Subject:
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Re: Making Pikes
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.castle
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Date:
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Thu, 31 Aug 2000 08:36:54 GMT
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Viewed:
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3506 times
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In lugnet.castle, John Robert-Blaze Kanehl writes:
> In lugnet.castle, Eric Joslin writes:
> > In lugnet.castle, John Robert-Blaze Kanehl writes:
> > As an aside, Naginata are often disparaginly referred to as a
> > "woman's weapon", because apparently they were often used by
> > unskilled warriors, like wives, who were left behind to defend
> > the homes and land. At least, that's what I've heard.
>
> Funny...my teacher in college made a similar remark...He
> uttered a Japanese word that was roughly translated
> "peasant weapon". Similar idea, he described these weapons
> as being distributed to old men or injured as a means of
> defense. Essentially, these weapons gave the weilders a
> small chance of dismounting a horse riding assailant while
> maintaining a distance farther than a sword stroke (like
> any polearm)
As far I understood from my studies, the military history of medieval Japan is
basically divided into two sections, divided by the development of the
shogunate. The shoguns began to encourage sword-worship and a harsh division
between the samurai class and the rest of society, as a means of maintaining
the status quo.
In the period prior to this, there were plenty of women samurai, and samurai
training included the six standard martial arts: naginata, swordsmanship,
archery, unarmed striking, unarmed grappling, and horsemanship. It's common
in hero-literature of this period for a samurai to begin a battle by killing
some large number of enemies by archery until the arrows run out, then to kill
some large number of enemies with a naginata until the shaft breaks, and then
to draw his (or her) swords and kill a bunch more guys before the story can
proceed.
After the shoguns' stratification of society, women were strictly second-class
citizens, only samurai were allowed to carry swords and longbows, and naginata
were no longer considered noble weapons. The naginata were given to peasant
foot soldiers, and they continued to be a characteristic weapon of the warrior-
monks. Eventually the value of foot-soldiers got a big boost when the
arquebus was deemed unworthy of samurai; Nobunaga used them to great advantage
and became the first warlord to unify Japan. The End.
- Mike Rayhawk.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Making Pikes
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| (...) I seem to recall hearing of one diminutive warlord who greatly favored the use of a short-barrelled arquebus for controlling unruly crowds and was thereafter referred to as the Sawed-Off Shogun. Dave! (24 years ago, 31-Aug-00, to lugnet.castle, lugnet.off-topic.pun)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Making Pikes
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| (...) shurikens...I could (...) those little pointy metal (...) painted on the torsos (...) That's right...throwing stars...I was pretty good with those...I couold almost play cricket or 301 with them) I stand corrected = ) (I just couldn't think of (...) (24 years ago, 30-Aug-00, to lugnet.castle)
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