes. Picture a 3x3 grid and every technique in the world swings a cutting edge through one of the eight. Defensively, you can easily cover two to three squares at once. IE upper left, top, and upper right can be blocked or parried by choosing to guard upwards. TWF and swinging both from the near-same angle of attack (say upper left and top) could be easily blocked in a single motion. TWF in opposing angles to "get around your opponent's defense" carries the problem that if your opponent dodges either you've trapped your arms, cut them, of slammed your weapons together. This goes back to parry daggers really. The center square is neutral and left open, a small piercing weapon used to stab
does work. And it
was used, but you need to understand that it's a dagger and a sword, not two swords. And it wasn't used for very long, weapons became lighter and faster, daggers could no longer reach your opponent and a foil could dance
around them, plus blocking a stab with another bladed weapon is all but impossible.
Looking back, you also missed the point on armor. Japanese armor left areas completely uncovered. The closest thing to a gorget to keep their heads from being was a face mask. The sides of their abdomens were uncovered, arms only had armor on one side etc. Full plate covered everything, even the joints had mail, leather, and cloth. In Japanese, ninjitsu exploited the large gaps in a Samurai's armor and the Samurai saw is as dishonorable and never thought to fully armor them selves. Unlike Europe, where yes, everything was fair game like it is in war.
