Rising Sun, You are indeed most welcome, and I shall add to the info I’ve given if such re-emerges in recall.
Kind and Respectful Regards, Uyraell.
From having practiced with swords for a while I can say they are weapons and in a night enguagement at close quarters they defiantly would have dismembered a few opponents.
But they didn’t do so well against a BAR. I would have preferred a .45 and a Bowie, and such as Lt. John George, in his book, “Shots Fired in Anger”, wrote that on Guadalcanal they found most of the Japanese had pistols of various kinds. This may have been because the swords were scarce and expensive, or because they had some common sense. In either case, while the sword can be deadly, there are better ‘personal’ weapons to choose from, far better.
Deaf
Really?
And I thought that the Samurai were people rather than objects. Most of whom had ceased to exist as an influential class by WWII, due to certain events in Japan in preceding decades about which you might like to inform yourself.
You think so?
Check out NCOs carrying and using ‘Samurai’ swords. The only thing these people having swords emphasised was that the IJA had no connection with the Samurai tradition it corrupted for nationalistic and militaristic purposes.
Thinking doesn’t appear to be your strong point any more than is knowledge of the topics upon which you so confident opine.
I watched an episode of “Stories of the Gun” on Japanese weapons on Military History in the UK this week. They said that one of the most commonly issued rifles for IJA infantrymen would stand 5"5’ tall, with bayonet. The average height of the IJA trooper was only 5"3’. This would make the weapon somewhat unweildy in the close quarter combat for which it was designed. Therefore, a sword would be much more preferable, as it would be more appropriate to the physical stature of the user.
Also, forgive me if I don’t see any relevance to an ancient bloodline in whether or not a soldier will act with humanity toward a defeated oponent. How did ‘nobles’ gain their ‘nobility’ but by prying it from somebody else’s cold dead hands at the point of a sword. Throughout history, the ‘noble’ classes have been the first to support the shedding of (somebody else’s) blood.
It is the ‘noble’ or officer castes who propagandise the supposed differences between nations and cultures. In fact, common peasant soldiers are the same wherever they come from.
I think you’ll find more instances of the sword being used on captives than in battle.
And maybe not that much different to Japanese use of the bayonet, to blood raw troops or just for the fun of mutilating captives.
‘Nobility’ was in most cultures awarded by the monarch or equivalent.
As for acting with humanity towards defeated opponents, the medieval European practice was to hold surviving nobles for ransom.
I think you’re confusing the past few centuries of Euro-American conduct with the earlier periods where nobles actually went into battle.
I doubt that you’d find too many peasant soldiers from Russia in WWII who agreed that the Einsatzgruppen were the same as them. The same with farm boys from the US, Britain and Australia who encountered peasant soldiers from Japan in WWII.
I do not doubt that there are many examples of brave nobles. However I would say that they are brave in spite of and not because of, their nobility. I am currently reading a book on the Crusades which is full of heroism from nobles and knights. That said, there is heroism from the peasant footsoldiers in equal measure, so often overlooked.
My issue is with the frankly absurd notion that the inhumanity of the Japanese towards civilians and pows was due to them being lead by men raised from the lower orders and not from the traditional nobility. There is as much good and bad in every class surely. So the family tree of the guy in charge is completely irrelevant to how he will behave. Have we not gone beyond such foolish ideas as ‘breeding’. It is as idiotic and offensive to assume that one man is better than his fellows on grounds of class as it is on grounds of race.
May I ask, do you feel that a Lord, Earl or Prince is a better man than you or I sir? Are we not all men of learning and deeply held principal? Yet I have no ‘breeding’. Perhaps you do?
As for the difference between a Soviet soldier and an Einsatzgruppen soldier, they had just been told different lies by different leaders. Deep down, yes they are the same.
Interesting thread.
Jap swords were a common souvenier around my home and I have owned many.
All seemed to be of the military machine made variety, but they’d take your head off.
I believe primarily they were symbolic in a some what arcane military that was stuck between centuries.
I believe their revival of “Bushido” was corrupt, but so was the original concept.
In maintaining “honor” and all that crap, they enslaved their own population and regarded their own people as less than human-lopping off heads at random. Wonderful system, no wonder it was finally outlawed.
The disdain for prisoners and conquered civilians, etc started at the top and worked its way down.
There was a great deal of brutality in their own ranks.
As I said, The Japs were pretty far behind in the concept of conducting warfare. Too much traditional and archaic practices to be effective.
The sword was a symbol of rank and an officer was supposed to lead rather than actually engage enemy, but at close quarters they had no choice.
I recently went to see a local Marine vet who has a sword.
He is rather famous locally as a state athlete ans football coach.
Well spoken and enjoyed speaking with me as a fellow combat vet.
He manned a machinegun all night during a sustained attack and when the sun came up a considerable pile of dead enemy lay in front of him.
The closest was a young officer with a Nambu in his hand and sword in scabbard.
A bullet passed through the scabbard halfway up and took a big nic out of the blade.
The young man had enough sense to use his pistol, futile as it may have been.
He still has the sword.
Katana had more of a spiritual meaning to Japanese people. It had a lot of meaning to them. Also had a big psychological effect on US troops, they were afraid of japanese soldiers charging with swords in hand to hand combat.
Notions of the so-called Code of Bushido, or of the Samurai, as representing some sort of consistent moral ideal followed in practice by any body of people at any time stand up poorly to historical scrutiny. Much of the later Japanese “nobility” and the class of “samurai” began to evolve over a thousand years ago, in the Heian period. The circumstances were of the slow erosion of the power and wealth of the Court nobility, who became increasingly isolated at the Imperial Court, leaving their estates be managed by estate managers who were, in many cases, members of a minor nobility or “gentry” – not infrequently members of “cast off” branches of the Imperial Family, or of the Fujiwara noble family that dominated the Court in this period. In a country the unity of which was heavily compromised by its problematic geography, it is hardly surprising that over time, the estate manager minor nobility, over time, increasingly appropriated the resources directly under their control, promoting their class to a powerful provincial nobility. In parallel with this development came the development of the class of “bushi” (warriors) or “samurai” (retainers) – military servants generally attached to the new provincial nobility in a relationship not dissimilar to that between pre-feudal North European kings and their personal military retainers. Japanese “feudalism” never seems to have lost this personal, proto-feudal quality, less reliant on contractual relations relating to land than its European equivalent.
These developments, not surprisingly, eventually undermined the Heian system to the point of collapse. The system that followed it was one in which top warlords (usually, but not always, appointed generalissimo – shogun – by the Emperor) more-or-less controlled a country dominated by a powerful provincial nobility, backed up by their respective private armies of “retainers”. “Control” was always relative; and such balance as existed in the system was heavily based on military violence or the threat of it. Conflict between shogun and the nobility, and within the nobility itself, were common. There is quite a bit of evidence that in the context of this system, treachery was common currency, not least within and between noble families, but also on the part of samurai who were quite willing to switch allegiances when circumstances suggested that this might be in their own interests. Use of lethal violence to control the perpetually-downtrodden peasantry was par for the course. The balance of the shogunal system disintegrated altogether between the mid-15th and the beginning of the 17th century, a period characterised by near-constant civil war, endemic double-dealing and large-scale slaughter. At the end of this period, an effective Shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu – more or less the last warlord standing.
It was under the new Tokugawa Shogunate that the first step in the “reduction” of the samurai took place. Ironically, it was probably presented as the opposite; the samurai were created an exclusive minor nobility, and given a monopoly of carrying arms (excepting the senior nobility, at least). The practical effect, however, seems to have been to convert most samurai into a sort of sword-wielding police bureaucrat, who followed his “Way”, essentially, by eliminating any member of the lower classes who stepped out of line. The second step in the “reduction” came with the modernisation of Japan that followed the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the mid-19th century. The samurai class was, as part of this process, “phased out”, with the holders of this status (along with senior territorial nobles) being paid off in return for the surrender of (in the samurai’s case), their monopoly of arms. This process was supposedly completed in 1876, when samurai who had not already surrendered the right to carry swords were banned from doing so; following on the introduction of conscription to a regular army in 1873, this development effectively extinguished the role of the samurai officially – although resistant samurai staged a final rally in the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. This rebellion was firmly put down by the new Imperial conscript army, equipped with modern rifles and artillery. Whatever the tradition of the samurai may have represented up to this point, it came to a final full stop in 1877.
So, why are we still talking about the “Code of Bushido” and its application to the 1940s? I think it had a lot to do with the fact that the new, modern Japanese military established a predominant position in the new Japan – perhaps not surprising, given the long tradition of rule by sheer violence, or the threat of it, for many centuries before. It was convenient for the military cliques that controlled the new, “modernised” government to promote archaic and indeed misrepresented versions of the (partly imagined) warrior code to engage the populace in general in their martial, expansionist agenda, something that was, clearly, not at all popular with the people in general in the late-19th century. In this, propagandistic sense, the re-imagined samurai code was highly influential in the Japan of the 1930s and 1940s – but it bore as much connection with the realities of the samurai past as did Wagner’s “Ring” Cycle with the realities of early medieval Europe; perhaps even less. Best regards, JR.
Excellent report and assessment.
Too many get caught up in glorifying and lionizing the outright thuggery and oppressive practises associated with Samurai and Bushido.
They provided a lot of misery to the general populace in maintaining their society.
I totally agree with JR. A good example of the will of destroy Samurai heritage is the film “The Last Samurai”. The new Japanase industrial society is build on middle-class, class formed by business men. This new class wiped out Samurai class, because Samurai are tied to an anacronistic social system, based upon nobles landowner.
The calling for Bushido of WWII is totally false. For sure Samurai from western point of view act as wildlings: from Bushido point of view kill an innocent paesant to test if Katana works well is a normal act. So the atrocity committed by Japanese for a Samurai are not crimes, in part at least. But this is the only point of contact between Samurai and WWII Japanese soldier, for example think about the use of torture. For Bushido point of view to be subjected to torture is a severe dishonour and Samurai must do seppuku, also named hara-kiri by western culture, to prevent the possibility to be tortured. So the same officials that considered themselves as “Samurai” so followers the Bushido are the first ones that don’t follow it, because they let the use of torture.
To answer to the topic, the Katana is a destructive device. The superiority of Katana to western and chinese sword is something that is amazing. Use of Katana leads to a develop of only light armour while in Western culture the personal armor tend to became heavier and heavier. The Katana are so flexible and at the same time so sharp edged that can pierce through heavy armor “easily”, so the Samurai with heavy armor is vulnerable quite as the Samurai with light armor but it is slower. So the Katana in close combat is a destructive device, because it is more long than bayonet and cut better. Anyway in trench warfare, where the spaces are cramped, a Katana may be too much long and bayonet be more useful.
Getting back to the subject of the katana itself, it was certainly a destructive device, and had particular advantages over other types of sword. It was, primarily, an infantry sword, but not unsuitable for cavalry use. Its particular virtues were in chopping and – very importantly – in slashing/slicing. By comparison, the Western medieval sword was as much a crushing as a cutting weapon. This, to some extent, explains the increasing weight of Western armour as swords increased in length and weight – but I am not sure that heavy armour would not have been useful against the katana. I think the persistence of infantry tactics in Japan (they arrived late in medieval Europe) resulted in a different pattern of development in armour, in which heavy metal shells never attained a prominent part because of the consequences for mobility.
One particular contrast of interest is that between the katana and the Mongol sabre. The latter was a large, single-edged curved weapon, weighted at the point. This design evolved from the use of the weapon as a cavalry weapon in a particular context; horse archers were the principal means by which the Mongols reduced their opponents, and swords were used in the main to chop down broken and retreating enemy infantry with a downward, “polo player” swing. This characteristic proved unfortunate for the Mongols in their two attempted invasions of Japan. Mongol swords were definitely inferior to the katana when it came to fighting on the level; the heavy-headed Mongol sabre was clumsy and difficult to use as an infantry weapon, leaving its users vulnerable to katana users in infantry fighting and in the context of ship-board raids. Certainly, the katana was no toy. However, faced with modern rifles and machine-guns, it is not, perhaps, the weapon one would prefer to have in one’s hand in an attack. Best regards, JR.
Ummm…
- Japanese armour was roughly the same in weight as western armour of the same period. Indeed, some Samurai actually wore imported European plate armour into battle.
- Sharpness hasn’t got a great deal to do with going through armour. In any case, the steel in Japanese and European swords was pretty similar (the Damascus steel used in the best European swords was almost certainly superior to the best the Japanese could do) as were the manufacturing techniques.
See http://www.thearma.org/essays/knightvs.htm for a very good essay on the subject.
pdf27 - Thanks for the link to the ARMA website – fascinating. Mainstream history, for a long time, tended to overlook the more specific, technical aspects of military history. It is good to see such a positive project engaged in the recent and ongoing revival of military historical studies. The importance of military technique and technology in arriving at historical understanding is still often underestimated or misunderstood. Having been trained in Medieval English legal history, I should know.
As to the particular article linked – again, fascinating. I would suggest that, while the author does acknowledge the difficulty arising from the relative dynamism of European (as compared to Japanese) military technique over time, he does fall into a bit of a trap in generalisation as to what being a “knight” involved; it really was very different in the 15th century as compared to the 11th. Also, the sociological assumptions that seem to inform the article are (despite the author’s best efforts) still influenced to an extent by the somewhat romantic view of “chivalry” and all that. Revisionism is a vital part of the historical sciences, certainly. But it would be a mistake to forget that, in reality, an 11th century “knight” was, usually, an illiterate but highly trained barbarian heavy on a large, mean horse; or that his 15th century equivalent was often not very different, just with better armour and a bigger sword. Also, it is certainly true that 15th century swordsmanship cannot simply be dismissed as a simple matter of chop crush and batter. That having been said, it does appear, as far as we can determine, that 11th century swordsmanship was a bit like that, and this influenced the development of arms and armour for centuries afterward.
Anyway, most interesting topic. Thanks again, JR.
Those essays are a bit of a missed opportunity - he goes out of his way to avoid coming to a conclusion. The information in them is fascinating though, and throws up several things that don’t normally get thought about.
Not to change the topic, but why do you say such a thing that it was such an “awful way to die”? Seems to me it’s probably pretty quick. A quick slice and off comes the head. With the brain severed from the body so quickly there probably was no time to feel any pain. Those Japanese officers were probably pretty good in weilding their blades.
As for an awful death, I’d say the Chinese “death of a thousand cuts” would be pretty bad. From what I’ve read it took awhile and the person was given herbs to heighten the pain. If I had a choice, I’d go for the head lopping.
Friend of mine, a Marine with a lot of Pacific time has a sword and Nambu from a deceased young officer who got closest to him in a night assault.
He had a Nambu in his hand and the sword was sheathed. There is a bullet hole through the sheath and a big matching chip in the blade.
The guy had enough sense to bring a gun to a gunfight.
I doubt most sword wounds were clean head cuts. More like big bloody slashes with spilled guts.