Clash of techniques

golok

golok

Joined
Oct 20, 2000
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I have been imagining this scenario for sometime but has been unable to come up with the conclusion.

A samurai meets a fencer. Both draw their weapons. Obviously, there is a clash of cultures, weapons and techniques.

It's all over in two minutes but I can't see the winner. My vision is blurred. Who wins?

What do you think?

Let's suppose that both opponents are good at their own game and excellent with their own blades.
 
You're right - the fight would be short and brutal. Luck and not making the first mistake would probably be the deciding factors. I'll show by western sword bias and say I would prefer the reach of the rapier or cut & thrust sword.
 
IMO the samurai would usually win against a fencer if you mean modern foil fencing. Of course there are no samurai today, and it would be hard to say who would win between a samurai and a knight or a later European swordfighter. I took a fencing course last winter but unfortunatly only made half the classes due to the flu. I had to stop myself from doing abinikos after parrying.:D I guess a good way to practice is to get those foam-covered full-contact swords and get a group of friends and practice all the sword styles you can find and do a lot of sparring. I know some people who are planning to do something like this but with people who are already trained in Japanese and Chinese swordfighting.
 
The person who is smarter, more intuitive, luckier, faster, better-trained, and versatile is gonna be the most likely victor.

Don't think about art versus art or weapon versus weapon. Regardless of what they use, it's going to be person versus person.

Even if you COULD use yourself as a standard (learn both and pit them against one another, obviously not feasible)...you are likely to be swayed by a bias. One style may be more romantic to you than the other, or one style's techniques may be more in-tune to your individual body's mechanics. Everyone is different, so there isn't just a superior style that is inherently better...it's far too subjective.

You should never, ever need to claim what you study (or what you like) is superior to others. This is just like "my teacher can beat up your teacher" which is in effect the same crap as "my dad can beat up your dad." What is the point?

And 2 minutes? What, did they have a cup of tea after drawing their swords? :D
 
In my experience the only time sword fights lasted more than a few seconds were in battles with two teams and even those did not last very long. When you start with about 15 people per side and see maybe 4 or 5 people standing at the end it does help you have an idea of how dangerous those battles were. The guys with spears usually kill the guys with swords.


Edited to add: I forgot to mention a very common outcome I've seen in sword sparring, and that is mutual kills. It is far more likely that two guys with close to equal skill will kill each other than fight all day like on movies.
 
I've often wondered the same thing, Golok. I don't have any personal experience with sword fighting, but cut and thrust would seem to be the way to go. In boxing,if your opponent throws a hook you step inside his arc and counter. According to what I've read, this is how the Romans with their thrusting swords countered the barbarians with their slashing swords.(Step inside:insert gladius in gizzard) So I guess it depends on whether the Samurai fought strictly with the edge of their swords like in the movies, or whether they were more versatile. Martial arts trained forumites can answer that for us. Also, Europe went from using heavier swords and lots of armour to lighter swords, less armour and relying on speed and skill i.e. "fencing". Presumably, this was considered to be an improvement.
Cheers, Mark
 
Just a blip about the lighter swords and less armor evolution thing. It was actually the advent of decent projectile weapons that caused the evolution away from armor and the resulting evolution in swords.
 
I agree with Benjamin Liu that mutual kills are likely if the skills of the swordsman are matched.
 
Yeah, Triton, you've got a good point about the advent of firearms and their effect on the use of armour.
Cheers, Mark
By the way, Ferrous, that's not a very Teutonic answer.
 
I imagine it would be difficult to match skills between a Samuri and a fencer in the first place. The Samuri are taught from a very young age how to fight, so by the time they are adults, they have about 20 years under their belt, compared to a fencer the same age who would probably only have a few years. I beleive the Samuri are completely in tune with their weapon by then. One who fences usually doesn't spend every day of their life learning how to fence, though a Samuri would have.
 
I think he may have meant someone who trained in European swordfighting rather than a practitioner of the sport of fencing. Even modern practitioners or Japanese and European styles on average won't be as good as the average knight or samurai from medival times.

Regarding mutual kills, on average I saw more of it in fencing than in Eskrima or the Bujinkan. One problem was that even in a mutual kill, the guy who hits first or in the right way according to the rules wins even though in real life he'd be dead. It kind of surprised me to see people happy to score a point when they recieved what in reality would be a killshot. :rolleyes:
 
I think that you guys need to go read Ichabod Poser's thread on Knife Fighting over in the Political Forum before continuing this discussion as it needs a dose of the real world added to it. I once read an article by a old man, an ex-Marine and a veteran of Carlson's Raiders in WWII. He was also an accomplished knife fighter from that time of his life up through his tours, plural, in VietNam, with various side excursions in between. In other words, he had seen the elephant. His first observation is that the winner in a knife fight is the one that goes to the hospital and that the loser is the one that goes to the morgue. He also observed that both parties usually wind up looking like hamburger. It is my very strong suspicion that a serious sword fight between relatively equally skilled persons would have the same results, no matter what the choice of implements. A rapier or epee might, repeat, might be slightly less bloody as they are designed to poke holes and not to slice, but they can still do serious damage. If two unarmored persons go at one another without shields or other protection, it will be a bloody affair.
 
Ditto that, read the prologue of Amberger's "Secret History of the Sword" for some enlightening stuff about what a duel was like.
 
On one of the knife boards I read an account of the last "official" Bowie knife dueal in this one state. The loser died in the duel and the "winner" died a few hours later. I don't have the link but the account was pretty gruesome.
 
I agree that fighting, especially with any sort of weapon, is nasty, brutal and apt to get very bloody. All the same, it's an interesting subject and Golok posted a legitimate question.
Cheers, Mark
 
MadMark, I don't deny that. I retain my boyish fascination with these items at age 60, but I also urge all of you to keep in mind that using them in combat is very serious business and always has been so. That is one of the reasons that the Roman legions were so good at it in their prime, they held no romantic illusions about what they were doing, they just set about killing the opposition as efficiently as possible.

Edited top add that I regard the following as one of history's most noble and honored funeral tributes: "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie." It was placed on the memorial at the pass at Thermopylae.
 
Rapier wielder dies first - but gets in first hit - samuri slices him up - but dies from infection in the penetration wounds later.

BTW agree about comments in sport fencing. I prefer foil to epee - fought properly, your hits don't count unless you have parried the other guy effectively first. This teaches caution - unlike epee matches where you often see both fencers jabbing away at each other.

A strong shoulder can sometimes force a foil through a weak parry in foil - so you have to be careful, just as if the blades were sharps.
 
Thinking about cultural/social backgrounds, a samurai in those days was encouraged to learn sword fighting. They were no aristcrats, but administrators combined with law enforcement. Sometimes he can get a (much better) job with his skill with few exception of "executive" samurai politicians.

Muay Thai fighters today are good not only because of the good fighting system, but also because his skill is closely related to his income. I don't know what an average fencer lived on, but he who had more at stake with his fighting skill would have win... in average.

P.S. Samurai's swordplay took a major place about 400 years ago, as duel fighting. For 600 years until then, a samurais were to do well with 1. horse riding, 2.bow and arrow (last 100 years, firearms) 3. lance/spear for warfare in battlefields. Swords were last resort for self protection, or beheading tool (counting enemys' heads was the easiest way to decide his rewards). There was no average nor standard swordsman, needless to say styles of swords.
 
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