Group training and the battlefield

[Fred Stakem]

In reading about the koryu of japan I have come upon articles about its history, its relation to modern budo, and technical smidgets. But what I have not been able to find is information on how they were imployed on the battlefield…. to the like of what Hanson has done for greek warfare. I was wondering what is known of structure of the Japanese martial arts on the ancient battlefield and how it has shaped the koryu.
To start with, I will pleade ignorance to the actual workings of the koryu because the depth of my knowledge is limited to second hand sources…such as Draeger, the Skoss compilations, and various historical treaties. I think I have a certain grasp of what makes a koryu a koryu, but no indepth training to cement the theoretical ideas. I have read extensively on the asian martial arts and have even had the chance to practice a few, but I don’t feel as though much has been published to the questions I will pose.
How much does of the classical western military relate to the koryu? When I think of the western approach to war, the first group that of course comes to mind are the greeks. And what do you imagine when you think of the greeks. A shiney bronze phalanx with overlapped shields locked together for mutual protection. Often group together by tribe or strong fraternal bond because the very nature of the warfare demanded it. If the line fell then the army was doomed. The Spartans trained together, ate together and slept together(in many different ways).
Did the koryu ever train in this way? In text, I have read of Nobunaga’s use of a musket line being a monumental step in the nature of Japanese warfare, but what of the koryu? The little I know of the koryu is of drills done in pairs. Were formations ever taught, and if so did the role of the koryu change from active paticipant to the western equivalent of the officer class in later European history. If so this would entail a different set of skills more akin to Clausewitz than Conan.
In modern western warfare there is still a vestige of the past in close order drill. When a student enrolls in boot camp or military school, the first thing that is taught it how to line up, form platoons, and march in step. Is there any koryu equivalent to this?I know with my experience in budo the practitioners tend to line up in order of rank. Is this a western methodology or do the koryu assemble themselves accordingly? I find it interesting that some people now associate lack of a belt system the more classical military way and the belt system more sporting. When traditionally in the west it would be the opposite.
I have read in the books about koryu of other skills such as signaling, espionage, and musketry. But it seems to me more more emphasis has been placed in the literature on swordsmanship and weapons play than army organization. This seems to me more akin to chivalry and knights dueling than to practical considerations of how to win wars. Not that those skills are not needed, but I would argue that a skilled technical samurai is no match against a few men trained in basic group warefare tactics. Did the training methods of the samurai change to reflect a less battlefield oriented martial art?
I know the argument am going to hear. A Japanese warrior was more a man at arms in the medevil European sense than a common foot soldier. That could be true, but a battle is won by the foot soldier, not the man at arms. I am making this minute distinction not to belittle the technical skills of the koryu, but to question the assumption sometimes expressed that the koryu is the battlefield martial art while others are not. A hundred men skilled in a simple kendo stroke is more important that a single well trained practitioner of kenjustu.
In the budo training in pairs is an integral part of training. Is this emphasis carried over into the koryu? This I found very interesting compare to the western method. In fact I remember reading some of greek scholars speaking out against individual pursuits such as western boxing and wrestling since they have no benefit on the battlefield. As I recall, the Spartans were known not to be involved in such pursuits, but instead played team sports. This has even been used in modern times where I have read of marines emphasizing the team work developed by playing western sports. Very ironic that sports have become a negative word in the martial arts world, but the very team nature of western sport has been a sought after quality in modern combat circles. Of course it is also very ironic that the individuallity is valued so much in the west, but in our sports we tend to think in teams. In the east the confucian paternalism tends to favor an individual that conforms to society, where as the traditional martial sports focus on individuals.


Fred Stakem

[wmuromoto]

Geez, Fred, you sure know how to ask a hard question.

There are a couple books in English that discuss premodern Japanese warfare, although not as well or as philosophically as some books on Greek hoplite theory and warfare. I'm at work so the book isn't in front of me, but I believe a book by Ferris (? sp?) gives a general historical overview of how warfare changed from the earliest dates recorded of Japanese warmaking to the 1600s. There are a couple "general readership" books, albeit in Japanese, that describes battlefield tactics and concepts as practiced by the bushi, from big shiny full color books to stuff by Sasama Yoshihiko, etc.

Basically--and I'm sure others (Prof. Goldsbury?) will have more detailed info for your--I think we have to understand that warfare in Japan from circa 700 ACE to the 1600s due to technical, historical and strategic differences. From the 700s, Chinese strategic texts were imported and studied, although upon reading some of the records of battles, I am led to think that Chinese theory were utilized but a distinctively Japanese style of strategic fighting (or lack thereof) ensued. Many of the koryu are based on different levels of combat by different combatants, from ashigaru to mounted warriors with tachi, and also on different historical contexts, as well as different technological innovations and reactions to them, hence you see the differences in ryu to ryu.

To compare the relative strengths of strategy between Japanese and Western classical warfare is really too great a topic for one reply due to the long history of both Western and Japanese warfare before the gun, or more to the point, before the advent of Western strategic theory influencing Japanese warfare to a great degree. Do we talk about the Heian period expeditions to the Tohoku, or the Gempei Wars, the Mongol invasions, the Muromachi period, Sengoku, Azuchi Momoyama? Each era had a different kind of warfare, different players, different levels of strategy, different technologies, different aims, different enemy composition, different needs in terms of training soldiery to move en masse.

In the earlier eras, mounted bushi conducted most of the wars, accompanied by their footsoldiers. These battles were fluid and fast moving. But as the ashigaru (footsoldiers) became more involved in decisive combat, the need to train lower class samurai and even part-time peasantry finally necessitated some kind of training, not just in single combat but in massed maneuvering. By the time of Sengoku, the use of spears and guns were well established in most daimyo armies, because it did take less time, money and effort to train an ashigaru or conscript to use a spear or a rifle than to train a warrior to use a sword and horse.

If you're talking about the 1600s, yes, it does in a way resemble hoplitic combat...in that large masses of ashigaru were put into formations that attacked each other with spears, usually after volleys of arrows and/or rifle shot. You might want to try to find some people who do something like the Owari Kan-ryu spear to see how the yari was adapted over the years for that kind of combat.

I'm sure others can comment more completely on your specific questions, so I'll sign off now. I would comment though, that as is apparent in a reading of Western warfare, excellent generalship was more the exception than the rule, if you ask me. Strategic geniuses in Japan looked really good because their opponents were pretty awful. Even up to and including WWII, my opinion of the Japanese military is that they had a couple brilliant generals, and a whole bunch of dopes who got where they got by kissing butt. But isn't that the case in a lot of armies?

Wayne Muromoto

[ben johanson]

Fred wrote:

"I have read in the books about koryu of other skills such as signaling, espionage, and musketry. But it seems to me more more emphasis has been placed in the literature on swordsmanship and weapons play than army organization. This seems to me more akin to chivalry and knights dueling than to practical considerations of how to win wars. Not that those skills are not needed, but I would argue that a skilled technical samurai is no match against a few men trained in basic group warfare tactics. Did the training methods of the samurai change to reflect a less battlefield oriented martial art?"

I will offer my understanding of the situation that prevailed during the Sengoku period. I think the preponderance of individual-centered combat arts found in koryu over tactics of battlefield organization is due to the fact that almost all koryu, virtually without exception, were founded by one or maybe a couple of individuals who were without variation members of the samurai class. These samurai were of course more concerned with the arts of swordsmanship and spear fighting because they were the arts most likely to be employed by them, whether on or off the battlefield. The men that founded the various koryu were not generally of the daimyo class (although there were exceptions) and therefore were less concerned with organization than with training to perfect their skills at one-on-one combat. Koryu founders such as Tsukahara Bokuden and Kamiizumi Hidetsuna functioned either as captains who commanded lower-ranking footsoldiers and served under the command of other higher-ranking generals or simply as members of a single battlefield unit. In other words, they were more likely to follow the orders and battle plans of other commanders rather than develope them on their own. Thus, they were more inclined to found schools of individual combat techniques rather than of strategy and/or battlefield organization. Although I do believe that there were schools of strategy founded during the sixteenth century, but I am not sure by whom they were developed or how representative of the general trend of koryu development they were (in fact, I don't think they are representative. They were probably more of a seperate entity entirely from the koryu).

Another contributing factor here may be the long-standing tradition of individualism on the battlefield that existed amongst the samurai since their inception in the 9th-10th centuries. Although I do not believe in the received notion that Japanese battles in the Heian period and beyond consisted simply of many individual combats (for I think the object of war was more far-reaching and general than this view suggests) there was undoubtedly a strong spirit of individualism in samurai warfare from the beginning. This, too, may have contributed to the tendancy of samurai of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to found koryu of individual-based combat techniques.

There are clearly many other determinants at work here which contributed to the koryu developing as they did, but I will not go into them all now (for instance, the fact that individual-based schools of archery existed well before those of the sword and spear which clearly had roots in the warfare of the Heian period and the near absence of comprehensive battlefield strategy in that era). But it is important to realize that there was in fact extensive "group training" conducted during the Sengoku period; it just generally did not include the samurai and thus such drills were excluded from the koryu founded by them. I believe it is documented that many daimyo drilled ashigaru spearmen in group spear tactics and of course we know of Oda Nobunaga's use of organized volley musket fire at Nagashino.

[Fred Stakem]

Thanks for the help Mr Muromoto.I will check for a book by Ferris? Is it more an academic book...less likely to be found at borders or other bookstores? If anyone else knows a book that fitts into the question of japanese strategy I would be interested to hear about it. The problem I see is that the more academic work I have seen is vague as to how strategy relates to the techniques that are preserved in the koryu. And the books on koryu
don't seem to address the training of large groups. This is true of greek warefare too, but people such as Hanson and has tried to reconstuct
what an actual battle must have been like. Of course most of that is guesses and opinions.

Mr Muromoto said:
"To compare the relative strengths of strategy between Japanese and Western classical warfare is really too great a
topic for one reply due to the long history of both Western and Japanese warfare before the gun, or more to the
point, before the advent of Western strategic theory influencing Japanese warfare to a great degree."

Sorry, I didn't really specify my question well. What I was trying to get at is that formations were important in greek warfare and more modern western warfare. Even after the gun was invented, western battles were fought in formation.( I am thinking it must have been scary as hell marching within paces of the enemy line to exchange fire in the open.) Even during WWI Keagan tells of units,not in step as the Napoleanic days, attacking in mass formations(his pictures in the the book Face of Battle? are very interesting). Western warefare is so ingrained with idea of group warfare, that the first thing they do in a military school or boot camp is to teach the soldiers to march. Marching in step is completely irrelavent for modern warfare, but is a vestige of the past. My question, is what has happened in the
koryu, in little that I have read, that seems to make individual combat paramont. In a sense, I am not concerned with a specific time period, but what has happened to make modern koryu what it is. I understand the great variety of koryu, but do any of the practioners think certain styles are more pratical or battlefield oriented. In a similiar question, i am wondering if any of the koryu taught today have special skills developed for group warfare....such as how to go from a line to a square in case of a calvary charge.

Mr. Muromoto said:
"If you're talking about the 1600s, yes, it does in a way resemble hoplitic combat...in that large masses of ashigaru
were put into formations that attacked each other with spears, usually after volleys of arrows and/or rifle shot. You
might want to try to find some people who do something like the Owari Kan-ryu spear to see how the yari was
adapted over the years for that kind of combat."

Sounds interesting. I do not practice the koryu(and regretfully don't have the time for it) but am always interested in articles or lectures on the subject. I understand the old fashion nature of the koryu, but are there ever any lectures or demonstations of this stateside?

I think Mr Johanson answered it when he said:
"I will offer my understanding of the situation that prevailed during the Sengoku period. I think the preponderance of
individual-centered combat arts found in koryu over tactics of battlefield organization is due to the fact that almost
all koryu, virtually without exception, were founded by one or maybe a couple of individuals who were without
variation members of the samurai class. These samurai were of course more concerned with the arts of
swordsmanship and spear fighting because they were the arts most likely to be employed by them,"

I can sort of agree with this, but not fully. Why?
Because I think if that was so, then wouldn't the samurai be a sort of junior officer class that had to carry out orders.(like a leuitenant in the modern army) If so there would still be an emphasis in how to organize men. Not on the army level, but on the platoon or company level. Keeping an army tightly woven together is easier said than done. Does anyone know of koryu practicing these skills?


One thought coming to mind is that the great amount of turning in the chinese martial arts of bagau would not be permisible in a tight formation. With large formations what sort of techniques would be better to perform, and do the practitioners ever sift through the koryu they practice to find later non-battlefield additions?

I have seen many experts of bjj beat people without similiar training. I don't think it is a bad martial art, but with the emphasis of going to the ground, it would be disasterous on an old battlefield. On the battlefield of greece the person on the ground would likely be trampled in the pushing of armies.
But in personal combat bjj adapts make formible opponents. If there is such a thing as a better school of koryu, what would be its defining characteristics and techniques taking into account group warfare instead of individual combat.



Fred Stakem

[wmuromoto]

Fred,

Whew! I can't reply with any authority on many of your questions, but would hope that others (Meik Skoss, Prof. Goldsbury, Prof. Karl Friday etc.) might help you further. I too enjoyed Keegan's essays on the history of warfare.

Without going back to my library at home, I can say that daimyo employed gunshi, or masters of strategy, to map out battle plans, strategies, battle formations and fortifications. Gunshi, therefore, were higher ranking warriors, I guess you would call them staff members in the field HQs, so to speak, of the leader. Arranging the samurai into battle formations fell to the next rank of leaders, I guess we'd call them captains and lieutanants, who were also hereditarily rather high up on the brown-nosing scale. They often commanded atop horses, even if they led footsoldiers, as due to their rank. Squad leaders were drawn from lower-ranked samurai, who controlled the squads of ashigaru in tight battle formations. You had different groups: gunnery, archers, spearsmen, horsemen--the mobile shock troop cavalry--supplies, field HQ, etc. Formations, as I can recall from some books, were based originally on Chinese models and had fanciful names such as uroko gaeshi ("returning scales"), and so on.

By the time of the Sengoku Period, as one example of large scale fighting, black powder rifles were in use. But as commentators of the Civil War and other wars in which such guns were used will tell you, after a couple of volleys, it gets pretty darned smoky and hard to aim. In addition, the barrel, if I understand it correctly, can overheat. From all accounts, therefore after an exchange of volleys using arrows and rifle shot, formations would then close in and strike at each other in various setups. Often, there would be an initial charge of horsemen to break a barrier or formation down, in coordination with a set formation of spearsmen. I watch a lot of historical dramas on Hawaii TV and whenever they show a recreation of such battles, it seems like they start of in a certain set formation, then when the two sides make contact, all hell breaks loose, and shortly, the formations of massed spearsmen and horsemen often break apart into chaotic skirmishes. It's hard to generalize, though, because different battles (formation against formation, formation against castle, formation against field fortification, sea battles, river battles, etc.) called for different methods of fighting, including siege as well as open combat.

Many of the koryu bugei were developed by middle-level or upper samurai who primarily used swords, both as a mark of their station and as their main weapon, and such composite bugei will then include secondarily other weaponry, such as the spear, naginata, etc. In other words, the emphasis was on that class of samurai learning what they needed to know given the kind of weaponry and combative applications they would probably prefer to use in battle. "Ashigaru bugei" is a term given to bugei that appear to be more for the footsoldiers, and perhaps their techniques are more direct, not as influenced by upper class etiquette or sensibilities. If you wanted to find schools of heiho (hyoho), you'd have to find more upper class samurai bugei...I believe the Katori Shinto-ryu still has remnants of hyoho in its curriculum, as does the Takeuchi-ryu, my own school. There once also existed schools primarily devoted to heiho, such as the Takeda-ryu, the Kusunoki-ryu, the Sanada-ryu, and so on. But as you probably surmise, during the combative era of the Sengoku, what you studied often boiled down to what level or class of samurai you belonged to. If you were a higly ranked samurai who would by heredity and station be a general, it was in your best interest to study strategy first, swordsmanship second. If you were in the middle, you studied a little bit of both...Of course if you were an ashigaru and wanted a promotion, you'd try to apply yourself to studying such methods as well as simply learning how to march in formation and thrust a spear.

I'm not sure how well the ashigaru trained to be in formation. They marched in retinue and formations but I don't know if there's a tradition of lock-step marching as in the West. Apparently, however, the formations of spearsmen were similar to hoplitic combat in that the samurai squad leaders tried to establish a fearsome line of spears in the front, spearsman next to spearsman, to smash through enemy formations. The clash of spear formations against spear formations must have been pretty frightening. And as you surmised, you didn't really want to be on the ground, else you'd get trampled by feet and hooves. But there was combative grappling methods, mainly to hold a guy down long enough so you could stab him and/or take his head. In our ryu, these are the kogusoku methods. Then you got the heck up and made sure no one was going for you from all sides.

Wayne

[wmuromoto]

Fred,

Whew! I can't reply with any authority on many of your questions, but would hope that others (Meik Skoss, Prof. Goldsbury, Prof. Karl Friday etc.) might help you further. I too enjoyed Keegan's essays on the history of warfare.

Without going back to my library at home, I can say that daimyo employed gunshi, or masters of strategy, to map out battle plans, strategies, battle formations and fortifications. Gunshi, therefore, were higher ranking warriors, I guess you would call them staff members in the field HQs, so to speak, of the leader. Arranging the samurai into battle formations fell to the next rank of leaders, I guess we'd call them captains and lieutanants, who were also hereditarily rather high up on the brown-nosing scale. They often commanded atop horses, even if they led footsoldiers, as due to their rank. Squad leaders were drawn from lower-ranked samurai, who controlled the squads of ashigaru in tight battle formations. You had different groups: gunnery, archers, spearsmen, horsemen--the mobile shock troop cavalry--supplies, field HQ, etc. Formations, as I can recall from some books, were based originally on Chinese models and had fanciful names such as uroko gaeshi ("returning scales"), and so on.

By the time of the Sengoku Period, as one example of large scale fighting, black powder rifles were in use. But as commentators of the Civil War and other wars in which such guns were used will tell you, after a couple of volleys, it gets pretty darned smoky and hard to aim. In addition, the barrel, if I understand it correctly, can overheat. From all accounts, therefore after an exchange of volleys using arrows and rifle shot, formations would then close in and strike at each other in various setups. Often, there would be an initial charge of horsemen to break a barrier or formation down, in coordination with a set formation of spearsmen. I watch a lot of historical dramas on Hawaii TV and whenever they show a recreation of such battles, it seems like they start of in a certain set formation, then when the two sides make contact, all hell breaks loose, and shortly, the formations of massed spearsmen and horsemen often break apart into chaotic skirmishes. It's hard to generalize, though, because different battles (formation against formation, formation against castle, formation against field fortification, sea battles, river battles, etc.) called for different methods of fighting, including siege as well as open combat.

Many of the koryu bugei were developed by middle-level or upper samurai who primarily used swords, both as a mark of their station and as their main weapon, and such composite bugei will then include secondarily other weaponry, such as the spear, naginata, etc. In other words, the emphasis was on that class of samurai learning what they needed to know given the kind of weaponry and combative applications they would probably prefer to use in battle. "Ashigaru bugei" is a term given to bugei that appear to be more for the footsoldiers, and perhaps their techniques are more direct, not as influenced by upper class etiquette or sensibilities. If you wanted to find schools of heiho (hyoho), you'd have to find more upper class samurai bugei...I believe the Katori Shinto-ryu still has remnants of hyoho in its curriculum, as does the Takeuchi-ryu, my own school. There once also existed schools primarily devoted to heiho, such as the Takeda-ryu, the Kusunoki-ryu, the Sanada-ryu, and so on. But as you probably surmise, during the combative era of the Sengoku, what you studied often boiled down to what level or class of samurai you belonged to. If you were a higly ranked samurai who would by heredity and station be a general, it was in your best interest to study strategy first, swordsmanship second. If you were in the middle, you studied a little bit of both...Of course if you were an ashigaru and wanted a promotion, you'd try to apply yourself to studying such methods as well as simply learning how to march in formation and thrust a spear.

I'm not sure how well the ashigaru trained to be in formation. They marched in retinue and formations but I don't know if there's a tradition of lock-step marching as in the West. Apparently, however, the formations of spearsmen were similar to hoplitic combat in that the samurai squad leaders tried to establish a fearsome line of spears in the front, spearsman next to spearsman, to smash through enemy formations. The clash of spear formations against spear formations must have been pretty frightening. And as you surmised, you didn't really want to be on the ground, else you'd get trampled by feet and hooves. But there was combative grappling methods, mainly to hold a guy down long enough so you could stab him and/or take his head. In our ryu, these are the kogusoku methods. Then you got the heck up and made sure no one was going for you from all sides.

Wayne

[Earl Hartman]

Haven't time to read through all of the replies, but I will tell you what little I know.

There still exists in Kyushu, in the town of Izumi in Miyazaki Prefecture, the Satsuma Heki Ryu, which maintains the practice of battlefield kyujutsu as pracitced by the Shimazu han. These archers often give demonstrations at various kyudo events.

I was privileged to be given a private demonstration and talk with members of the ryu. The standard procedure is called "yari waki no shaho" (archery at the side of the spears) and consists of two distinct elements:

1. sashiya (long distance shooting)
2. koshiya (close distsance shooting)

In the sashiya, a line of archers lays down a long-distance volley which is designed to keep the enemy archers behind their shields and so to allow your own spearmen to advance under cover of the barrage and engage the enemy without getting shot by the enemy's archers.

Once the distance between opposing forces has decreased to under 50 yards or so, the archers employ the "koshiya" technique where alternating lines of archers advance on the enemy while firing in turn so as to keep up an uninterrupted barrage of arrows. As the first line fires, the second line advances with their arrows nocked, and fires while the second line nocks their arrows in preparation to fire. Thus, the archers advance on the enemy while keeping up an uninterrupted stream of arrows. When the battle is joined, the archers then use the tips of their bows, which were fitted with blades, as spears. After that, the archers presumably draw their swords and engage the enemy at close quarters.

The Satsuma Heki Ryu is distinct from other styles of battlefield archery in that 1) all ranks of warriors, from the highest to the lowest, were required to train in this method whereas in other fiefdoms only the ashigaru archers were required to train in this way, and 2) only the Stasuma Heki Ryu used the alternating-volley method, whereas other schools simply shot their arrows at random. I was told that this regulated, alternating volley method was adapted from French musket tactics about 200 years ago.

[Karl Friday]

Originally posted by Fred Stakem
In reading about the koryu of japan I have come upon articles about its history, its relation to modern budo, and technical smidgets. But what I have not been able to find is information on how they were employed on the battlefield…. to the like of what Hanson has done for greek warfare. I was wondering what is known of structure of the Japanese martial arts on the ancient battlefield and how it has shaped the koryu.

Most of the koryu (and other Japanese martial arts, for that matter) around today center on individual combat--the sort suitable for dueling and self-defense. This has less to do with conditions on Japanese battlefields than with conditions in Japanese society during the past 400 years., and particularly conditions during the last 150 years. In a nutshell: during the Tokugawa period and beyond, the emphasis of bugei training shifted to center on self-development, and the dominant areas of interest became martial art, rather than military science.

In addition to the martial arts most familiar to modern audiences, there were (maybe still are, although I don't know off hand of any still active) schools of strategy and tactics. These arts, most often called "gungaku," were around from the sengoku period onward and were required study for samurai of most domains. Most daimyo sponsored domain schools at which these arts were taught. But the value of these arts was heavily discredited by their dismal performance during Saigo Takamori's Satsuma Rebellion (1877), when Saigo's samurai troops were routed by an imperial army composed on peasant conscripts, using modern (European-style) tactics.

There are quite a few very good manuals and such available on various gungaku schools, although I don't know of anything available in translation to anything other than modern Japanese. John Rogers dealt with the topic in fair detail in his 1998 dissertation (from Harvard) "The Development of the Military Profession in Tokugawa Japan."

In any case, the forms and practices of bugei ryuha today, with the possible exception of schools of gunnery, don't reflect the nature of warfare, for any period of Japanese history. The ideal of one-on-one combat they seem to point to was never a significant part of Japanese warfare--particularly not during the later medieval period, when bugei ryuha were coalescing.

This is an enormous subject--too big to get into here--but there's a growing body of literature on the topic. Tom Conlan has a new book on the Mongol Wars (In Little Need of Divine Intervention [Cornell, 2001] and one forthcoming on 14th century warfare, as well as a few articles on the topic. I've done a couple of articles on various aspects of 10th-14th century warfare (including a few chapters for anthologies that are in press or otherwise in the works at the moment), and am now about halfway through a manuscript for Routledge's Warfare & History series, on early medieval warfare in Japan (hopefully the book will be out in a couple of years). In most of these, I do quite a bit of comparison with Western medieval ideas and technology. Paul Varley is also doing a book--for the same series--on sengoku era warfare, and has a couple of chapters on this topic in anthologies here and there--one edited by Jeremy Black, but I can't recall the title offhand.

[ben johanson]

Karl Friday wrote:
"The ideal of one-on-one combat they seem to point to was never a significant part of Japanese warfare--particularly not during the later medieval period, when bugei ryuha were coalescing."

Then why, Dr. Friday, were the many ryuha begun in the first place? Why did the samurai of the Sengoku period spend so much time practicing and developing techniques for the sword and spear? Why did they embark on musha shugyo and engage in one-on-one dueling as a means of improving their combative skills for the battlefield if one-on-one combat was never a significant part of Japanese warfare?

These are questions that have bothered me since I first started studying Japanese history. It just doesn't add up. During the Sengoku period, the samurai were the political and military leaders of Japan who clearly prided themselves on their martial prowess and accomplishments on the battlefield and yet they seem to have left most of the fighting in battle up to masses of low-class ashigaru. The latter were the first into battle and it would seem that the bows, and later the guns, used by them accounted for a significant majority of the casualties on Sengoku battlefields.

What purpose exactly did the samurai who were not officers serve in battle? It seems to me that their presence was almost unnecessary if the skills with the sword and spear they trained so hard to perfect were scarcely even employed on the battlefild.

[Karl Friday]

Originally posted by ben johanson
Why did the samurai of the Sengoku period spend so much time practicing and developing techniques for the sword and spear? Why did they embark on musha shugyo and engage in one-on-one dueling as a means of improving their combative skills for the battlefield if one-on-one combat was never a significant part of Japanese warfare? . . .

What purpose exactly did the samurai who were not officers serve in battle? It seems to me that their presence was almost unnecessary if the skills with the sword and spear they trained so hard to perfect were scarcely even employed on the battlefild.

By the sengoku period, the upper ranks of the bushi order--the group most people associate with the term "samurai"--were officers whose primary task was directing the fighting. The decisive part of most battles was the exchange of missile weapons fire--bows until the late 1500s and then guns and bows. Hand-to-hand combat occurred mainly after the battle had been decided--when one side had broken and begun to run, and the other side moved in to mop up.

But the fact that they were officers, rather than "grunts," didn't make samurai unnecessary, nor did it make their skills or training with sword and spear superfluous or pointless.

For one thing, officers have to be able to defend themselves, especially when their jobs involve leading charges into retreating enemies. During the late medieval period samurai may not have been the main striking force of armies, but they were still in the thick of things in most battles.

For another, in Japan, as in many premodern military cultures, personal military skills were seen as a microcosm of group-oriented ones. Directing a squad or a company was believed to be essentially just a larger-scale application of the same principles involved in fighting a single opponent. So study of kenjutsu and sojutsu was also a route to mastery of strategy and tactics.

And then too, keep in mind that the level of sophistication, organization and intricacy of training that we now associate with classical Japanese martial art was largely a development of the Tokugawa period. Sengoku military training was more informal and more ad hoc.

It was, on the other hand, also not all strictly about military efficacy or results on the battlefield. The kernels of the idea of bugei as self-development--certainly the ideal of striving for perfection in a chosen discipline--were already around by the 1500s. Most musha-shugyo and the like was probably more about this aspect of martial art than it was about perfecting skills for practical application in battle.

In other words: samurai did have need for skills with sword and spear; they saw important benefits to acquiring and developing such skills above and beyond the direct application of them to battle; and the overwhelming majority weren't spending as much time and effort polishing their fencing technique as we tend to imagine today.

[ben johanson]

Karl Friday wrote:
"By the sengoku period, the upper ranks of the bushi order--the group most people associate with the term "samurai"--were officers whose primary task was directing the fighting. The decisive part of most battles was the exchange of missile weapons fire--bows until the late 1500s and then guns and bows. Hand-to-hand combat occurred mainly after the battle had been decided--when one side had broken and begun to run, and the other side moved in to mop up."

Thank you Dr. Friday for taking the time to answer my questions, but I'm afraid I have more. Your above quote conflicts with other things I have read. I was under the impression that there were samurai on the battlefield who were not officers, but merely members of an individual military unit. These soldiers, members of the samurai class, fought either mountedor on foot.

I can site a few sources for this:

In G. Cameron Hurst's Armed Martial arts of Japan, he states on page 39 that the "lower-ranking warriors and ashigaru" who fought "on foot and (wore) lightweight armor" were the ones who had to master the use of sword and spear because they were the ones most likely to employ such skills in battle. He goes on to say that the great swordsmen of the day who started the various ryuha were among the lower-ranking warrior numbers.

Steven Turnbull, in his Samurai Warfare and The Samurai Sourcebook, mentions units of foot samurai many times and almost all of the painted skrolls and woodblock prints in his books depicting various Sengoku period battles show such corps of samurai fighting on foot or on horseback in the manner of regular soldiers.

I could even site Akira Kurosawa's movie "Ran," which shows several samurai armies that have mounted and foot samurai units, the members of which are clearly not officers, but are merely "grunts." I know it is only a movie, but I am sure Kurosawa and his production team strove to achieve as much historical accuracy as possible.

There are others, but I do not feel like going through all of my books right now and these should suffice to demonstrate where I received the impression that there existed a non-officer class of samurai during the sixteenth century.

So the questions are, 1) do you disagree with all of these sources that there was such a thing as a non-officer samurai in sixteenth-century Japan; and 2) if these sources are mistaken, then are there any reliable books in English that deal with the make-up of samurai armies and the functions of the different parts of said armies?

I thank you in advance Dr Friday and hope very much that you will take the time once again to answer my queries and ease my confused mind!

[Brently Keen]

Ben Johanson wrote:

"Why did they embark on musha shugyo and engage in one-on-one dueling as a means of improving their combative skills for the battlefield if one-on-one combat was never a significant part of Japanese warfare?"

I that think that although sengoku era battles may have been tactically, and practically decided primarily by lower-ranking ashigaru with bows (and spears), and later even non-samurai participants wielding muskets and such, I think the point is that higher ranking bushi directed the initial movements of these troops using strategy learned from the study of sword and spearmanship.

Karl Friday wrote: "The ideal of one-on-one combat they seem to point to was never a significant part of Japanese warfare--particularly not during the later medieval period, when bugei ryuha were coalescing."

Prof Friday, wouldn't it be more correct to say that although one-on-one combat was not a decisive factor in Japanese warfare, it was still a significant part for those samurai who participated in those battles?

I guess I'm thinking that one-on-one combat skills WERE still a significant part of Japanese warfare (even if not decisive). As you also pointed out, the higher-ranked samurai still had to charge into the melee along with their troops and clean up.

As professional warriors weren't they still expected to distinguish themselves in battle and make a name for themselves? Assuming they survived the intitial, decisive exchanges of projectile weapons, didn't their professional livelihood (as well as their personal survival) depend on their close quarter skills during the succeeding charges and retreats?

The experience gained in those battles and training in whatever ryuha they did would naturally form the basis of how they would direct their troops in later battles and campaigns would it not?

Karl Friday wrote:

"For another, in Japan, as in many premodern military cultures, personal military skills were seen as a microcosm of group-oriented ones. Directing a squad or a company was believed to be essentially just a larger-scale application of the same principles involved in fighting a single opponent. So study of kenjutsu and sojutsu was also a route to mastery of strategy and tactics."

I think this answer nails it. Many schools of swordsmanship were also thought of as hyoho/heiho. The principles of strategy and swordsmanship were deemed to be identical. Examples of this are found in the writings and even names of many schools such as Hyoho Niten Ichi-ryu (Musashi's school), Yagyu Shinkage-ryu Hyoho, Asayama Ichiden-ryu Heiho, Tatsumi-ryu Hyoho, etc...

My own experience in Daito-ryu also reflects this microcosm idea as well. Daito-ryu is said to originally have been a school of strategy whose principles were the basis of it's jujutsu, aikijujutsu, and weapons tactics. Many of Sokaku Takeda's students were military officers and politicians who were interested in studying Daito-ryu specifically for it's strategy.

We may not study group battlefield tactics anymore per se, but the principles of our techniques allude to it, just as the principles of strategy and group tactics also illustrate many characteristics of Daito-ryu techniques. I can recall a number of times that my sensei actually explained principles of techniques he was teaching in terms of battlefield strategy & tactics, and I often use the same examples (and others I learned implicitly) as well.

I would suspect that this microcosm concept was actually widely accepted, and used by bushi during the sengoku era, but that the number of those who understood it may have declined during more peaceable times along with the shifting emphasis in bujutsu toward spiritual/self-development rather than achieving practical military or political objectives. Arts that emphasize only self-defense techniques or techniques for winning duels may fail to grasp the underlying principles and their wider application.

Throughout history many of the greatest swordsmen and strategists have lamented those that failed to make that distinction. I think this concept is further validated even now, by guys like James Williams and Ken Good who regularly teach the wider application of these sort of principles derived from aikijujutsu and kenjutsu to modern special forces and such.

In addition to the principles of strategy, and techniques taught in the various koryu, I think the whole mindset taught in koryu was invaluable to the bushi who were participating in battles.

It's a known fact that mindset is more important than techniques in combat, and I'm sure that the bushi knew this. The most famous, and most skilled founders and teachers of the koryu arts all certainly knew this, and often it was a mindset, attitude, or set of attributes that they most tried to convey as the "secret essence" of their art or secret(s) of obtaining victory.

I think that originally, the role of one-on-one kata in the koryu was primarily intended to teach the principles and mindset necessary to prevail in combat on the battlefield, more than to teach tactics to merely defeat an opponent. The one-on-one kata was to be a vehicle for achieving skills for the battlefield, a means toward an end (of achieving objectives). I don't believe the founders of the koryu envisioned their kata as ends in themselves, strictly for winning one-on-one encounters or duels. Nor do I think the bushi who trained in them felt they were insignificant. I think they saw their arts pragmatically as vehicles of preparation for both their roles in society and on the battlefield as professional warriors.

I don't think the daimyo would've expected the samurai of their domains to study and train under the most skilled and experienced instructors they could find and/or afford, if the arts and skills those instructors were teaching weren't of significant value to their their bushi on the battlefield, and the security of their domains, not to mention their personal/political ambitions.

These are just my lowly opinions of course, as others have also sometimes said, I reserve the right to change them at a future time if convinced that would be more appropriate. :)

Brently Keen

[Karl Friday]

Originally posted by ben johanson
I was under the impression that there were samurai on the battlefield who were not officers, but merely members of an individual military unit. These soldiers, members of the samurai class, fought either mountedor on foot.

I think your confusion is coming from the word "samurai." This is a broad, and rather ambiguous word, particularly when applied to the warriors of the pre-Tokugawa era. There was no "samurai class" until the Tokugawa regime defined it; before that, a warrior was anyone who chose to be one.

As I said in my earlier post, the group that springs to most people's minds when they hear the word "samurai" were the officer class of medieval armies--the middle and upper ranked warriors. But the term can also be used to refer to much lower-ranked warriors--including most of the ashigaru level fighting men.

I don't see any conflict between anything I've said and what Hurst or Turnbull say--except, possibly, the point about the relative unimportance of hand-to-hand combat in deciding battles, which comes from the most recent work on the topic appearing in Japan, since Hurst and Turnbull's stuff was written.

Kurosawa, on the other hand, needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt--as numerous authorities have pointed out over the years. His battle scenes are colorful and fun, but they are staged with the priority on visual appear--good cinema--not accurate history. Japanese armies didn't look like that (among other things, units didn't wear uniform colored armor), Japanese horses didn't look like that, and cavalry of the sort depicted in Kurosawa movies (such as Kage Musha) never existed in Japan.

[Karl Friday]

Originally posted by Brently Keen
Karl Friday wrote: "The ideal of one-on-one combat they seem to point to was never a significant part of Japanese warfare--particularly not during the later medieval period, when bugei ryuha were coalescing."

... wouldn't it be more correct to say that although one-on-one combat was not a decisive factor in Japanese warfare, it was still a significant part for those samurai who participated in those battles?

I guess I'm thinking that one-on-one combat skills WERE still a significant part of Japanese warfare (even if not decisive). As you also pointed out, the higher-ranked samurai still had to charge into the melee along with their troops and clean up.

As professional warriors weren't they still expected to distinguish themselves in battle and make a name for themselves? Assuming they survived the intitial, decisive exchanges of projectile weapons, didn't their professional livelihood (as well as their personal survival) depend on their close quarter skills during the succeeding charges and retreats?

Warriors certainly did get involved in close-quarters fighting during early and late medieval Japanese battles, but my point was in reference to the image of bushi deliberately squaring off to fight as individuals. That rarely, if ever, happened. The common pattern, from the earliest samurai battles onward, was for warriors to fight in small groups and teams. During the later medieval period, group tactics became increasingly sophisticated and larger scale.

As to the expectation of bushi distinguishing themselves in the fighting, the answer is yes and no. Certainly the broad social ethic among warriors was to seek individual glory. (In fact, Suzuki Shin'ya argues quite persuasively that this penchant for showing off and for collecting heads was the key reason that warriors engaged in as much hand-to-hand fighting as they did--running down and finishing off opponents who were already in flight.) But it also appears to have been the bane of medieval commanders. From the 14th century onward, you find repeated injunctions issued to troops not to collect heads and such!

I suspect this situation was kind of analogous to what goes on in modern team sports: Basketball players love to showboat, since that's what gets them noticed and hence gets them scholarships, constracts and big bucks; but coaches generally hate it when their players hog the ball, take unnecessary shots at 3-pointers, and the like.

[Earl Hartman]

Dr. Friday:

While it is of course somewhat silly to use modern films as evidence of what medieval Japanese battles loooked like, I have a couple of questions:

1) What did the horses used by the Japanese look like if they do not resemble modern horses that one sees in movies? Should I assume that they were smaller, like Mongolian ponies?

2) What did medieval Japanese cavalry actually look like, then, if the depicition of it in modern films is innaccurate?

Also, I suppose that there is probably no good answer for this, but would you care to speculate why the Japanese apparently never developed fighting methods employing a shield and a single-handed weapon used in conjunction with a shield, and why they never developed the couched lance as was used in Europe?

[Karl Friday]

Originally posted by Earl Hartman
1) What did the horses used by the Japanese look like if they do not resemble modern horses that one sees in movies? Should I assume that they were smaller, like Mongolian ponies?

Japanese horses (until Arabians and other thoroughbreds were imported after the late 19th century) were short, stubby ponies--a lot like the Mongolian ponies Earl mentions. The only place I know of in Japan where you can still see Japanese horses of the sort the samurai rode is the island of Oshima.

An analysis by Hayashida Shigeyuki of areport on an excavation of the bodies of men and horses involved in Nitta Yoshisada's attack on Kamakura in 1333 shows that the 128 horse skeletons found ranged in height from 109 to 140 cm at the shoulder, with the average height being 129.5 and the most common height being 126-136 cms. The 8 horses described in the Gempei josuiki as "famous" range from 139 to 145 cm. Modern Japanese ponies of about the same size as the Kamakura skeletons average around 280 kg. Modern thoroughbreds, by contrast, average around 160-65 cms and about 450-550 kg in weight.

Japanese ponies were also relatively weak animals, incapable of carrying more than about 90 kilograms--including rider, saddle and weapons--and unshod, so that their hooves could not take heavy pounding and they could have galloped long distances only with great difficulty. They were also unruly and difficult to control--especially when both hands are occupied with a task like archery.

In general a horse can carry about one third of his own weight; more than this and his running power decreases by 30% or more. Horses today of roughly the same breed as traditional Japanese ponies weigh around 350 kg. Armor during the early Kamakura period weighed between 22 and 32 kg.

Modern thoroughbreds have a maximum speed of about 60 kph; Modern Japanese ponies top out at 40 kph, even without the weight of a saddle, rider, armor, and weapons, which would weigh in at around 90 kg. In an experiment conducted by NHK in 1980 for an episode of the series "Rekishi e no shotai" titled "Yoshitsune kiba gundan," the speed of such ponies so laden was tested. A 130 cm., 350 kg horse was timed with a rider and 45 kg in sacks of sand (the equivalent of the armor and weapons). The horse dropped from a gallop to a trot almost immediately. A horse at gallop normally travels about 300 meters per minute, but this one never exceeded 150 meters per minute.

Even modern racing horses can only run full out for 200-300 yards. And medieval ponies were unshod. A horse running at full speed places nearly 8 times his normal weight on his hooves, which makes it very difficult for a horse to run fast for very long.

Moreover, Japanese stirrups were not well-suited to high-speed riding. They are long and high up, to facilitate standing in the saddle. Mounted troops probably did not, therefore, gallop about except in special situations; the movements of an army on a battlefield were determined by the speed of foot soldiers marching or running.

Thus the purpose and utility of the horse on medieval battlefields was less exploitation of its superior speed, than to distinguish the class of the riders from the foot soldiers, and to bear the weight of the armor.


What did medieval Japanese cavalry actually look like, then, if the depiction of it in modern films is inaccurate?

The sort of cavalry units depicted in the movies never existed in medieval Japan. Clear tactical division of cavalry from infantry troops disappeared with the ritsuryo (imperial state) military apparatus, in the 8th century, and wasn't revived until the introduction of modern (European-style) cavalry, in the late 19th century. Medieval military units mixed mounted with unmounted troops, with warriors of a given status and rank fighting mounted, and everyone else fighting on foot.

Moreover, even the mounted troops appear to have dismounted to do their real fighting: Luis Frois, a Jesuit missionary in 16th century Japan, noted, in his extensive commentary on things Japanese that, "We [Europeans] fight on horseback, but when the Japanese must fight, they get down from their mounts."


Also, I suppose that there is probably no good answer for this, but would you care to speculate why the Japanese apparently never developed fighting methods employing a shield and a single-handed weapon used in conjunction with a shield, and why they never developed the couched lance as was used in Europe?

As Earl says, there's probably no good answer for this, but my guess is that it's simply a matter of trajectory of technological and tactical development.

Early samurai military forces were defined by and created around the skill of mounted archery, and early samurai armor was developed for use in this style of fighting. Using a bow from horseback pretty much precludes the use of a shield, but the style of armor (oyoroi) that evolved compensated for this with the two big plates (osode) that hang from the wearer's shoulders. At the same time, the heavy armor was probably a major factor in prompting the development of long, heavy polearms (like the naginata, and later the yari), which required both hands to wield effectively, to augment the missile weapons. (In point of fact, polearms--such as the hoko--had been long, two-handed weapons, even during the ritsuryo era.)

By the 15th century, Japanese were doing a lot more of their fighting on foot, using bigger armies, but tactically the essence of battles didn't change all that much. The Japanese simply never developed a tactical tradition of marching closely-ordered infantry head-on into a waiting enemy host--ala the Greeks or the Romans--which is the style of fighting best-suited to using shields and one-handed weapons (medieval European knightly cavalry is simply a mounted version of the same thing). Japanese battles, from the ritsuryo era onward, always centered on missile exchanges of one sort or another; hand-to-hand fighting occurred mainly in special circumstances or in the closing phases of battles, after one side or the other had begun to break. Standing shields, which the Japanese did use, were more useful for covering archers or gunners than hand-held shields would have been; and the length and power of heavy, two-handed polearms was probably of more value when mopping up troops who were breaking and scattering than whatever protection warriors might have gotten from hand-held shields would have been--especially given the heavy armor they wore.

In other words: the Japanese had never had a tradition of using hand-held shields (although there are one or two depictions of this sort of shield in medieval picture scrolls) and never had any particular reason to develop one. So they didn't!

[Earl Hartman]

Dr. Friday:

Thanks. I suspected that since the aristocratic warrior in Japan had long defined himself as a member of the class which fought on horseback with a bow (kyuba no ie) and so concentrated on his main skill, mounted archery (kyuba no michi) that this would have been one of the main reasons that shields were not employed. In Europe, archery, even in England where it reached its zenith with the longbow (originally Welsh, not English), was considered to be the domain of the common foot soldier. That was one of the reasons the French so depised it, and one of the reasons they were so stupid as to launch frontal cavalry charges against massed longbowmen stationed behind a hedge of sharpened stakes at places like Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt.

I am sure there are various considerations, environmental and historical, that accounted for the lack of the use of massed, close-order infantry units a la the Romans and Greeks. Can you recommend any books (including your own, of course) that discuss this in more detail?

Also, as a kyudo practitoner, I am curious if there is any information regarding the range and power of the Japanese bow during its heyday as a weapon. (I am quite aware that the modern laminated bow was developed later and that Japanese bows, especially during the Kamakura period, were most likely wooden self-bows or less-developed bamboo-wood laminates.) I would like to see how it compares to the bows of other nations. Are there any sources that discuss its performance against the Mongols during the invasions, for instance? (I have a sneaking suspicion that the Mongol bows were probably better.)

[Earl Hartman]

Dr. Friday:

The speed and size of the horses you mention is pretty pathetic. I could jog 150 yards in a minute, I would think, without much problem. Hell, it sounds like the "horses" were not much bigger than an Irish wolfhound (OK, a really, really big one). No wonder a foot soldier could keep up.

Do you have any comparisons of the weight of Japanese vs. European armor? A 15th century European battle harness (not special tournament armor which was especially heavy for extra protection) of Italian make (full articulated plate) apparently weighed about 45 kg. I'm not sure if this included the arming jacket with mail inserts and the helmet, probably a barbute type.

Also, I have always been intrigued by the "gap-osis" of old Japanese armor. The kote usually have no defense for the inner arms, and the armpit area is often completely undefended. And why is Japanese mail so useless? Thin links in weird, open patterns which leave great gaps in protection. I have a book on Japanese armor, and the typical 4-to-1 link pattern used in almost all European mail is referred to as "nanban kusari", or "Southern Barbarian chain", indicating that it was unkown in Japan until introduced by Europeans. Care to speculate?

[wmuromoto]

Hiya Earl,

Saw you on some martial arts documentary, along with Joseph Svinth and some really bad budo, some really good budo.

Anyway, Otake Risuke sensei of the TSKR came to Hawaii once with Donn Draeger and he was talking story. Otake sensei raises horses, I guess, so he got around to talking about the strategies of fighting from horseback, and he said that the horses once used in pre-Tokugawa wars were much smaller, like the Mongolian horses. He didn't get around to saying why European horses now are primarily used in Japan, but he did say that the Mongol type horses were very well trained, very responsive, and could be directed by varying the pressure of the warrior's legs, thereby freeing up both hands to use the yari or sword in combat when necessary. Their compact size added to the melding of mounted warrior and horse as a fighting unit, and the horses could bite and kick while the warriors used their weapon. Then he told us how to approach a mounted soldier; depending on his weapon, he had some weak spots.

I'm thinking, geez, when am I every going to try to attack someone on a horse who's got a sword in his hands? But it WAS interesting, considering that such tactical considerations continued in his ryu from way back.

Per the comment that many bugei ryuha were developed by the ashigaru, that's generally true, although upper class bushi still enlisted the teachers as their fencing and martial arts masters, as well as strategists. Like other military systems, Japanese generals didn't really need to learn much hand to hand per se, but it didn't look very good if you were a total klutz. Being capable of handling a sword properly was considered a way to impress the troops and lead them by example, even if they didn't always lead in the front. It's sort of like the disdain many American troops had for green officers in Vietnam unless they proved themselves capable of combat abilities or they had combat experience to impress the troops with.

In observing other ryuha, some of our own ryu members would try to figure out whether or not that ryu was an ashigaru bugei or not from their emphasis and stylistic characteristics. The Yagyu Shingan-ryu, for example, we thought was an ashigaru bugei, while the Yagyu Shinkage-ryu kenjutsu, as we know from the historical documents and from observing their kata, looked more like a mid-level bushi school that, of course, became more "karei-na" or "hinkaku-na" because the Edo branch members became one of the hyoho shinanyaku for the Tokugawa shoguns, and their social status got more and more elevated, from goshi to sohmetsuke.

In the case of the Takeuchi-ryu, research by my sensei appears to suggest that the founder of the ryu was descended from a family of nobles (the Takeuchi), as were many buke families, and not being the first son of the first son, was split off as a bunke, and ended up a castle lord of buke status. He joined the losing side and got his ass kicked by Oda Nobunaga and Hashiba Hideyoshi, but he still ended up a landholding goshi, and his son and grandson had enough upper class blood in them to perform their art before two emperors. The family never attained daimyo status due to siding with the Ukita/Mori against Nobunaga; so no, I doubt that many bugei ryu were developed by daimyo; if at all, they were more interested in chanoyu and the like. But there WERE ryuha that were developed by mid-level landholding warriors, such as the Yagyu, the Takeuchi, even the Iizasa, who were a cut above the ashigaru footsoldiers in status, although, if they engaged in battle, they still had to engage in combat, unlike the daimyo leaders.

Formulation of a ryuha also implied some level of education, and the ashigaru were composed, as Dr. Friday says, of a mixed bag up to the Pax Tokugawa. There is doubt, for example, that Toyotomi Hideyoshi came from a samurai family at all, or that he came from a very low ranking farming/warrior family, and that he fabricated his lineage after the fact. One or two of his higher ranking followers (I don't have the history books in front of me) were actually merchants before they got buke status, and in those days merchants were considered as low as you could go before you got to the "non-humans." So there was a flow of movement up and down before the Tokugawa Period, but in many pre-Tokugawa ryuha documents, there is evidence of a high degee of literacy and education. So my assumption is the founders of many ryu weren't from the lowest of the low ranks, although they weren't daimyo class, either.

Damn. Now I have to go make posters and post them around campus to get students to fill up my design classes. Ah, the joys of being a newly minted college instructor.

Wayne Muromoto

[Earl Hartman]

Hey, Wayne.

Jesus, is that thing still playing? I met an Israeli guy in Tokyo who does Yoshinkan aikido, and he said: Hey! I know you! I saw you onTV!" Pretty funny.

Yeah, the level of budosity of that particular documentary was kind of iffy in places.

Re: horses, any mounted warrior had to know how to control his mount with just his legs. In Europe, you had a shield in one hand and either a lance or a sword, etc., in the other. No way to use the reins in such a situation, so the same thing applies. The Europeans developed the heavy cavalry charge, made up of heavily armored troops with couched lances, who were used, as Dr. Friday sggests, as shock troops. Interstingly, the Bayeaux Tapestry shows the Normans using their spears not in the couched way but as javelins. Of course, these tactics didn't work against foes who were trained differently: the Mongols just shot them to pieces from a distance, and the Muslims used the same tactics during the Crusades, apparently. However, it appears that in a head-to-head confrontation, the European heavy cavalry charge was a fearsome thing. I guess it's all what you're used to. In kendo, I always see guys get beat up because the other guy starts doing weird stuff that's "against the rules".

[Earl Hartman]

Whoa, big, BIG mistake upthread. The 15th cent. Italian battle harness I mentioned weighed 45 POUNDS, not 45 KILOGRAMS.

Oops.

Also, I have heard that it was expected of a well-trained knight that he be able, fully armed, to climb a scaling ladder propped against a castle wall from the underside using only his arms, vault into the saddle without using his hands, and, if needs be, swim in his armor. This argues for a couple of things: 1) well-trained knights were pretty strong, and 2) their armor wasn't as heavy as we think.

Anybody know of any historical records to back this up?

[ben johanson]

On the other hand, I just recently read in Medieval Warfare: A History (which I would consider to be quite a reputable source) that after the widespread adoption in Europe of extremely heavy plate armor in the later medieval period, knights had to actually be hoisted up onto their mounts with cranes! That sounds pretty heavy to me.

[Joseph Svinth]

Wayne --

I think you have two different documentaries in mind -- to my knowledge, Earl appears on one, I appear on another. In both cases, as you say, some folks sadly were not up to their advance billing. But the joy of video is that you can fast-forward past the silly stuff, and enjoy the good stuff multiple times.

BTW, based on reactions I got from the show I worked on, it is possible that what you and I think good, other people think silly, and vice-versa.

Earl --

Forty-five pounds sounds about right for late medieval tactical armor. That weight is less than worn by modern combat infantry by at least 50% (they do sometimes carry 45 kg), and is better distributed across the body. To get the armor so light, the fourteenth century Italians worked the angles, as a 60-degree slope effectively doubles thickness. For modern examples, look at a Tiger I and a T-34 -- the Tiger's armor is flat, and so had to be enormously thick to achieve what the T-34 got through the use of angles. That said, the advantage of the box is that it maximizes interior space, thus you still see box designs on personnel carriers.

(Aside to Ben -- The knights being hoisted by cranes were often kings and dukes, who due to their status presumably had the Henry VIII girth and didn't exercise as regularly as they had when younger.)

Tactically, you're also looking at ideas of how confrontation should proceed. Germanic tradition is for force-on-force, at a Schwerpunkt, as Clausewitz put it. Decisive battle, cast one's lot to the gods, etc. The Muslims and Asians, on the other hand, generally preferred to swirl about looking for weaknesses. The general's art in that case wasn't so much convincing everybody that today was the day, but instead figuring out whether the apparent weakness was real or Memorex. The Romans, for instance, were notorious for letting their center collapse intentionally, thereby taking the exploiting force from the flanks.

Finally, keep in mind that despite all the drama, most medieval warfare ended up being won or lost by siegecraft. Spies, engineers, and artillery may not be as glamorous as man on horseback with sword, but they do win campaigns.

For comparative armor, try these links:

* http://www.geocities.com/sengokudaimyo/katchu/0.Home.html (Japanese)
* http://therionarms.com/resources.html

[Joseph Svinth]

Earl --

On the horses, the Vikings used to use Shetland ponies. In their environment, this was quite practical. First, ponies could be transported in standard merchant vessels, and second, they survived living outside in the North Atlantic winter. Generally they were used as pack animals, much the same way Mexicans used burros.

Still, it's an image I've always had: Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis in "The Vikings," astride Shetland ponies...

[Aaron Fields]

If anyone is interested, Mongolia being my area of history I have done considerable research into the steppe horse, and horse technology. I would be happy to forward my research to anyone interested who contacts me directly. There is some very interesting material on horse breeding and stirrup development.

[Aaron Fields]

Earl

Regarding the Mongol bow

In English Joseph Needham's "Science and Civilization in CHina" Volume 5 part 6. Keeping in mind that Needham was Han-centric.

There was quit a variety of size regarding the Mongol bow, but the construction was all the same. The average military bow had a draw of 100-140 lb. and killing reach of 400- 500 (extreme range of larger bows) yards. The average archer could get off 6-12 shots per minute (mind you from horseback.)

[Earl Hartman]

Aaron:

Is the 400-500 range you quote accomplished with a flight arrow or with an arrow designed for the maximum armor-piercing impact?

For example, as far as I know, the record for distance is around >800 yards, set using a Turkish bow and a special flight arrow with a barrelled shaft and narrow fletching. I doubt if this arrow was designed to be able to penetrate anything once it reached the end of its flight. The Japanese also had these arrows, which were called "muginari", or "barley shaped", since they resembled the ovoid shape of a grain of barley. Straight arrows were called "ichimonji", and armor-piercing war arrows with extremely heavy points were called "suginari" because the shape resembled that of a cedar tree, thick at the base (the point) and tapering towards the top (the fletching). These arrows obviously could not fly as far as the aerodynamic muginari arrows, but they had a devestating impact at close range. (I saw a photograph of such an arrow shot through a kabuto by Urakami Sakae Hanshi, my kyudo teacher's father-in-law. It looked like a small yari with feathers. The point was huge.) It appears from my (minimal) research that the optimum killing range for the Japanese bow using this sort of arrow was <50 yards, where the archer was expected to be able to take aim at a specific target and deliver a shot with sufficient force to penetrate armor.

Any reliable comparitive data on the optimum killing range under battlefield conditions (NOT the maximum distance achievable with special arrows) of various bows would be appreciated.

Joe, this should be right up your alley.

[Aaron Fields]

Earl,

That is killing range. The Mongols had "long flight" arrows as well used for hunting and play. There are accounts of taking armored opponents down at further distances, but as they are few and far between they are not the most reliable. Keep in mind the tactics employed by the Mongols, this was no pick a target and shoot, this was all 1000 of us let go, and as the Russians are cited as saying, "the sun was blocked out by a blanket of anguish."

The Mongols also used their bows at close range during combat; I have seen some unbelievable shots first hand. I have read accounts of 100-150 yard picking the shot in battle conditions as well.

[Earl Hartman]

Well, then, would you mind speculating as to how the Japanese were able to resist them at all if they could be so outranged? I have never heard of a Japanese bow being able to shoot that far. If this is normal Mopngol archery, the Japanese should all have been shot down before they got anywhere near the Mongols at all.

I know the typhoons supposedly played a part, but either the Japanese bows/archers of the Kamakura period were far better than they later were, the majority of soldires sent in the invasion force were not Mongols at all but Koreans and Chinese who didn't shoot as well, the terrain did not allow the Mongols to use their massed tactics, etc., etc., or something else is going on.

[Aaron Fields]

:D

Earl,

I will summarize ( I alwasy look forward to talking Central Asian history),

The majority of the invasion force was not Mongol. Mongols are not sailors, so the weather was a bit of a problem, as was the use of boats in general. Mongol military tactics rely on horses to operate as per designed. Lastly, Japan was not important as it was not part of the continent, (they had bigger fish to fry.)

The key is that Mongols are pastoral nomadic types.

"Farmers are slaves chained to the earth." (Mongol proverb)
“When my people quit living under Tengri and ger and begin to live in stone houses, they will cease to be Mongol.” (Temujin)

Anything you can't reach on horseback doesn't really matter.

[Earl Hartman]

If the Mongols didn't care about Japan, why bother to invade them twice?

As I thouhgt: it wasn't a "Mongol" invasion at all, it was a Chinese/Korean draftee invasion, and they couldn't use their horses. End of story.

[Aaron Fields]

Wow Earl,

I didn't know you were personally invested, if I have offended you in some way I apologize.

As Mongol (and Eastern Central Asia) is the area of history that I work in, I have just been trying to tie up threads within responses regarding Mongols and their technology. If someone is really interested I would be happy to discuss, or suggest good materials in English.


Qublai Khan enlisted Chinese, Turks, Koreans, Russians, etc. into his army.

The invasions Japan had only a small % of Mongols. Though they were in positions of power. In addition the conscripts were from areas that were already under Central Asian influence. In fact, due to Mongolian personnel management methods the majority of folks involved with the Japanese invasion were Korean, Chinese, and a few Turks. There may have been a smattering of Russians according to some of the Turkish documents.

As to why they attempted twice, well everything is relative, sure they would have taken Japan if it had worked out, but they were not willing to invest large number of Mongol soldiers, as they were needed elsewhere. They realized that Japan would be difficult to take and maintain due to its geographic conditions (many of Qublai’s Mongol advisors suggested against it from the start.) Again, Mongols were not sailors. Japan being not important is in relation to the locations on the continent they were pushing on at the same time.

In the case of military loss, the second attempt on Japan is keeping in the Mongol mold of “if at first you succeed try and try again.”

In addition, Qubali thought a lot of himself (he wanted very much to be as important as his much bigger grandad), and in order to maintain his position within the Mongol power structure he hated to have a defeat of any kind credited to him. (Southeast Asia also proved to be a stumbling block as well, again horse mobility is hampered by jungle.)


End of story?

[Earl Hartman]

Aaron:

I'm not at all offended; sorry you took it that way.

All I am saying is that what you say bears out a thesis I've had for a while: that Mongol tactics are suited, naturally, to having a vast expanse of steppe to work with. That is only natural; they lived in such an environment and their life style was adapted to that environment. Also, vast areas of Russia, all the way up into Poland and Hungary, are perfect for cavalry, being wide open and flat. In such situations, Mongol victory is not at all surprising. Also, as I understand it, they were united under a centralized government which could thus put a very large and cohesive army into the field. The Europeans, on the other hand, were divided into small feudal states and had no central authority to compel the organization of the kind of force that would have been needed to fight the Mongols effectively. As I understand it, the Mongols only left off conquering Poland because the Khan died and they had to go back home to choose another one. From what little I have read, the Europeans never won a single battle against the Mongols.

I figure that the main problem with Japan was just logistics. Getting an army across the sea on boats is a hell of a lot harder than riding your horse a few hundred miles. And, as you say, the Mongols were not sailors. That, combined with the lack of vast wide open spaces for cavalry, would make it hard for the Mongols to fight as they were used to doing. And, as you say, the actual number of Mongols in the force was low.

Ifyou know of any contemporary accounts of how the Japanese actually performed in battle against the Mongols, especially how their archery stacked up, I'd be interested. I have heard that the Japanese swords, interestingly enough, had a lot of trouble with the Mongol armor.

[Joseph Svinth]

Earl --

You're correct, those ultra-long range Turkish records involved special flight arrows.

European armor-piercing arrowheads were often square. Indeed, the phrase "picking a quarrel" may have referred to these, as in Old French, is a quarrel describes a square-headed arrow. (Or maybe not, as the word quarrel, meaning complaint, is from Middle English querela, meaning "to complain.")

Rates of fire with heavy pull bows were of course less than rates of fire with light pull bows. Using light bows, Native American archers employed by Bill Cody's Wild West Show could get off 4-5 shots in as many seconds. Targets were playing cards at ranges of about 25 feet, and they pinned 'em. Using the big war bows, Turks and Welsh probably did well to average as many shots per minute, but then they were shooting 300 yards, and seriously threatening unarmored body parts in the process. Meanwhile arbelests (crossbows) managed maybe 1-2 shots per minute, but shot accurately enough to around 400 yards, and could be kept loaded, meaning that they were well-suited to defending castles or wagon laagers. Therefore every weapon had its role, and the trick was to avoid making the one at hand have to do things that it wasn't well-suited to perform.

To my knowledge, the Mamluks of Egypt were the only Western military to hand the Mongols a really decisive defeat on horse terrain. ('Ayn Jalut, Syria, 1260.) But this was still way out on the fringes of the Mongol empire, something that can also be said for Japan, Java, Burma, and Vietnam.

During the 14th century, the Mongols and Turks themselves divided, often over religious questions (Khazars were Jews, while the Golden Horde converted to Sunni Islam), and as a result they ended up as divided as the folks they had been fighting, with predictable results. In mid-century, the Black Death hit, and of course that ruined all kinds of schemes. During the last quarter of the 14th century, Tamerlane picked up the pieces and probably could have put the old empire back together, but he was always more interested in loot than government. As a result, what he put together fell apart after his death. Tamerlane's descendant Babur, who conquered India in the early 16th century, was the last of the great Mongol ("Mughul") conquerors.

Still, some Russian princes negotiated quite satifactory terms with the Mongols, the most notable example being Aleksandr Nevsky, who was always more interested in fighting Swedes, Poles, and Prussians than Turks and Mongols. For almost 200 years afterward the Muscovites were satraps of the Golden Horde, and it wasn't until the 18th century that this relationship was truly reversed. Unfortunately, neither the Czars nor the Communists were very nice to the conquered Uzbeks and Khazars, and this explains much of the Turkic antipathy toward the Russians during the 20th and 21st centuries...

[Earl Hartman]

I knew I could count on ya, Joe. Good stuff (some was "knew", some was new).

A quarrel refers specifically to a crossbow bolt, I believe; and, as you say, some had square heads.

Part of the reason the English were successful at Crecy (aside from the general Frogginess of their enemies) is becasue the English longbow outranged the crossbows available at that time; thus, the Genoese crossbow-wielding mercenaries the French hired, who were the first to engage the English, were getting shot off the field due to the longbow's superior rate of fire (about 12 shots per minute, vs. less than half that for the crossbows). They retreated in panic; the French commander, incensed at their "cowardice" ordered his cavalry to ride them down, saying famously "Slay me these rascals, they do but hinder us." Understandably miffed at being ridden down by their own allies, the Genoese turned their crossbows on the charging French cavalry with predictable results. I'm not even sure how many of them reached the English lines.

I have also heard that at Agincourt the French were accompanied by some Scottish and Irish knights, who wanted to put the kibosh on the English, needless to say. Seeing the pathetic state of the English army and the vastly superior numbers of the French, the Scots and Irish suggested that the French simply surround the English and wait for their inevitable surrender. The French, being French, turned their noses up at this, sniffing "Where is the honor in that?" and made the decision to attack the English frontally, which meant marching massed cavalry a mile up a muddy slope directly into the teeth of about 10,000 longbowmen snugly ensconced behind hedges of sharpened stakes. The Scots and Irish shrugged, said "See ya later, maybe", and left the French to their fate. A great story, if true.

Later crossbows, with bows made of steel or whalebone and loaded using winches, could out-distance a longbow, but by their nature they were never able to equal the longbow's rate of fire. However, they could shoot through just about anything.

Any sources on performance specs of medieval Japanese bows? If anybody can find a link to some website on that, it will be you.

Earl

[ben johanson]

In addition to the intriguing questions Earl has posed regarding performance specs of medieval Japanese bows and how the Japanese performed in battle against the Mongols, I would also be extremely interested to know how the mounted archery tactics of the Japanese compared with those of the Mongols, Turks, Magyars and other nomadic "horse people" of the Asian steppe. Does anyone know anything about this or of resources that may deal with such a topic?

[Neil Hawkins]

Earl,

Just a quick aside, I have collected these for some of my own research and you have probably seen them already but they do pertain to Japanese Archery in some way.

Japanses Archery Article (http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/Willthomas/invest/investarrow.htm)
An Old Book on Archery History (mentions Ainu in Chapter 7) (http://www.xs4all.nl/~marcelo/archery/library/books/badminton/)
Bow History (http://ac.stratics.com/content/history/general/bows.shtml)
Bow Construction through history (http://www.anu.edu.au/CSEM/ENGN2216/bows/Body1.html)
Asian Traditional Archery Research Network (http://www.atarn.org/)

I haven't fully read all of them yet but they may be of use to you or others.

Regards

Neil

[Karl Friday]

Originally posted by ben johanson
In addition to the intriguing questions Earl has posed regarding performance specs of medieval Japanese bows and how the Japanese performed in battle against the Mongols, I would also be extremely interested to know how the mounted archery tactics of the Japanese compared with those of the Mongols, Turks, Magyars and other nomadic "horse people" of the Asian steppe. Does anyone know anything about this or of resources that may deal with such a topic?

Ah, funny you should ask . . . I did an article on the vicissitudes of mounted archery in Japan
this last year, that addresses this topic briefly. And I'll be dealing with it in some depth in the book I'm working on now. The article was in Japanese (for those who might be interested, the citation is: "Umayumi no ayumi no ikkosatsu: chusei Nihon ni okeru kokka to bunka to gijutsu" [Tokyo daigaku shiryohensanjo kenkyu kiyo 11 [2001] pp. 21-35), but here's a quick paraphrase of the relevant section:

Huge expanses of time and geography separate Scythians from Huns from Turks from Manchus, and gave rise to considerable diversity of technology, political organization, and military practices. Nevertheless one can, with only a moderate degree of over-simplification, identify among the range of pastoralist civilizations a characteristic pattern of tactics, one that John Keegan argues probably developed out of and was honed by the skills required for working herds of livestock. From techniques originating in the need to break flocks into smaller, more manageable parts; round up scattered animals; cut off lines of retreat by circling and flanking; compress herds into compact areas; isolate flock leaders; kill specific animals while leaving the herd inert and controllable; and dominate superior numbers by threat and intimidation; the steppe nomads developed a classic order of battle that confounded and terrified the agriculturist societies who faced them.

Steppe warfare centered on sweeping, fluid, coordinated cavalry maneuvers that managed enemy troops like animals hunted or herded. Armies advanced in loose, far-flung crescent formations that encircled their enemy on both flanks and forced him to bunch together, where he could be harried and intimidated by volleys of arrows, launched either from long range or from close-up by waves of riders coming in at full gallop and then breaking off to regroup at the rear for another charge. When too strongly resisted, they pulled back, hoping to draw the enemy into a pursuit that would break his ranks and leave him vulnerable to further hit-and-run counter-charges. Finally, when the enemy had been thoroughly worn down and thrown into confusion, they would close and cut him down with swords and polearms.

The weapon that made such tactics possible was the composite reflex bow, made by laminating together layers of wood, animal tendon, and horn. Bows of this sort were short-about the length of a man's torso when strung-and powerful enough to shoot accurately to 300 meters or more and to penetrate armor at up to a hundred meters. They shot light arrows (each weighing just under 30 grams), which allowed every warrior to carry as many as fifty in his quiver.

The samurai, by contrast, wore a boxy, heavy armor, called oyoroi, made from lamellae of iron and lacquered leather. oyoroi was not perfectly symmetrical, so it was unevenly balanced between its right and left sides. And, because it fit loosely, rather than snuggly at the waist (so that it could hang over the saddle without pushing up the plates of the skirt and thereby exposing the wearer's thighs), it shifted readily from front to back and side to side, like a bell around its clapper, making it difficult for the warrior to maintain his balance in the saddle.

Japanese ponies were comparatively weak animals, incapable of carrying more than about 90 kilograms-including rider, saddle and weapons-and unshod, so that their hooves could not take heavy pounding and they could gallop long distances only with great difficulty. They were also unruly and difficult to control-especially when both hands were occupied with a task like archery. Japanese bows, moreover, were completely different from-and distinctly inferior to-those used by horsemen on the continent.

Without ready access to supplies of bone and horn, the Japanese fashioned their bows from plain wood or, from sometime in the Kamakura period onward, from laminates of wood and bamboo. But wood lacks the flexibility and springiness of horn and tendon: in order to achieve significant power, a simple wood bow must be a long one. And samurai bows were long--about two and a half meters, during the Heian period--which would have made them impossibly awkward to use from horseback but for their unique shape, with the grip placed a third of the way up from the bottom, rather than in the middle in the manner of European longbows.
The combination of weak bows, sturdy armor and arrows carried in numbers too few to permit any to be wasted forced the samurai to shoot only at very close range--usually ten meters or less--and to target with precision the gaps and weak points in the armor of specific opponents. The combination of puny mounts, weighty armor and the rarity of open terrain would have precluded the sweeping charges and feigned retreats favored by the steppe warriors, even if the samurai had wished to fight that way.

Instead therefore, Heian warriors developed a distinctive, somewhat peculiar form of light cavalry tactics that involved individuals and small groups circling and maneuvering around one another in the hopes of getting a shot at an enemy from an angle at which he could not return fire. The angle of approach was, in fact, a key consideration, because the bowman could shoot only to his left side, along an arc of roughly 45 degrees, from the ten or eleven o'clock to about the nine o'clock position. Attempting to shoot at a sharper angle to the front would result in either bumping the horse's neck with the bow or bowstring, or spooking the mount when the arrow was released and flew too close to his face. Attempting to shoot at a sharper angle to the rear would have twisted the archer right out of his saddle. And shooting the lengthy Japanese bow to the right of the horse's neck would have called for the flexibility of a contortionist.

Accordingly, the tactics for combat between mounted samurai bore an intriguing resemblance to those of dogfighting aviators. In this sort of fighting, horsemanship often counted for as much as marksmanship, as Oba Kageyoshi's report of his encounter with Minamoto Tametomo during the H?gen Conflict (1156) illustrates:
"Tametomo was a bowman without peer in our realm. . . . For this reason when . . . I found myself facing his left side and he attempted to draw his bow . . . I galloped around to his right side and rode past him, below his bow sights. Thus the arrow he meant for my body struck my knee instead. Had I not known this trick, I surely would have lost my life. A stalwart needs only to be expert at horsemanship."

The political structure and the composition of armies in early medieval Japan further determined the tactical options available, making it impossible for the samurai to employ either the sophisticated mixed-forces tactics of the Chinese (and ritsury?) armies or the cavalry methods of the steppe peoples.

Heian and Kamakura era armies were temporary, irregular assemblages, constructed through complex private military networks. Warriors knit together needed forces by calling on the members of small core bands of fighting men, subordinate allies, and (unless the conflict was a purely private affair) military officers of provincial governments. This arrangement offered commanders few, if any, opportunities to drill with their troops in large-scale, coordinated group tactics, and mitigated against fielding disciplined and well-articulated armies.

Instead, tactical cooperation devolved to smaller units and components. The fighting men who composed these monadic organizations lived and trained in close proximity to one another, honing their skills through a variety of regimens and competitive games. Hence they were able to coordinate and cooperate on the battlefield, and to harmonize their actions to those of close associates with an impressive degree of discipline and fluidity. The result was that early medieval battles tended to be aggregates of smaller combats: melees of archery duels and brawls between small groups, punctuated by general advances and retreats, and by volleys of arrows launched by bowmen on foot, protected by portable walls of shields.


BTW, for thems of y'all interested in the military side of the Mongol invasions of Japan, the best work to date on this topic in English is Tom Conlan's In Little Need of Divine Intervention (Cornell, 2001). Conlan demonstrates pretty conclusively that the Japanese had--or would have had--the Mongols beaten, even without the typhoons that allegedly (I say "alledgedly" because many scholars today question whether or not these were really as devastating to the Mongol fleets as traditional accounts maintain--or even whether the storms really occurred at all!) saved Japan's bacon.

The "Mongol" forces were, of course, composed primarily of Korean and Chinese draftees (as Aaron pointed out) and were also not able to employ the tactics that made them so deadly in western Asia and eastern Europe (as Earl noted). On the other hand, they'd already proven that they could adapt very well to new circumstances--such as the terrain of southern China--when the need arose. But the Japanese had the advantage of control of terrain, better supply, and--in the long run, at least--superior numbers.

[Brently Keen]

Thanks Professor Friday for a very interesting and informative post!

Brently Keen

[Earl Hartman]

Dr. Friday:

Very informative post. Thanks. Now, the inevitable questions:

You mention that the Japanese horses were similar in size to the Mongol horses, yet they are described as weak and hard to control. Did they have some genetic defect that made them this way, or were the Japanese just lousy horsemen and incapable of training their mounts properly? Since the Mongols were herdsmen, perhaps they were better horse trainers. Or maybe they just had better horses.

Why did not the Japanese, who were so adept at producing weapons, tools, and artifacts of the highest quality, and are rightly renowned for their skill and ingenuity, never get around to developing a horseshoe? It seems incredible, frankly. Were the Mongol horses shod? If not, why not?

I have heard that the Mongols were very lightly armored, sometimes wearing little more than a light helmet and a silk shirt or leather body protection. I believe that I read somewhere that the Mongol/Chinese/Korean soldiers of the invasions wore leather and felt armor that the Japanese swords of the time could not cut through readily, and that this was one of the factors that led to the later development of a shorter, heavier sword. Yet, from your desription, it sounds as though Japanese armor for horsemen was not only quite heavy relative to the strength of the horse, but extremely clumsy and poorly designed. Again, perhaps the Japnese, due to the terrain of their country, never felt the need to develop the kind of cavalry tactics in use in other places, or that such tactics would not work. Or, perhaps they just didn't have the one basic tool they needed: good strong horses. Anyway, care to comment?

The materials for the Mongol bow came from their herds. The Japanese, however, had no access to sufficiently large numbers of cattle from which to make such bows. However, the Japanese islands are blessed with abundant supplies of hardwood and bamboo. A different bow was inevitable. While the Japanese bow may have been inferior in power to the Mongol bow, it sounds from your description that the main reason Japanese horseback archery was conducted from such a close range is that the Japanese horseman was well armored enough that arrows were useless unless they struck an unarmored area. Was this because the bows were too weak or the armor was too good? A symbiotic relationship if there ever was one, it seems to me. In Europe, one of the reasons for the development of plate armor was the English longbow, which could shoot through even the strongest mail. There are eyewitness accounts of battles from the Crusades where the Crusaders would return from battle with the Saracens shot full of arrows like pincushions, yet almost entirely uninjured. The light Saracen arrows would drive the mail into the thick padding over which it was worn, but lacked the power to penetrate all the way through. Such bows were sufficient against the light armor that was worn in hotter climates, but was hard put to it against the Crusaders. Of course, the Crusaders, being unused to such heat, often died of heat stroke, so you pays yer money and you takes yer choice, I guess. Anyway, I am still interested in finding out more about the raw firepower specs of the Japanese bow. The short distances you mention seem more related to the armor of the warriors involved as opposed to the actual strength of the bows. Just as an aside, I was talking to someone at a kyudo rank test in Japan recently, and he told me that the record for flight shooting in modern Japan is around >300 yards. I don't have any information on medieval Japan, but considering that modern kyudo archers shoot much weaker bows than those used in war, I think that it is reasonable to assume that the medieval archers could probably shoot just as far or farther.

Anyway, good discussion.

[Earl Hartman]

Some interesting stuff from Joe Svinth, wizard of the links:

According to J. Chambers, The Devil's Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe (New York: Atheneum, 1979, p. 57), the Mongol bow compared favorably with its best European counterpart. The English longbow had a pull of 75 pounds and a range of 250 yards; the smaller Mongol recurved composite bow had a pull between 100 and 160 pounds and a range of 350 yards. The Mongols also practiced a technique called the Mongolian thumb lock, whereby an archer used a stone ring on the right thumb to release arrows more suddenly to increase velocity. Hildinger's review of various historical sources and modern experts (1997, pp. 20!31) suggests that the accurate range for shooting the composite bow from horseback is much shorter, between 10 and 80 yards. More inaccurate fire at greater ranges is possible against massed enemies by "shooting in arcade" (shooting at a steep angle of about 45 degrees)."

Now, this makes a lot more sense. Volley shooting by massed archers will do a lot of damage against a massed enemy even 350 yards away; sort of like massed artillery fire or carpet bombing. However, when on a horse aiming at a specific target, the rate of accuracy naturally falls. The 10-80 yard distance given for accurate mounted archery compares to that quoted by Dr. Friday. If one had to be close enough to hit a small gap in a heavily armored enemy, one would need to get quite close; if the object was to hit a man on a horse who was wearing little or no armor, you have a bigger target and thus can be accurate at a greater range.

From all the sources I have read, there are widely varying draw weights qoted. This article says that English longbows drew at 75 lbs., other sources say 100-120 lbs. was common. I'm sure it depended on the archer.

Anyway, FWIW.

[Cady Goldfield]

Mongol horses weren't weak, but they were very small and hard to control. Prior to the Edo period, horses in Japan were descendents of the wild Mongolian horses, which in turn were domesticated descendants of the only remaining species of wild horse (Equus equus,wild form, also now called "Przewalski's horse").

The hardest part about riding them is that they have narrow backs, which makes it necessary to use lots of blankets and saddlery -- which adds more weight to the horse's already considerable armored and be-weaponed human burden. Considering what they had to carry, they should be given credit for their strength and speed, and their ability to keep going for miles and miles when other breeds would have dropped from exhaustion.

It was the stamina of the Mongolian horses, along with the use of the stirrup, that allowed the Mongol hordes to cover as much territory as they did in such relatively short periods.

[Aaron Fields]

sayin bayi-no tei,

Actually the back of the Mongol horses are size appropriate and the gear was appropriate to the horse. Mongol horses being hard to control is a matter of perspective. The hardest thing about ridding one is getting use to standing in the stirrup rather than sitting. Ther legs are relatively short so their trot is rough. As my backside can attest to. Also for the most part mogols did not armor their horses at all, or minimally. (For the weight reasons.)

The Devil's Horseman is a good general survey, but within the Mongolist community their has been some question as to some of the specifics in the book. In particular his technology sections.

The Empire of the Steppe by Grousset is an "oldy but goody" for a well detailed overview.

I am working on a joint translation of a recent publication on Mongol empire period technology. It is probably several years out as the info is really technical.

Many of the Altan Ordu became Muslim but there was still large a portion who were Buddhist or Tengri-ists.


Armor varies, chain mesh, silk, leather, whatever was at hand. One area they armored very often was the outside of their boots as their legs were at risk of being chopped by sod kickers.


Anyone interested in this Mongol stuff feel free to contact me directly as it is my field.

Just call me ariag

[Cady Goldfield]

Aaron, I agree that the horses' backs are proportional. Besides, Mongols and 13th-century Japanese were pretty small folk, apparently. However, these horses were grass-fed and did tend to be bony. They still are, even though they seem to get more barley nowadays. I have an antique Mongolian saddle... early 19th century... but they hadn't changed much over the centuries, which I put on my own tiny Morgan mare just for laffs, and realized that on a Mongol pony you would have to heap the blankets up just to even out the terrain.

Actually, the worst thing about Mongol horses is that they are so small that their gaits are short and jerky. You have to stand in the stirrups to avoid hemorrhoids!

What amazes me that Mongol warriors could maneuver on horseback with those gaits and the small, tight circles the horses wheel around in, while successfully wielding weapons. I had enough of a challenge just keeping to the gait! Those Mongol ponies don't have the extended trot of a Morgan. :)

[Aaron Fields]

Cady,


Yep,

I own several horses in Mongolia. The Stallion I won wrestling, his name is Jigig Yamaa (Dancing goat.) I not sure what you mean about blankets, as I use, and all I've ever seen used is one blanket. (Maybe I misread.) Mongols historically are not as small as they are often thought of being, or as small as East Asians due to a major difference in diet. The key to the horse and the steppe was that you switched mounts all the time.



"Those Mongol ponies don't have the extended trot of a Morgan.

True, but it is what you are use to. I feel like I'm not riding when I'm on a western horse these days. And for pure comfort the camel is the Cadillac of the steppe and I'll put it against the
smoothest gated horse anyday. ;)

[Karl Friday]

Why did not the Japanese, who were so adept at producing weapons, tools, and artifacts of the highest quality, and are rightly renowned for their skill and ingenuity, never get around to developing a horseshoe? It seems incredible, frankly. Were the Mongol horses shod? If not, why not?

I don't know enough about horse culture worldwide to do more than hazard a guess on this, but I wonder if the practice of shoeing horses was really all that common? If this was a near-universal practice, discovered independently by horse-riding in lots of times and places, then the question of why the Japanese didn't figure out how to shoe horses takes on some significance. But otherwise, the real question is why did Europeans come up with this rather bizarre idea of nailing metal frames on the feet of their mounts?

Don't forget, BTW, that Japan was never much of a horse culture. Horses were used for some transport of goods overland, and for plowing fields, but they weren't used much for riding, outside the military. Unshod horses were probably fully equal to the demands placed on them in all these usages, so there would have been no real need to develop something like a horseshoe.



from your description, it sounds as though Japanese armor for horsemen was not only quite heavy relative to the strength of the horse, but extremely clumsy and poorly designed. Again, perhaps the Japanese, due to the terrain of their country, never felt the need to develop the kind of cavalry tactics in use in other places, or that such tactics would not work. Or, perhaps they just didn't have the one basic tool they needed: good strong horses.

I don't think that oyoroi deserves the label "poorly designed." It was, in fact, an outstanding design for the purpose for which it was intended: archery from horseback. It offered superb protection in this arena--and was steadily improved on over the years. But it also had weaknesses, as does most military technology.

As I noted in my earlier post, political, cultural and geographic factors all played a role in determining the sort of tactics and technology used in early medieval Japanese warfare. They didn't fight like the horsemen of the steppe, but then again, the Japanese never saw this kind of fighting, and many of the peoples who did--such as the European knights or the Chinese--never adopted steppe warrior-style tactics either.


While the Japanese bow may have been inferior in power to the Mongol bow, it sounds from your description that the main reason Japanese horseback archery was conducted from such a close range is that the Japanese horseman was well armored enough that arrows were useless unless they struck an unarmored area. Was this because the bows were too weak or the armor was too good? A symbiotic relationship if there ever was one, it seems to me.

"Symbiotic" may not be quite the right word here, but that seems to have essentially been the situation. Japanese bows were relatively weak, largely because of the materials available for making them, and Japanese armor was designed specifically to protect its wearer from arrows. The combination meant archers had to get very close, and had to target gaps and weak points. This is just another example of the universal dialog that goes on between offensive and defensive technology (and tactics).


I am still interested in finding out more about the raw firepower specs of the Japanese bow. The short distances you mention seem more related to the armor of the warriors involved as opposed to the actual strength of the bows. Just as an aside, I was talking to someone at a kyudo rank test in Japan recently, and he told me that the record for flight shooting in modern Japan is around >300 yards. I don't have any information on medieval Japan, but considering that modern kyudo archers shoot much weaker bows than those used in war, I think that it is reasonable to assume that the medieval archers could probably shoot just as far or farther.

Modern kyudo bows are much more powerful than those available in early medieval Japan. Most of the material I've been able to dig up on Heian and Kamakura era bow construction is relatively vague on the timing of new developments in bow construction and on pull weights, but the standard disclaimer is always that bows were fairly weak--particularly in comparison to their continental counterparts--until the late Kamakura or early Muromachi period. One of the problems historians face in answering this sort of question, it appears, is that few actual bows survive from early times.

The earliest bows, called maruki yumi, were made from natural branches and displayed concentric rings in cross-section. By the early Heian period the standard bow was the ki yumi, made from a single piece of wood, albeit a big one (the rings of the wood show up as curved horizontal stripes, when the bow is viewed in cross-section. Both maruki yumi and ki yumi were straight bows--that is, they have no curve unless strung.

From around the 12th century we start to see references in the sources to a two-layerd, recurved (i.e. curved even when unstrung and bent against the natural curve when stung) composite bow, made by bonding a layer of bamboo to the "front" (i.e. the side opposite the string ) of the bow, and called a fusetake yumi. Fusetake yumi were originally developed by Heian court nobles, for court ceremonial archery; it's not clear if they were ever used by warriors for battlefield work.

At some point during the late Heian or early Kamakura period, warriors developed a three-layered laminated bow--essentially a sandwich of wood between two slats of bamboo--called a sammaiuchi yumi. It's not clear when this first appeared, but the earliest extant examples (on display at the Oyamatsumi Shrine in Ehime) are said to date from the 1330s and 1360s. In any event sammaiuchi yumi are believed to have been the standard bows of
the Muromachi era. By the sengoku period the samurai had added two more slats of bamboo to the wood core (such that the bamboo formed a box around the wood), to produce the shihotake yumi.

The higo yumi of the early modern era and beyond, are a further improvement on these, with a core of 3-5 rectangular slats of bamboo set parallel to the direction of draw, perpendicular bamboo slats laminated to the front and back of the bow, and slats of wood laminated to the side. Higo yumi are quite powerful, but most experts on this say that they were designed more for competition archery (such as the toshiya distance-shooting competitions you mention) than for battlefield usage.

[Cady Goldfield]

Hey Aaron,

Once I got used to the Mongol pony gait, it actually was a lot of fun. They have fantastic endurance and you can cover a lot of ground on them. Yes, I'd imagine that Mongols had a higher-protein diet than East Asians, certainly -- all that milk and curd and meat. I've met some of their wrestlers. :)

Regarding the blanket, I meant in the singular, not plural, but was referring to folding it thick. The blankets I brought back are hefty but I had to fold them to make a good fit for the saddle -- the ponies had really bony withers, and the blanket helped even out the "terrain" from withers to rump. Those of us who still have Western Butts appreciate that. ;)

Changing horses was the main trick. A really good bio of Genghis Khan I read spends the better part of a chapter describing the logistics. The vastness of the distances covered required it, more than the routes of the US Pony Express. Mongolia sure knocks your eyeballs out for vastness. I was content to cover 20 miles a day on one horse -- a sorry comparison to what the Mongol warriors are said to have covered.

BTW, I trained my Morgan myself. When she was young, her gaits actually were a lot like those of a Mongol pony. But she's trained for rough trails and terrain, not the steppes. I had to cultivate a smoother gait in her to deal rocky, hilly trails. She's retired now at 28, but was an excellent endurance trail-ridin' horse.

[Earl Hartman]

Dr. Friday:

Thanks again.

Regarding bows, since I practice kyudo, I have made it a point to familarize myself with the development of the bow in Japan, so what you say is familiar to me and follows what I have read elsewhere.

What I meant by modern kyudo bows being weaker than their ancient counterparts is that even though the old technology was certainly inferior to the later higo bow, for reasons of efficacy in war, I am assuming that the actual draw weight of the bows must have been greater than that in general use today, not that the older bow technology could produce a stronger bow than the later higo technology.

Most modern kyudo archers, for reasons of style, the technical considerations of modern kyudo, and the fact that most modern kyudo archers do not train anywhere nearly as strenuously as their earlier counterparts, shoot relatively weak bows in relation to the body strength of the archer. The proper weight is considered to be half of the maximum strength one can draw: that is, if a draw weight of 40 kilos is the outer limit of your strength, the correct bow strength for you is 20 kilos.

There is no doubt that the higo bow, because of its construction, is capable of greater strength than the maruki, fusedake, sanmaiuchi or shihodake bows. However, even assuming the inferiority of the old technology, I cannot imagine a bow of the strength drawn by modern kyudo archers, which ranges from 18-21 kilos (about 40-46 lbs.) for men, would be able to do much damage even at fairly close range unless, as you say, an unarmored area was struck. I mean, even the modern FEMALE Mongol national champion shoots a 50-60 lb. bow, thus putting Japanese kyudo archers to shame, if strength is a determination of "manhood". I must assume that even though the technology was inferior, the old Japanese archers must have been able to find a piece of wood that would produce a bow of a greater draw weight than a mere 45 lbs. Such a bow is nothing more than a toy, and would certainly have been as good as useless against Mongol bows of upwards of 80-90 lbs. draw weight with a range of upwards of 300 yards.

In addition to that, the modern kyudo draw is considerably different from how the bows must have been drawn in war. In the modern kyudo draw, the arrow is drawn so it rests against the cheek at roughly the level of the mouth with the elbow of the string hand slightly to the rear of the shoulder joint and the plane of the body. Thus, the string, since it is held in the crotch of the thumb and forefinger, is nearly 6" behind the ear. This is impossible if you are wearing a kabuto since the fukigaeshi will interfere with the string. Pictures of Heki Danjo Masatsugu, considered the "father" of ryuha kyujutsu (some say he was a mythical figure) show him drawing the arrow to the breast, similar to the draw used in continental Europe with the short bow. It is assumed that the military draw was done in this way, or the arrow was drawn to the chin, much like in Western archery. Even the Satsuma Heki Ryu uses a more modern kyudo style draw, and in their demonstrations they wear eboshi as opposed to kabuto, probably to make it possible to draw the bow in that way.

As you say, the toshiya acted as the motive force for rapid and far-ranging developments in archery equipment and techniques. If you look at the records of the toshiya throughout the Edo period, the rapid increase in the number of arrows shot and the number of arrows to successfully carry the length of the shooting area is incredible. I don't have my books in front of me, but the first archer recorded was only able to get one or two arrows to carry the length of the hall. A little more than a century and a half later (if I have my dates right) Wasa Daihachiro was able to shoot more than 13,000 arrows in a 24 hour period with more than 8,000 of those shots carrying the required distance. The higo bow, special flight arrows with light points, and the shooting glove with a stiff, reinforced thumb and wrist support, are probably more responsible for these advances than anything else. Of course, by that time, schools of archery concentrated on achieving success in the toshiya, which was an artificial situation with a very specific set of conditions, so the technique of toshiya shooting was not the same as battlefield shooting.